It’s not a matter of taste exclusively

What many writers forget is that the Prius is a design statement, it’s an efficiency statement. With all the blather over the last couple of years of about “looking green” the one thing that keeps getting ignored is that Prius looks the way it does because it’s the most efficient shape for that size vehicle.

Form followed function.

So it’s not about looking futuristic it’s about the concept that aesthetics may start taking a back seat to overall efficiency.

It’s back to the future for fuel-efficient designs
Detroit Free Press

DETROIT – Those Jetsons – the forward-looking cartoon family of the 1960s – were on to something with their bubbly, teardrop-shaped space car.

Given the changing public consciousness surrounding high gas prices, which now hover around $4 a gallon and seem to be moving onward and upward, people are not just going to want more fuel-efficient vehicles.

A group of top designers at the nation’s largest automakers also predicted that consumers will want vehicles that look fuel-efficient, too – not unlike the Toyota Prius, which makes as much of a design statement with its aerodynamic kidney-bean shape as it does with its 46 mpg fuel rating.

So expect the cars of the future to look a lot more like the futuristic vehicles from yesteryear’s science fiction films and cartoons.

“Everything is going to be aerodynamic,” Patrick Schiavone, director of design for Ford Motor Co.’s North American trucks and sport utility vehicles, said during a recent luncheon at the Detroit Athletic Club hosted by the Automotive Press Association.

“Gas prices will change taste,” agreed Greg Howell, exterior design manager for Jeep at Chrysler LLC.

Actually, gas prices have changed tastes, not will.