Luxe Toys - SUVs and more

Rebirth

of the Family Car

David Traver Adolphus says SUVs killed family transportation, but EVs might be bringing it back…

It’s an uncomfortable truth (or maybe a very comfortable one): the tall SUV vehicles that increasingly dominate roads around Europe and North America are lousy at moving families. How many more new

Volkswagen T-Rocs, Peugeot 2008s and

Hyundai Tucsons do you see than any kind of sedan or estate? You have to go far down the list of bestselling cars to get to a Toyota

Yaris or Renault Clio.

SUVs have bred more SUVs. If people around you are driving tall cars, you’re at a disadvantage in visibility at intersections and in traffic when all you can see out your windows are doors and grilles.

They’re also popular because especially for people with reduced mobility, it’s easy to get in and out of something with a seat closer to your hip height (H point, in car speak). However, making tall vehicles requires compromises, the biggest one of which is space.

Even when it’s not all-wheel-drive, which is increasingly common, the height takes up room that could be used for other things, like

“We love MPVs, which drive much better than SUVs, and have far more room in an equivalent space. Some people don’t like them because of their lack of style.”

people. It does allow manufacturers to package more components underneath the car and tuck in the ends, making them shorter, but getting people on top of that ends up exaggerating the height even further.

Saloons and estates have another advantage: they’re more efficient. No matter how aerodynamically slick it is, a taller vehicle pushes more air out of the way, making it consume more fuel for a given volume. There’s a reason aircraft are long and thin.

Electric cars can have a battery pack under the floor that might only be 30cm thick, but their real trick is eliminating the transmission and driveline. Instead, they usually have electric motors at the wheels, with no connection between them and the power source other than some cables.

This lets an electric car use more of its interior space for people, recreating some of the upright experience of an SUV in a lower package. Since battery ranges will continue to be a serious concern for EVs for a long time to come, there’s a lot of incentive to keep them at least a little lower than comparable conventional engine cars.

Safety is a real concern, though. Tall vehicles are already increasing pedestrian fatalities, and making collisions more dangerous. If the American trend of making EV SUVs even larger than their gas engine equivalents continues and spreads, we risk an arms race of electric behemoths rampaging through the roads.

The best hope to avoid EVs going the way of the family car is for people to fall in love with their style and convenience. Low and sleek used to be selling points, and we’ve yet to see a luxury SUV, even a Lamborghini or Bentley, that we’d call attractive, let alone stylish. Sitting close to the road is just more fun than up high, cars handle better, and lower cars just look better. EVs can save not just the family car, but car styling, as well.

Every decision in car design is compromise. If you want to sit up high, it takes away room for passengers.

“Saloons and estates have another advantage: they’re more efficient.”