Why crossover SUVs are now greener than sedans
Sales of green vehicles in the U.S. aren’t accelerating as much as they were a few years ago. But they’re still hitting new records, now accounting for 21% of the U.S. market in the third quarter, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. That includes vehicles powered by an electric battery alone — cars, SUVs and pickups with no gas tank — as well as hybrids, which are powered by a battery and an internal combustion engine.
Among all those kinds of vehicles, according to the Environmental Protection Agency’s latest report on carbon emissions, small SUVs are now the greenest. It’s no longer sedans — regular 2- and 4-door cars — that get the best gas mileage and release the least carbon dioxide, according to the EPA.
Small SUVs — sometimes called crossovers or car SUVs — now contribute the least as a vehicle-category to greenhouse-gas emissions. We’re talking about vehicles like the Toyota RAV4, Honda CRV and Tesla Model Y.
“SUVs were originally truck-based and big, and now are essentially cars with taller bodies on them,” said Karl Brauer, an analyst at iSeeCars.
These smaller car-SUV’s now average 41 miles per gallon versus 34 for sedans. Their aggregate CO2 emissions are about 25% lower.
“SUVs have been growing in popularity; they’ve been eating up all the market share. Cars are now a niche part of the market,” Brauer said.
There are fewer sedans on the road — and most of them older, running on gasoline. Newer SUVs are getting more and more fuel-efficient, per Gil Tal, director of the Electric Vehicle Research Center at UC Davis.
“People care about the efficiency of these vehicles,” he said. “They are willing to pay a little bit higher than for small cars. And the car companies are investing in electrifying this segment faster than any other segment.”
One in three new car-SUVs sold last year in the U.S. was all-electric or a gas-electric hybrid. And the push to make ever more hybrids is likely to continue, noted Brauer.
“We’re going to soon be at a point where you wouldn’t build a car and let all the braking energy just turn into heat and vanish, versus recapturing it somehow,” he said. “It’s going to be too inexpensive to add the hybrid components and to meet the fuel efficiency requirements.”
The top-selling vehicles in America are still big, gas-guzzling pickups and truck-sized SUVs. Some of them have all-electric and hybrid versions.
But Gil Tal at UC Davis doesn’t think much of them. “Large electric vehicles — Tesla Cybertruck, the Hummer — are not very efficient. We think about producing the batteries, wear and tear, the energy consumption.”
It might be time to rethink the place of some SUVs in American car culture, he said.
“Maybe we are overreacting to the name. Car-SUVs are not the enemy,” Tal said. “These crossovers can be the sweet spot.”
For getting ever-closer to an all-electric, carbon-zero transportation future.