Actually no, not all new cars look the same, as these EV sedans show

If you were hoping that BMW would go back to small grilles, hope again. This is the BMW Concept i4, and a production version of this four-door electric car goes on sale in 2021. [credit: BMW ]

"Every car on the road looks the same." It's an oft-heard refrain, one that bemoans the fact that sometimes, designers will coalesce or converge upon similar ideas. There's an element of truth in there—when you're designing (for instance) a three-row SUV, packaging concerns largely dictate the shape you end up with. But it's mostly a gross oversimplification, usually illustrated with a big old .jpg covered in tens of not-identical cars all shot from the same angle in the same color. What those Internet arguments fail to note are all the cars that fit the same niche but look radically different, and today we have a great example with a pair of electric sedan concepts, one from BMW and one from Hyundai. And I'm pretty sure if you love one, you won't love the other.

Do you like angles?

I'll start with the BMW first, for reasons alphabetical as well as the fact that a production version of the Concept i4 will arrive on the road sometime next year. It's another car in BMWs i sub brand, which acts like a capsule collection for advanced lightweight materials and clever electrified powertrains. The first i cars were the urban "stormtrooper helmet on wheels" i3—still possibly the best used electric car bargain available—and the i8 plug-in hybrid, which combined supercar looks (and doors) with a sense of social responsibility. There's a crossover in the works, too, because that's all anyone seems to buy today, but design-wise the Concept i4 should carry some weight, given BMW's long history of making money selling sporty sedans.

Our first hint of the i4 came back in 2017 with the i Vision Dynamics concept. In the intervening time, it has become increasingly clear BMW is leaning into the whole giant grille thing. We haven't seen the Concept i4 in person, but I will go out on a limb and say that last year's Concept 4 Coupe, which broke cover at the 2019 Frankfurt show, had a grille of a similar size and shape, and in 3D it looked a lot better than photos suggest. But I also won't deny the fact that from head-on, there's definitely something a bit "pig from Angry Birds" about this one. I'm a big fan of the Concept i4's interior, which continues some ideas we first saw in the iNext crossover. Like Porsche's Taycan EV, there's no cowl or binnacle over the main display, but the effect here is more "boutique hotel room" and less "smartphone" than in the Porsche.

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