One of Xpeng’s top designers has hit out at the continuing use of grilles on EVs, saying they serve no purpose other than being a hangover from models with combustion engines – and his remarks came as the brand revealed its first model down under will be the grille-free L03 SUV (pictured, below).

Joan Melenchon, Xpeng’s creative design director, also took other EV makers to task for continuing to use the feature on their vehicles, saying they need to find a different way of establishing their own visual identity.

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“You will see that everyone is developing their own front fascia based on the air intake, where you probably don’t need it in an EV. Doing design identity based on something that they don’t use, is that the right thing to do?” he said. 

“For me, [it] is not honest for any EV brand that doesn’t have a combustion engine in front. It’s the wrong thing to express your identity based on an air intake you don’t need. Tell me just one brand that is being built from scratch, being electric, that has a strong design identity from the very beginning. 

“Maybe it’s our competitor, maybe you can say Tesla. It’s clear what it is. But if you also analyse any other brand, any OEM [original equipment manufacturer] in the market … its design identity is coming from combustion engines.”

Tesla, of course, does not feature grilles on its extremely popular Model 3 and Model Y BEVs. Other manufacturers with a strong background in internal-combustion cars, such as BMW and Mercedes, retain them for their BEVs as part of the brands’ already-established signature looks. 

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But as Melenchon pointed out, some new EV-centric brands – such as Chery and MG – make air intakes a major part of the look of their vehicles. 

Grilles aren’t needed on BEVs for the same reason they don’t need petrol tanks: the absence of an internal combustion engine that needs to be fed with and cooled by air. Furthermore, leaving them off the front of the car has advantages beyond creating a completely non-ICE look.

Dropping the air intake gives designers more freedom to concentrate on aerodynamics by creating cleaner airflow around the body, which can bring benefits for efficiency, especially during highway driving.