No more potato-shaped cars

摘要

EVER WONDERED WHAT KEEPS POLESTAR DESIGNER NAHUM ESCOBEDO UP AT NIGHT? IT'S THE TYRANNY OF POTATOES. SPEAKING TO POLESTAR 3 design lead Nahum Escobedo at the large SUV's Australian unveiling, it became clear the company doesn't care much for trends, fads or gimmicks. So while Chinese company Geely may own Polestar's majority shareholder, Volvo, the brand's ethos remains decidedly Scandinavian. One battle for the design team was balancing aero efficiency with visual presence. To give the Polestar 3 a high bonnet line without rounding its edges, Escobedo and his team came up with a novel nose wing to keep the visual balance of an SUV without resorting to overly rounded edges for efficiency - something Esobedo is certainly not a fan of. "A lot of details around Polestar 3 like the wings and the SmartZone at the front where we cluster all the sensors and cameras, we have them because they have a function. Nothing is there by accident or as a styling exercise", Escobedo explained. If you really want that sort of entertainment, you know, you go to Vegas, or you go to a nightclub maybe? I don't know. But not in our cars! That begged the question: what are Nahum's design pet peeves?"One of them is the roundness of cars that are becoming almost potato-shaped, or like a Jelly Bean because that's perfect for aerodynamics. Obviously, we want to do something different", he replied. Nahum didn't name brands, but it's not hard to look at the landscape and see what he's talking about. Plenty of brands including Tesla, BYD, and the Mercedes' EQ range seem to be falling into the aero-is-everything design trap. You could also accuse them of being guilty of Escobedo's next peeve.