Please let us have station wagons again
[This post originally published October 2024]
Time for another prediction. This one is about EVs and the size bloat problem of the current SUV fleet.
Oversized vehicles create several problems:
A Newtonian physics mismatch with smaller vehicles leading to unequal accident outcomes - bigger vehicles kill people in smaller vhicles while people in bigger vehicles live. Bigger vehicles are not safer because of "safety features", bigger vehicles are safer because they smash smaller vehicles with their Newtonian physics advantage. Ceteris parabus, a macroeconomists like to say, the winner of two large vehicle hitting each other will depend on whose "safety features" were better. The winner of a large vehicle and a small vehicle will always be the large vehicle. The smaller vehicle’s safety features may improve the occupant’s survivability percentages, but the smaller vehicle will get the worst of it.
There are actual usability problems - you can't see over the front, you don't fit in parking spaces, it's hard to maneuver in tight spaces, garage doors aren't high enough, you need assistance like steps to actually get into the things.
Energy inefficiency, especially EVs - rolling all that metal around uses more energy to achieve the same outcome. This makes no sense -- why make something more difficult than it has to be? Whether it's more gallons burned or more electrons consumed, you're still using more energy than you need to do the same job.
People claim bigger vehicles are more comfortable, more spacious, more usable, but we all know that SUVs and large trucks aren't usably larger than mid-size sedans. A Camry is like a giant lounge suite on wheels. Comfortable and spacious. A Camry doesn't have that big trunk, but perhaps there's something that does?
Could it be that the actual killer app of electric vehicles (so to speak) is the venerable Station Wagon?
Putting the Useless in SUV
If only there were a category of vehicle that gave us good load-carrying capacity while being spaciously comfortable and not excessively large? We used to have those, years ago. The station wagon of yore was an excellent solution to the problem of families needing to carry kids and groceries and sports gear and dogs. Station wagons have long ruled the usability segment of automobility.
The joy of CofG
Besides usability, there are other suitability advantages for electric wagons. Consider that the electric vehicle carries its batteries low, along the chassis and floor plan, making for a low Center Of Gravity. Low CofG is the holy grail for car makers, for it solves many of the physics challenges of cornering — low CofG vehicles are often described as “cornering on rails”, or “sticking to the road”. Who doesn’t want great handling? The wagon is traditionally a longer wheelbase vehicle, giving the designer extra space for more battery. And who doesn’t want more battery? Exactly! Nobody! We all want more battery, and we all want better handling. And what about more usable interior space? Of course, we all want that.
SUVs suck at things that cars should do — be comfortable, spacious, easy to drive and above all, be useful. SUVs are so badly named for the U-tility part of the acronym is completely absent. The wallow around the road like pregnant manatees.
As manufacturers and dealers struggle to convince people that 75k is a fair price for a pickup truck, we will see enterprising car makers rediscover the station wagon market segment. The auto makers need a new segment they can pivot to, to save face. They can't very well just say "oh goodness me, our StupidTrucks are just too big and aren't very good at carrying things, we were stupid and wrong and our rabid focus on profit to the exclusion of all else has put us in the untenable position of not having anything useful to offer customers and oh please customers come back we need your money so badly".
What they can say is "Our excitement knows no bounds as we introduce this all new form factor, supremely practical and yet sexy at the same time, the ... STATION WAGON!!"
I predict that we will see a rash of station wagon announcements for the 2025 model year, bigger than before, but smaller than SUVs are now. We'll see a return to some kind of rational balance in vehicle size.
The time of station wagon EVs is coming, friends. VW just kicked out their ID.7, but I suspect we'll see better offerings from Volvo and others soon.