These are not your parents' SUVs

SUV sales are on the rise: Jeep sold 41 percent more cars last month compared to June, and other automakers have seen similar increases in SUV sales. However, these SUVs have become more fuel efficient since the last generation had their SUVs.

|
Keith Srakocic/AP/File
A row of 2014 Lincoln MKX SUVs are lined up on the lot of the dealership in Wexford, Pa. SUV sales are on the rise: Jeep sold 41 percent more cars last month compared to June, and other automakers have seen similar increases in SUV sales.

Bad news for green-car fans: SUVs are back, and sales are stronger than ever.

Good news: They're not the same old SUVs.

Don't resign yourself to a hermetically-sealed, solar-powered bunker to avoid the pollution from all those sport utilities just yet.

The new SUVs and crossovers are significantly different from the ones that first rose to prominence 25 years ago.

As Bloomberg reports, SUV sales are going gangbusters right now.

Jeep sold 41 percent more cars last month than it did in June. The Chevy Tahoe number increased by over a half. The diminutive Buick Encore soared 80 percent.

While parts of the Jeep range, and certainly the Tahoe, are designed along the lines of 'old-school' SUVs with large engines and bodies mounted on separate frames, all are significantly more economical than their forebears.

And the Encore is one of a growing range of vehicles in a class that hardly existed 15 years ago: the compact crossover.

Okay, Honda's CR-V, Toyota's RAV4, and the Subaru Forester have been around since the mid-1990s.

But the last few years have seen an explosion of smaller SUV-styled vehicles that get closer on fuel efficiency to regular sedans and hatchbacks than any previous SUV.

The best compact crossovers are rated at more than 30 mpg combined, and some offer highway mileage in the mid-30s. That's not so far behind the latest generation of regular compact vehicles.

That buyers can now have SUV style with regular-car economy is clearly proving popular: IHS Automotive figures show that SUVs and crossovers made up 36.5 percent of vehicle sales this year through May

Regular sedans, which led SUVs and crossovers by a few percent a year previous, now sit 1.1 percent below utility vehicles in year-to-date sales.

Jeff Schuster, an analyst from LMC Automotive, describes America's love-affair with the SUV as "on-again, off-again"--but as their fuel efficiency continues to rise, it's likely it won't be "off again" for quite some time.

He notes that increased SUV sales in general mean consumers are expressing confidence in the economy--as they were before the global economic crisis in 2007, when the remaining buyers flocked to more economical and less pricey vehicles.

Ironically, for vehicles once criticized for their environmental impact, the climate itself might have led to the most recent spike. Last winter's extreme low temperatures and heavy snow may have spurred purchases of vehicles with all-wheel drive and raised ride heights.

The buyer profile for crossovers and SUVs is changing too.

Younger buyers, those starting families, are moving from existing vehicles into smaller crossovers. Those crossovers are also perfectly poised for older buyers whose kids may  have left the nest, since they no longer need quite as much capacity.

It's worth pointing out that buyers could see even greater fuel efficiency by trading to regular compacts, or perhaps swapping their larger SUV for one of the latest generation of hybrid midsize sedans.

But realistically, buyers want what they want--and will buy it if they can possibly afford it.

If U.S. car buyers want crossovers and SUVs, then the fact that they are more frugal than their forebears still means lower fuel use and emissions.

And for that, thank the imposition of new and tougher corporate average fuel economy rules by the EPA and NHTSA for the 2012 through 2025 model years.

You didn't really think those SUVs got more fuel-efficient on their own, did you?

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to These are not your parents' SUVs
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Business/In-Gear/2014/0809/These-are-not-your-parents-SUVs
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe