I've read so much knocking their appearance, which is so confusing to me. It's ultimately function over form in this case; who cares if you don't like how it looks? I can only dream that the visibility and safety of having features like such a low hood and large bumpers would be incorporated into other vehicles (i.e., every SUV ever).

Probably in the minority, but I actually like the look of them. I find so many modern car designs indistinguishable from each other. Cars such a narrow range of design that's considered "good aesthetics" that everything looks so uniform.

> I've read so much knocking their appearance, which is so confusing to me.

Especially since the old LLVs were pretty ugly in their own way. We've just gotten used to seeing them over the last 38 years.

> It's ultimately form over function in this case

Doesn't "form over function" mean the opposite of your usage?

Form = appearance

Function = usefulness

But it's okay to call them ugly. People get used to a certain look of things and then you introduce something that look like what an 8 year old would draw (this mail truck, Musk's cybertruck) and you'll get some flack. It's utterly meaningless in the end, and just bar talk. If these are reliable and make the postal workers' lives better I'm all for it, but they are imo ugly as sin.

For an institution that was the origin of the term "going postal", it's a wonderfully human-oriented design.

The low hood is almost definitely to help prevent scraping mailboxes and other objects, but especially mailboxes. My dad was a rural USPS carrier that used his own vehicle, and despite him having been an excellent driver with no accidents on record in his life, he still ended up swapping minor paint with mailboxes a few times.

Can't imagine how often it happens across the country.

for utilitarian purposes, like the guy was quoted "it gets the job done", but for soccer moms and their SUV looks are important.

Subarus use a boxer engine that drastically increases the visibility. I have a short torso with long legs and finding a car where I felt comfortable with visibility was a priority for me. I settled on the Subaru Impreza 10 years ago. Still has the best visibility of all the cars I’ve driven. I’d expect EVs to also have better visibility - may be eventually - since they can drop the height of the hood as well.

Well, they're mostly not qualified to comment on the function, are they?

A few ideas:

1) it kinda resembles Le Car

2) the junk in the frunk

3) and plus that extra forward bumper looks a bit like a telemark ski binding clip, and those ski folk never really looked especially smooth

4) it came out during DeJoy’s tenure, so it’s easy to imagine this is actually a shaming design

5) there are some very cute and charming EV designs out for Amazon FedEx UPS right now, and this isn’t up to the standard of those more forward looking (and admittedly bulbous but “of our time”) designs.

6) we’ll have to live, culturally, with this identity for a while. Seems a bit “meh”. I can see it now.. Kevin James as a future sitcom postal carrier and he will have a whole extra stage set up so he can have scenes in the enormous front cab of this thing. A la Art Carney as Ed Norton from the Honeymooners. We’ll get to visit the monstrosity during future Universal Studio backlot tours.

[dead]

Would you wear the same cloths but in clown colours?