Hyundai looked at its own electric vehicle lineup and, reportedly, barely recognized it. Xavier Martinet, the company’s European chief, put it with unusual corporate candor: there’s a troubling lack of visual coherence across the brand’s EV range. The only thread connecting models like the Inster and the Santa Fe, apparently, is a shared fondness for pixel-effect headlights. For a brand trying to carve out a distinctive identity in an increasingly crowded EV market, that’s roughly equivalent to saying a family resembles each other because they all own umbrellas.
The current Hyundai electric portfolio reads like a greatest hits album assembled by three different A&R executives who never spoke to each other. Rounded city cars, geometric SUVs, and sedans that each seem to channel a different architectural movement.
The fix involves a segmented design approach that at least acknowledges the problem honestly. Upcoming replacements for the Bayon and Tucson will lean into robust, vertical proportions, urban off-road attitude, Santa Fe energy. Meanwhile, lower models will maintain sleek, aerodynamic silhouettes, previewed by the THREE concept that anticipates what the Ioniq 3 will look like. Two distinct visual dialects, one recognizable family. In theory.
What Hyundai is emphatically not doing is abandoning the philosophy championed by global design chief Sang Yup Lee, who insists every model must retain a strong, individual personality. Martinet is threading a needle here: building family cohesion without drifting into the sterile, badge-it-and-forget-it uniformity that already makes too many competitors’ lineups interchangeable at fifty yards. It’s a legitimate concern. Visual standardization is the beige wallpaper of automotive design.
The strategic logic is sound. Hyundai genuinely believes design remains as decisive a purchase factor as price, and a unified yet distinctive electric lineup creates deeper emotional resonance with buyers while clarifying where each model sits in the hierarchy. Coherence without homogeneity, identity without chaos. The promise is elegant. Delivery is everything.
