Bland or Grand: EV Interiors
When electric vehicles started entering the market en masse a few years ago, it was popular to craft the things in the style of a piece of IKEA furniture: crisp and modern but generally rather blank.
The trend arguably started long before EVs became a political football. Consider the original Chevrolet Volt, a car with an interior (mainly the center stack area) which looked for all the world like a modern kitchen appliance, especially when opted in white. Buttons - remember them? - blended into that space with such ease that one would not have been surprised to find ones labelled ‘blend’ or ‘liquefy’. And check out the integration of that gear selector. It doesn’t look like it should have worked, or at least been comfortable only to people with mail slots for hands, but it did.
[Images: Everyonephoto Studio / Shutterstock.com, Teddy Leung / Shutterstock.com, Florenc.Elezi / Shutterstock.com, Vitissimo / Shutterstock.com, Wongsakorn 2468 / Shutterstock.com]
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Nissan Leaf
The first-generation Nissan Leaf did a passable job of looking for all the world like a real car and not an unfinished science project, save for the weird hockey puck of a gear selector which also basically made it to the second-gen car. That happened for reasons known only to people deep within the bowels of Nissan, apparently. Other quirks included a set of buttons (again, at least there were buttons) outlined to look like Ben Stein’s bowtie and a hump atop the dashboard which made it look as if an errant camel was trying to emerge from the space. Both the first- and second-gens are shown here.
Tesla Model Y
Operating waaay on the other end of the spectrum is the Tesla Model Y - or any Tesla, really. We’re picking on the Model Y because of its sheer sales numbers, ensuring that it is far and away the most common Tesla a person is likely to encounter.
Tesla Model Y
The space is willfully devoid of just about any buttons, to the point where even the traditional steering column stalks in some models for gear like wipers and signal lights are binned in favor of using other methods of activation. There’s a rumor that Elon investigated ways to legally paint the seat belt release buttons (mandated orange for obvious reasons) a darker shade so as not to interrupt the stark mood of a Tesla cabin.
Hyundai Ioniq 5
Residing somewhere in the middle of those two extremes is the Hyundai Ioniq 5, showing up for all-electric duty with an appropriate number of buttons but still managing to incorporate a dashboard screen which could easily suit an IMAX movie-goer. Plenty of redundancy physical controls continue to dot the space (and the steering wheel in go-fast N trim) but the space feels very modern.
Hyundai Ioniq 5
We’ll see if it (and the same-but-different Ioniq 6) ages well. What will age nicely is the electronic gear selector, configured in a manner which - unlike most rivals - is very intuitive. Twist the end of the stalk forward to drive, twist it backwards to reverse, and tap a button on its end to park. Simple, and currently the best in the biz.
