Electric car names need a jolt

Even though the technology improves with every new model, electric cars have a way to go before they become the dominant mode of transport on Irish roads.

Green Party leader and Minister for Transport, Climate, Environment and Communications Eamon Ryan has boldly claimed that by 2030 all new cars in Ireland will be electric. To make this happen, the branding approach used by carmakers for their electric vehicles needs a serious overhaul.

Gone are the days, portrayed so dramatically in Mad Men, when a car company account was the ultimate goal of every top-level advertising agency. These days, pharmaceutical and tech companies occupy the top floor of the corporate establishment, and not just in Ireland.

As a result, no automaker feels the need to come up with a 21st-century e-car branding equivalent of the Mustang, Thunderbird, Barracuda, or Corvette Stingray, which a swinging bachelor uncle of mine drove for a brief time in the Sixties.

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In dealer showrooms today you’ll see the Chevrolet Spark and Bolt – an example of fairly predictable branding and so last century – and Nissan has its greener and more imaginative Leaf. Volkswagen, according to its website, has decided “to choose a new path with the all-electric ID range.” In forthright German fashion, the abbreviated labelling signifies “intelligent design, identity and visionary technologies.”

Despite engineering the first mass-produced hybrid vehicle – the Prius went on sale in Japan in 1997 – Toyota won’t have a line of fully electric cars until late 2022, the antiseptically named Proace and bZ4X models.

Meanwhile, premium automakers don’t even bother coming up with a unique name or design for their electric-only vehicles. Mercedes has an indistinguishable EQ range and BMW an iX series – hardly likely to impress anybody’s playboy uncle let alone their impressionable young nephew.

Tesla’s founders, of course, went in a different direction and adopted the name of a pioneering electrical engineer and futurist for the entire company, thus creating a certain brand exclusivity and cachet – not to mention a near messianic appreciation of the firm’s current figurehead.

So to entice any old school petrol-heads away from fossil fuels, who exactly should be put in charge of dreaming up alluring names for e-cars?

Don Draper from Mad Men is an obvious choice – except he’s fictional.

Sci-fi filmmakers are a possibility. Over six installments of the Terminator franchise, for example, movie-goers have seen the Harvester, the Moto-Terminator, and the top-of-the-range Rev-9 model, as well as the prototype T-800 Terminator, personified by Arnold Schwarzenegger in the original film. None requires a recharge or a regular service. The downside is that these high-tech contraptions are designed to wipe humanity off the face of the earth.

Another option might be the geniuses who come up with names for paint colours. My wife and I are currently arranging some home décor work. As part of this gruelling undertaking, we’ve visited several DIY shops and picked up colour charts by the major paint manufacturers.

None of whom, it seems, has paid any heed to the groundbreaking work of Sir Isaac Newton.

When Newton was 23 and sheltering in his university rooms from the Plague, he passed the time by conducting some experiments in optics, ie the behaviour and properties of light. (Fortunately for the advance of science, video games weren’t yet invented.) According to an article on colour theory on the MIT website: “Newton organised his findings in a color wheel showing three ‘primary colors’ – red, green, and blue – separated by three ‘secondary colors’ – yellow, cyan, and magenta.”

While Newton may have been ahead of his time in choosing to self-isolate during a public health emergency, his colour wheel is farcically out of sync with modern research on the subject. There is no doubt, according to my examination of contemporary paint charts, that an infinite number of colours exist in the universe.

For example, to adorn our bedroom walls my wife and I can choose a seductive hue called Nude Bisque, which is actually more restrained than the rich bordello crimson of Perfect Pout. Or we can honour my wife’s signature dessert treat by slapping some Coffee Cake on our dining room walls.

Other food-themed shades include Baked Plum, Treacle Pudding, and Lemon Curd. And for recovering smokers who long for a subliminal nicotine kick, there’s a paint colour called Tobacco Plant. (I was unable to find any Acapulco Gold on my colour charts.)

Ultimately, though, the job of naming electric cars is perhaps best suited to authors of romantic erotica. After all, who better to make an e-car sound sexy than someone who can make fifty shades of grey seem titillating?