Todays EVs. Which ones are future classics?

BMW i3

Proper ground breaking EV with real novel engineering around the carbon fibre body, style and space in a small package.

I'd love a 120ah one if it didn't have 4 seats only!

I'll add a few:

Honda E - the range and charging are poor but somehow everyone wants one despite that

BMW i3 - way ahead of it's time

Nissan Leaf 24kWh - the battery will be too badly degraded to make it to a car show (or will have been swapped) but who could forget one of the first mass market EVs that sold in big numbers

Microlino - you know you want one 😉

Renault Twizy - this is what happens when you give the design team free reign 😂

Kia E-Soul - marmite in car form, but it's too far out there to be forgotten

I'm going to add one final car which isn't commercially available (and there's only one built)

VW ID.R - Volkswagen had one go at electric motorsports and built a 670hp moster machine which shattered almost every record it ever attempted and could accelerate fast than an F1 car.

There's already faster cars being built, and records will be broken, but to me the ID.R was a big step forward in electric motorsports

I think the Ioniq 28kWh could be a future classic. Sleek lines and a heavy Cobalt battery, not a huge number in the country.

Also agree with the i3, the carbon fibre body will make longevity easy.

Excellent thread idea @n.d.os

I would say BMW i3 because it has unique looks and I guess limited supply.

Leaf 24 indeed would be classic for all currently youngpeople for whom it was first EV.

@Gumbo I think Roadster is already classic car.

Another rare car would be Fluence Z.E., it has a very classic analogue dashboard.

i3 for sure, maybe Taycan but that will age pretty bad when newer higher performance ones arrive

Rest are all very generic, no decent hot hatch or anything has come out in EV form

Why would you have EV classics anyway, it's not like with ICE and you having lovely sounding V10's and different driving characteristics eg MX5 lightweight or Focus RS fighting front end or LFA for that F1 sound, EV's all make no sound and weight close to 2000kg besides the i3

I know people get older and buy their father's car when they were kids but no one is buying a classic Leaf or a i3 in 20 years' time.

To be a true classic it needs to be rare or as it doesn't have an amazing noise under the bonnet look amazing. Honda e, Fiat 500 or the Porshe will be desirable.

Tesla Roadster is so far the only one rare and a true classic as far as I can tell.

i3 variants like the S or the REx. Think they will be sought after big time.

The Peugeot VLV. I accept that it's a classic today

The 1950s Crosley is considered a classic so we know it isn't a beauty contest

Any of the Renaults so far, Twizzy, Zoe and the new Megane E-Tech

Yes to the first two, solid no to the Mégane. Absolutely nothing interior or unique about it, it's a copy and paste of every other CUV out there

Might be a good exhibition beside all the other current crossovers to demonstrate the apparent collective brain death that occurred among car designers in the early 2020s

And yes, I realise I'm being hypocritical since I drive an ID.4, but I never claimed it was particularly unique or good looking 😉

Hey if Soviet apartment blocks can be considered classical then there's hope for all the crossovers today 😂

Never said they would be (except maybe the Buzz) 😜

My point is more that current car design in general is incredibly bland and every brand just seems to copy each other shamelessly with little to no imagination

I'll actually give Tesla some credit here with the Model Y. Even though I don't like the look of it, it is at least different to it's competitors

I agree classics don't necessarily need to be good looking, but they tend to have some unique appeal

I think the Mégane is actually a decent looking car, but beyond the Renault badge I don't see much that differentiates it from the competition

Oh I agree, if you look at an ID.4, Peugeot 3008, Hyundai Tucson and Renault Mégane all from the side you'd almost struggle to tell them apart. A lot of the details just get copied and pasted across brands

Actually the analogy to Soviet apartment blocks might be a good one; boring, generic but strangely functional and generally well designed

LOl, as a proud owner of one, I'm firmly in the "it's fugly" category, and will date accordingly.

I think the ID.4 is blander than a week old trifle. The Peugeot is not much better. The best looking of the lot is possibly the Tuscon closely followed by the Megane.

An interesting little experiment. Do a google image search on each of the above. The manufacturers images will show what they consider as the best views. Then think of the viewing angles not shown.

Typically some cells in battery become weaker, so you can just replace them and quite likely using good cells from scraped car. For safety reasons batteries are placed under car in the middle so they are very likely to avoid damage accidents.

The I3 is nearly 10 years old and the design hasn't aged at all.

Reading through the comments, I see no love for the I-pace, surprising as the design and drive are generally well regarded by reviewers.

With battery packs it's likely people will swap out and repair /replace individual cells for the first 20 years of life. Then aftermarket newer higher capacity replacements will make sense for common EVs such as leaf. Recycling packs will only happen when there is no demand for working complete used packs which there seems to be. You can buy individual leaf and Tesla cells on ebay and I can imagine people swapping motors and inverters etc to keep cars going.

In terms of rarity the MX5 and old mini are very popular classics but they are not that rare. They are known to be good drives, cheap to buy, parts readily available, reliable and don't look bad. " Everyday classics" is a term used for low cost easily maintained classics that are not rare. Some can have very bad performance e.g. old beetle but still a definite classic.

Interesting thread and depends on the region what will be classic. For us here in Ireland I guess the BMW i3 and the Tesla Model S are prime candidates as they were very early entrants in the EV market well over a decade ago, very good at what they do and their number is very limited and they haven't been sold here for a while and you can't really import one any more. To put things into perspective, I was an early adopter buying my first EV nearly 7 years ago and people thought I had 7 heads when I told them. They said the battery would need replacing every year or two and depreciation would be horrendous. At the time, out of 2 million private cars in Ireland, there were a bit more than 1000 EVs. That car was a Hyundai Ioniq classic 28kWh. Maybe a classic to be? The first really affordable electric car that had a reasonable range at motorway speeds (the main failing of the Nissan Leaf)

The Tesla is very good looking and any other owner will tell you they are still amazed at the daily looks and gazes and finger pointing and shouting "Tesla!" (mainly from kids) where ever you go - in poor or rich areas. After owning two of these cars for well over 3 years, I am still amazed by this.

BMW i3 is ugly and a weird form factor. With tall but very skinny tyres and wheels. But it drives brilliantly and was far ahead of its time for a European EV.