SUV Endgame

A question people sometimes ask in the car world is, what is the SUV endgame?  That is, are we stuck with them forever? Will future generations just have SUV’s, with cars consigned to the history books? Or is the pendulum going to swing back, and we'll look back on the SUV era like the car industry's answer to bell bottoms.

See, the CEO of Citroen said that the days of the SUV are numbered. His reasoning was that in the coming age of electric vehicles, aerodynamics will be important in order to extend range, and that isn't exactly the forte for SUVs. 

I asked the SUV question a few years ago, and the answer I gave was that SUV's would get smaller and sleeker while cars would get taller, and we'd end up with this sort of in-between vehicle. At the time, I used examples like the Toyota C-HR. But since then, Toyota has introduced the Corolla Cross, and announced the C-HR will be discontinued in North America. 

The Corolla Cross is — as the name implies — just a Corolla stretched into an SUV. That's quite common; I hope you’re sitting down for this, but most SUV's these days are just adapted car designs. But usually they don't tell anyone, because they want SUV buyers to have the illusion that they have a rugged and wild off-road vehicle, not just a tall station wagon.

But by putting the name of that car in the name of the SUV, Toyota has shown us a rare moment of honesty from SUV marketing. So you'd think that if the car industry was going to start evolving a middle ground between cars and SUV's, this vehicle would be where it starts. 

And yet, the Corolla Cross is a boxy, stereotypical SUV, just smaller. It looks like the designers went out of their way to convince everyone that it's a big-boy SUV, even if that makes it look a little silly. So it seems that catering to the masculinity reinforcement needs of America overrules any other car priorities, and that doesn't look good for anyone expecting a non-SUV future. 

But there is one reason that Citroen CEO could be right, and electric cars could change the shape of SUV's. It starts with the little-known fact that there are a few reasons why manufacturers like SUV's, besides the obvious fact that consumers like them. One is that they are legally considered off-road vehicles in the United States, which means they are not subject to the same mileage requirements as cars. But to officially qualify for that off-road designation, they have to meet certain regulations, such as ground clearance, and the shape of body work around the wheels. 

But electric cars don't have to worry about mileage regulations. So there's no need to meet those design requirements, and the designers of electric SUV's have greater freedom in shaping the vehicles.  So far, electric SUV's and crossovers have been going away (a little) from the traditional SUV shape. Looking at models like the Jaguar I-Pace and Hyundai Ioniq 5, they're still taller than average cars, but also lower and less boxy than SUV's. So there does appear to be some effort to squeeze more aerodynamics out of them.

Of course, electric SUV's also give designers more freedom because unlike their gas-powered brethren, no one is buying one as an affirmation of masculinity — I assume that's part of the reason that they are a lot less angular and big-looking. They don’t look much like off-road vehicles. And is it just me, or do the Tesla model X and Y even look a bit like <gasp> Minivans.

If we get to the point that electric cars are completely taking over, this may change. In that case, electric cars will have to start appealing to everyone, not just people on the rich and green side of things.  We might even see electric vehicles get more masculine than conventional cars if electric vehicles have to work harder to convince mainstream buyers that they're not emasculating beta-mobiles. Arguably, the Tesla Cybertruck is already an example of this.  But for now, they're showing us a possible way forward into a future of more practical, only-sort-of SUV future.