The Ford F-150 Lightning’s front trunk holds 14.1 cubic feet of cargo and can carry up to 400 pounds, according to Ford’s own published specifications. The Rivian R1S, built on a completely different platform for a completely different purpose, offers a frunk with 11.1 cubic feet of lockable storage where a gas engine would normally sit. Meanwhile, Volkswagen’s ID.4, a mainstream electric SUV built to compete directly with those trucks’ smaller EV cousins, has none at all. Not a small one. None. The difference comes down to what an automaker chose to put under the hood instead of an engine, and that choice is turning out to be one of the more revealing engineering fingerprints of the EV era.
Where the Frunk Comes From
An electric motor and its reduction gearbox take up a fraction of the space a gasoline engine and transmission need, which is why EVs have room up front at all. What an automaker does with that leftover space depends entirely on what else has to live there. Front-wheel-drive-only platforms, or rear-motor EVs with no front motor at all, tend to have the most room to spare. That’s exactly why Ford’s rear- and dual-motor F-150 Lightning still manages a class-leading frunk despite being a full-size truck, and why Rivian, building dual-motor and quad-motor trucks from a clean-sheet skateboard platform, was able to design in an 11-cubic-foot compartment on both the R1T and R1S from the start.
Hyundai’s Own Platform Shows the Trade-off Directly
Hyundai’s Ioniq 5 makes the engineering trade-off visible within a single model line. According to Hyundai’s own published specifications, the rear-wheel-drive Ioniq 5 sold outside North America carries a 57-liter (2.01 cubic foot) frunk, while the all-wheel-drive version, which adds a second motor up front, and every North American-market Ioniq 5 shrinks to just 24 liters (0.85 cubic feet). That’s the same nameplate, the same body shell, losing more than half its front storage the moment a second motor gets bolted in up front. Kia’s EV6, which shares the Ioniq 5’s E-GMP underpinnings, follows the identical pattern: a shallow compartment sized for a charging cable, not a duffel bag, because the front axle is doing mechanical work that a single-motor layout doesn’t require of it.
Why Some Automakers Skip It Entirely
Volkswagen’s own technical documentation for the ID.4 explains the decision plainly: the front of the vehicle is occupied by a low-positioned air inlet, the radiator, and components of the air conditioning system, leaving no usable void for storage. That’s a cooling-architecture decision, not a cost-cutting one: VW’s MEB platform routes thermal management hardware through the nose of the car rather than tucking it elsewhere, and once that space is claimed there’s nothing left to open a trunk lid over. Nissan’s Ariya shows a similar outcome: the automaker’s own consumer-facing specification pages advertise cargo space only for the rear hatch, with no front-storage figure published anywhere in its marketing materials, a strong signal that the space simply isn’t there to sell.
Tesla Split the Difference, Then Reconsidered
Tesla popularized the frunk as a mainstream EV feature, and its cars still have one: the Model 3’s front trunk holds 88 liters, according to independent spec-tracking database EV Database. But Tesla has also been willing to shrink the feature where it doesn’t fit the engineering priorities of a given trim: reviewers who’ve measured the current Model Y describe its frunk as tapered and irregularly shaped rather than a clean rectangular bin, and note that the entry-level Standard version ships with an even smaller frunk that skips the drainable floor found on pricier trims. Even the company that made the frunk a selling point treats it as a variable to be traded against other priorities, not a fixed feature every version gets equally.
The Pattern
A frunk isn’t a bonus feature bolted onto whatever space happens to be left over. It’s a direct readout of an automaker’s drivetrain and cooling architecture. Single-motor, rear-drive platforms and clean-sheet trucks tend to have room to spare up front; dual-motor layouts and platforms that route cooling hardware through the nose tend not to. The vehicles that kept the frunk and the ones that quietly dropped it are both telling you exactly how they were engineered, you just have to know where to look.