I know they don’t have a grill due to not having a radiator and it being more aerodynamic, but replacing it with a flat sheet of plastic or metal doesn’t seem like the best way to go about it. If aerodynamics were the main goal wouldn’t the air that hits the nose make it less efficient? It makes sense to me to shrink down the front bumper as much as possible or create vents that give the air a more efficient path. Is it purely an aesthetic thing?
In: Engineering
Yes, shrinking the front is better. However you still need a crunple zone, there’s EV drive system components in the front, and/or a frunk for storage. So you need something there.
In general, you are almost always going to be better off moving air around the vehicle than trying to suck it through the vehicle and expel it. Exceptions for stuff like a F1 car that has really optimized aerodynamics, but for most production vehicles it’s not worth it to invest any air that you don’t need for cooling, and EVs have way lower cooling demand (usually a <100 sq inch opening in the lower bumper is plenty)
If a brand has a shared platform for hybrids and EVs, a lot of times the simplest thing is to just give the EV version a solid grille. It’s better to deflect that air around the car than to ingest extra air and dump it out underneath.
If it’s a pure EV platform, then you usually see cars designed without grilles – Tesla for example does no grille, just a smooth front bumper with a slot at the bottom for cooling. I think they actually have some interior passageways that go through the bumper and into the wheel wells but I don’t know why.
As more companies make EVs on EV-only platforms, generally you see less of the “let’s just put a big piece of silver plastic over where the grille was”. They just have a small cooling slot and then curve the front edge of the hood lower down to improve the aerodynamics.
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