Ensuring electric cars fit the needs of their owners is a requirement for boosting electric-vehicle sales. Adequate cargo space for an owner is necessary no matter what kind of car is being considered.
Now, in one handy video, YouTuber Bjorn Nyquist has shown just how much cargo space is provided by a handful of popular electric cars on the market today.
Using banana boxes as a standard unit of measurement, the test’s competitors included a BMW i3, Hyundai Ioniq Electric, Kia Soul EV, first-generation Nissan Leaf, and a Tesla Model X.
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The video itself is straightforward: the participants remove the privacy shelves from their cars to load as many banana boxes as possible in the load bay, and then do the same with the seats folded down.
It gives potential electric-car buyers an excellent look at the cargo space and practicality each vehicle offers.
As Nyquist noted in the video, the pricey Model X is clearly in a separate segment since it’s much larger than the other electric cars tested. Its owner managed to stuff 11 banana boxes into the cargo bay, and 28 with the seats folded down.
Electric car cargo space challenge with banana boxes
The more mainstream and higher-volume electric cars showed fairly similar results in the cargo area, but the Ioniq Electric and Soul EV beat the i3 and Leaf with six banana boxes each.
With the seats folded down, the Kia also managed the most banana boxes at 21 total; here, the Ioniq managed just 16.
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The Leaf fit five in the trunk and 18 with the rear seats down, and the i3 had room for four in the trunk and 14 with the seats down.
Then, a wildcard arrived: a Nissan e-NV200, the all-electric version of the Nissan NV200 small commercial van.
Electric car cargo space challenge with banana boxes
The electric van—obviously—offers much more volume for cargo of all sorts, and fit 48 to 50 boxes in its load bay.
We doubt that most electric-car owners would load up their vehicles with this much fresh fruit. Nonetheless, the test showcases the amount of usable space available in a variety of battery-electric vehicles despite the smaller sizes of many of them.
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Until more affordable large batteries leads to larger all-electric vehicles, including full-size SUVs and trucks, electric-car makers will need to squeeze as much usability as they can out of smaller hatchbacks.
Today, the Hyundai Ioniq Electric and Kia Soul EV do the best job with cargo space among the cars tested by Nyquist.
[hat tip: Brian Henderson]
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