The Type 01 is the first model to arrive from Jaguar’s rebirth. The British carmaker was an early entrant to the modern EV market with the 2017 I-Pace, which was fun to drive even if it was too small inside and perhaps completely unreliable. An all-electric sedan was supposed to be next, but a year from the showroom, it was abruptly canceled, leaving the automaker with nothing to sell as old models like the F-Pace ceased production.
“The jag, it looks like a car you’d steal in Cyberpunk 2077,” said one Ars staffer approvingly. Credit: Jaguar
The fact that Jaguar, a car company, ran an advert that didn’t show a single car will never not be silly.
Also, that thing is ugly.
Oh wow, look at those moveable vents in the bottom corners of the bumper, they look great.
Ugh, I thought we were getting over this already.
The interior is fine, I can appreciate the clean lines and overall minimal ornamentation. White is probably a bad choice for a car that any real human is going to use.
But a touchscreen for the interior controls? Really? Is it 2015 again? Physical buttons are better. I would even go so far as to say they’re necessary for any controls that a driver might operate while driving - they should be findable by feel only, in the dark, while your eyes are on the road. A luxury vehicle design should certainly have physical controls, even if they’re tucked behind one of these panels to preserve the look of the interior:
It wouldn’t be ideal, but it would be much better than that thing that looks like a phone bolted onto the center spine, which is just ugly. It sticks out from the rest of the interior design like a flashing neon sign of cost-cutting. It looks like a POS terminal, like I’m about to pay for my coffee:
What a bad decision, or probably chain of bad decisions made through several committee meetings.
White is probably a bad choice for a car that any real human is going to use.
It looks more like beige.
I drove an Audi A4 with light grey / silver fabric interior for 15 years. It was 18 years when I sold it and still looked mostly like new. Only the drivers seat had a few slightly darker spots that I could likely have cleaned with a wet-dry vacuum cleaner.
I didn’t have kids in the car during that time, though. But I guess neither would whoever drives Jaguar.
Whoever came up with the concept of touchscreens being somehow more sophisticated and luxurious than buttons deserves to be fired. Actually, while you’re at it, fire the guy that thought EVs needed all the useless tech gizmos cramped into them as standard.
That one is on Apple. Not because they pushed touchscreens as luxurious, but because Apple was generally seen as a luxury brand when people were first switching from phones with buttons to iPhones. The rest is just the general market reaction to a fad, in this case the ultra minimalist fad that also came from Apple.
Product people are being pushed out of leadership to make room for soulless MBAs. It is happening in every industry now that oligopoly guarantees returns and better products are no longer needed.
Edit: This is the LUXURY market. People buy luxury items not because they are COST EFFECTIVE but because they are AWESOME. Old school luxury car designers (ie product people) would sooner kill themselves than put their names on this bland shit.
Physical things, including buttons and knobs, have to deal with moving parts breaking. Moving parts break in different ways from digital screens, and testing those parts for MTBF is more expensive than for digital screens. Individual buttons and knobs also have to be wired separately instead of a single wiring input to a CPU.
It all comes down to cost.
I mean the reason they use the screens is more a cost thing.
LG and Samsung are pumping out millions of touch screens a year. The cost for a single screen is less than 100 bucks and it’s off the shelf. The alternative is spinning up or contacting production lines for those buttons or knobs each requiring design and QC and of course production.
The screens are just so so much cheaper.
They also don’t have to do any product development on the design team, they can outsource all of that to the tech team instead.
If touchscreens were better then every plane would have them on every instrument.
They’re cheaper to implement, and in this context it certainly looks the part. That panel looks like a Garmin circa 2008:
Obviously they’re cheaper to implement. Wiring up all those buttons costs money and we’re not gonna waste money on good UX.
Plus making everything electric means more warranty repairs when the electric motors break.
But that’s enshittification for you.
It looks cooler but doesn’t mean it is. My truck has a touch screen for Apple car play but everything else is physical control and I appreciate it so much
The car of the future was supposed to have pulsating LEDs, self-drive, pursuit mode, turbo boost and an reassuringly patronising personality that would scan for threats and tell you what you were doing wrong. I was supposed to have a chest and head of hair like David Hasselhoff and a rich crime-fighting sugar daddy to fund my escapades.
This is off-white nothingness inside. It leaves me cold.
This car at least has a somewhat unique look to it unlike the Luce; which looks so powerfully generic that it almost doesn’t matter what other features it has.
Or worse, the Ford Mustang Mach-E, which looks like Ford has suddenly started reselling the Tesla Model Y.
Fuck me. I thought the mach_e was a hot hatch. Its an SUV! Wtf were they thinking bedside raising the price compared to a coupe.
The Luce looked exactly like what I imagined the proposed Apple car would look like and nothing like a Ferrari
I think that’s true for the exterior, but for the interior it’s the opposite, the Luce interior looks great, and the jag interior looks like every other new car…
Kind of ironic given Jags are more well known for driver comfort while Ferraris are more known for showing off.
I’m not even sure you can compare the two. To me the have different missions and are appealing to different segaments of (albeit the same) market. The only similarity is they’re both EVs.
They don’t know what to do with the face. They’re afraid to go big, so they go bland and call it “understated elegance.” The only clue it’s a Jaguar is if you happen to notice the name on the front. At least the Rolls still looks like a Rolls.
Massive A-pillars. I guess if you can blow $150K on a car, you can afford to hit pedestrians.
It needs those A pillars in case it rolls over otherwise the massive battery pack would crush the occupants.
It’s nearly impossible to flip an electric car because of the weight being so low. You’d have to drive it off a cliff.
True, but there aren’t exemptions for EVs in crash tests
A Pillars are perfectly capable of hiding whole ass cars, too.
Turning out of my apartment’s driveway and entering the roundabout are two places I am regularly almost creamed thanks to the safety provided by a hefty A Pillar.
At least you’re not only getting the giant iPads, you’re getting a giant iPhone as well!
Do EV’s have to be ugly? Are they doing this on purpose so you don’t buy them? What’s going on here?
No, the Renault R5 is really good looking. The new BMW i3 Neue Klasse is as well and as it happens looks almost identical to the ICE version even though its on a pure electric platform.
I kind of like this one. But every time I see I Rivian I have to avert my eyes.
I’ll admit it’s not the worst example taken in isolation, but for heaven’s sake it’s a Jag. It is very likely the ugliest Jaguar ever made.
Companies need to make tiered pricing models, they all ditched the intro level car and left us with bloated driving computers. Bring back the basic car with all normal designs and physical knobs
I’m actually pretty impressed with how cheap EV’s are becoming. The ioniq 3 at €28k is a great deal, and Smart just announced their tiny #2 ev at €20k.
There going for 40k-50k US.
I think the Hyundai Ioniq, the Toyota bZ4X (what an awful name) and the Mazda 6e all look pretty cool. They more or less just look like any other regular ICE car. For some reason the western and Chinese manufacturers keep trying to do something funky and hideous.
I wouldn’t call them beautiful, but yes they are at least passable (except the older ioniq 6’s- don’t like the looks of them). I mean the best of them like the Mazda simply look like average ICE sedans. But it’s sad to see so many manufacturers with track records of making beautiful cars like Audi, Ferrari, and now Jaguar pumping out completely fugly EV’s. I just don’t get it. This is one area Tesla did pretty well. Pity Elon owns it. The one cheaper EV I actually like the looks of is the Smart #1, specifically the grey and red Brabus edition.
Ioniq and 6e both get massive points taken off for doing the stupid tesla door handles
Fair, I’m not a fan of those either but that unfortunately seems to be the case with almost all EVs unfortunately so it’s not like that really matters in this case.
They more or less just look like any other regular ICE car.
ice cars are how they are because they basically need to be. I’m an anti car but I’m glad EVs are throwing that shitty design criteria out the window and experimenting.
Chinese cars are how they are because that’s what the biggest car market on the planet wants.
if you want something that is boring and uninspiring, Toyota has your back
I can neither afford nor need one if these but id get one :)
Hyundai’s new V model as well
https://thebeep.com.au/car-news/hyundai-ioniq-v-beijing-debut-australia/
Most EV manufacturers doesn’t seem to be experimenting:
Doo handles - integrated
Body - Tall SUV
Grill - Missing
Headlights - Slim LED, sometimes a full lightbar.
Readlights - Full lightbar
Hood - Tall
General size - Huge
You know what would be experimenting? Styling EVs like ICE cars.
That frankly looks gaudy as heck but well taste is subjective I guess.
The Hyundai EVs are ugly, but so are Hyundai ICE vehicles. Their whole brand’s design language is very ugly to me.
Kia, on essentially very similar (if not basically the same) platforms, looks way better, but generally costs more.
It looks like it’s from Batman: The Animated Series which is cool.
Until you realize something that long would be totally impractical.
It’s the basic shape of one of the Batmobiles, but without any of the details that made it interesting.
Like pitching a movie based on the “Titanic” but the boat makes it to port safely–completely missing the point.
It’s very much a car for people to be driven around in.
The back doors are far too small for that.
It will be driven from one underground garage into the next, or to courtyard entrances. This is not meant to be parked in the streets.
I remember the electric Ferrari - hideous.
These companies mastered a design language and they’ve failed to maintain it in these EVs. You can take a chance with a radical new design, but don’t be surprised if you fall on your face. Slapping jag or Ferrari on it doesn’t make it look good.
BMW is another major offender.
Really? I don’t think the BMW i series look any different from their other vehicles.
But all of them with the giant bucktooth pedipalp grilles instead of the Poirot mustache grilles look stupid.
Yeah, þey don’t. I can’t tell an ICE 4-series from an i4 until it’s turned on.
True, they just went all in on ugly across the board, but seems like some of the worst looks early on were when they started with EVs.
Even the new Audi Q2 Etron they are rolling out in 2027 is horrendous. I thought I could trust Audi to make a normal decent looking car, but no. Not any more.
It feels like a low poly version of a muscle car.
It looks almost exactly like the 2006-2018 Dodge Chargers.
Don’t forget about the Magnum which was a wagon just like this.
I think this is a big miss for Jaguar.
I don’t like high beltline cars, I also didn’t forget the Ferrari I’m just indifferent to both
That logo is awful; it looks like it spells “Joovar” from any sort of distance lol
I happen to somewhat like the design, though, just doesn’t look anything like a jag.
Finally a refreshingly new design 🤩
it looks like a car you’d steal in Cyberpunk 2077
Don’t insult Cyberpunk’s car designs like that, man
