No accounting for taste, but I look at the current Accords and Civics and think those designs are gaudy and try-hard. Tons of creases and moldings and little blings everywhere.

This design looks really nice to me. Not too weird, looks a bit like the original CVCC, and it's clean.

I completely agree with you, I'm not a fan of them either. Those cars are designed to blend into the crowd, that's why they sell so many of them. But crowd-pleasing designs like that are quite difficult to develop. So why make a polarizing car your EV flagship? Is it so they can later say "oh well it didn't sell very well, EV must not be worth it"?

Good point. I confused my idea of good with what’s actually popular.

There’s got to be some reason they do it. Back when hybrid cars were new, Toyota’s design for the Prius was polarizing. But it worked for them, and they established that model as “the” design for hybrid cars for some time.

So differentiation seems to serve a purpose, but I can’t say exactly what that is.

It costs billions of USD to design a new platform. VW spent $60 billion USD on their MQB platform [1].

1. https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/industry/vw-could-sell-50...

Right, so why not re-purpose as much of an existing, proven platform as you can?

The idea is that by designing a new platform you can create one which has a 10-20 year lifespan. These platforms tend to be designed for both electric and hybrid cars, can have variable wheelspans, tracks, and widths while retaining a common set of drivetrains. The MQB and MLB platforms from VW are two examples of this.

Monkey patching an old platform might get you another model generation, but ultimately it will end up being more expensive and less flexible in the long run.