Cars have never been harder to design than in the EV era, so how does Chery's design chief think we can make them more exciting? Hyundai, BMW and Audi might give us a clue
By Samuel Irvine · 16 May 2025
Designing cars in the EV era isn’t as simple as it used to be, according to Chery’s Vice President and General Manager of Design, Steve Eum.The Korean-American design veteran and self-described automotive purist worked with some of the biggest names in the car industry, including Ford, General Motors and Hyundai, before joining the burgeoning Chinese firm in 2017.It was the same year Chery released its first electric car, the eQ1, marking a turning point for the brand as it began a fully fledged transition to electrification, carrying with it new design challenges.“Growing up, if you saw the front end of an Aston Martin or a Jaguar, you knew it was an Aston Martin or a Jaguar.”“With these newer energy vehicles, becoming a lot more simpler at the front, more cleaner, of course, but at the same time, you’re losing that identity,” said Eum.As car brands shift their priorities to aerodynamics and energy efficiency, designing a new car to be unique from its rivals has become an increasingly difficult task, said Eum.Take the front grille, for example.Irrespective of its functional purpose of cooling the engine on petrol and diesel cars, since the dawn of the motor car itself, the front grille has been the major identifier for car brands.But the problem for designers in the EV era is that they’re no longer required given there is no longer an engine to cool.In fact, a front grille on an EV can actually stifle aerodynamics, leading to lower energy efficiency that depletes driving range faster.“The grille plays a big part because it is that one piece of detail at the front of the car that really says it is a certain brand next to the badge. Of course, it gives a clear indication – especially from far away – about what vehicle is coming towards you,” said Eum.“As soon as you get rid of the grille, you’ve left this big part out of the visual identity.”The loss of the front grille has also coincided with the trend to adopt rounder body styling (also for aerodynamics), which Eum said has left little in the way of design features to tinker with other than the headlights and tail-lights.“A lot of vehicles are now designed because of regulation, aerodynamics and safety – it’s hard to get away from that.”But, depending on how you look at it, said Eum, the EV transition can either be viewed as a roadblock or an opportunity to experiment with more digital technologies.Hyundai is a prime example of how EV design can be individualised through the use of its LED lights, which incorporate a design technique the brand calls "Parametric Pixels”.As it might sound, Ioniq models use pixelated lights to create digital surfaces, lines and angles, rather than traditional physical styling.Audi is similarly an adopter of these lighting techniques. The LED light signatures on its newer models, such as the Q6 e-tron, are configurable to the driver's preferences and elicit different animations when locking and unlocking the car.BMW has gone a different route, reinstating the grille on some of its EV models but incorporating it as a flat panel that is, in some cases, much larger than on its petrol and diesel cars.The grille on the BMW iX, which is one of the brand’s largest to date, is coated with polyurethane to make it self-repairing from scratches and lined with LED lights to make its branding more conspicuous.According to Eum, it’s these sort of digital identifiers that will define Chery's car design going forward, rather than strictly physical ones.“I think, in the future, whether it be something that’s not so physically direct or so literal in terms of the physical grille, we might start experimenting with more digital aspects, like lighting, transparent lighting, opaque lighting and things of that nature.”“I think that gives more of an identity for the front part of the vehicle that supports the brand as well, and so, that's what we see for the future."
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