It's commonly accepted that the Leaf Gen 1 was weird because it was an EV, but in reality it's weird because it was a new generation of Japanese design. There are non-EV models Nissan released in Japan around the same time with the same design language that you could combine together to get something that looked like a gen 1 leaf, like the front of the first gen Nissan Note.

No more or less weird than some other Nissan cars, like the Juke for example, or the Cube (not very popular in the US).

Oh, sorry, yeah, the eUp (looked just like an Up) was the first modern VW one, not the eGolf. Design shown off in 2010, full production in 2013. Again, looked just like an Up.

I’d say a first gen Leaf looked fairly typical of small Nissan cars from that era, tbh; all their small cars looked a bit like that. And a Zoe looked pretty much the same as a Clio of like era. Interestingly, the Renault 5, their new electric car in the size category, is self-consciously weird-looking (you can get it in bright green as a standard option!), and seems to be doing very well.

Apart from BMW, the trend has been for electric cars to get more visibly weird/different, not less.

> Apart from BMW, the trend has been for electric cars to get more visibly weird/different, not less.

Yup, also see the weird styling decisions on the Toyota Prius and other hybrid cars that shared bodies with non-hybrids.