zzdcar
Home
/
Reviews
/
Culture
/
A Wave of New Crossovers Is Coming And We Will Never Escape It
A Wave of New Crossovers Is Coming And We Will Never Escape It-November 2024
2024-02-19 EST 22:13:02

Image for article titled A Wave of New Crossovers Is Coming And We Will Never Escape It

We’ve been given a glimpse of the future of the automobile, and it looks bleak my friends. With pretty much every manufacturer clamoring over themselves to abandon sedans for hatchbacks on stilts they call crossovers, there are a ton of them on the market. But according to an annual “Car Wars” study released today—extrapolating data on the future of new cars—by Bank of America Merrill Lynch, there is a huge wave of new crossovers heading to market in the next four years.

Way more than we’ve seen in recent years, in fact.

The study, coming to us by way of , states that of the 246 new or significantly updated models planned for the 2020-2023 model years—an average of 62 new models per year—a full 70 percent of them will be crossovers, light trucks, and SUVs. This is up from the 55% of new cars introduced from 2010 to 2019.

This presents a few problems for the market. For one thing, increased in-segment competition will only force manufacturers to crank up pricing incentives, potentially milking the market’s cash cow bone dry. With per-vehicle profit trending downward already, this could prove to be a real crunch on the automotive industry.

Remember back before the economic crash of 2008 just over a decade ago? One of the heralds of that…

Perhaps even more importantly, this paradigm shift from frugal sedans to tall AWD crossovers and SUVs has left the bottom of the market struggling to find good cars. Entry-level vehicles have been abandoned, and America’s working poor are feeling the pain already. With the average vehicle , and used cars priced higher to pick up the slack, it’s becoming more difficult to realize the American ideal of living in the suburbs and commuting to a job in the city.

Here are some :

Japanese automakers’ continued commitment to passenger cars appears to be shifting somewhat to a heavier crossover mix, making their product cadence volatile through 2023, with Honda and Toyota planning larger moves compared to Nissan.

Hyundai-Kia’s replacement rate for the next five years is above the industry average, especially in the 2020 and 2021 model years, but remains weighted heavily toward passenger cars.

Introductions of alternative-powertrain vehicles, including hybrids and battery electrics, will remain limited for now, due largely to continued prohibitive development costs keeping pricing for those vehicles elevated above those of traditional powertrains.

While the average showroom age of automaker products has declined year over year, it is largely attributable to product cancellations.

So not only are we ditching sedans, which are relatively inexpensive, more fuel efficient, and better on emissions, for SUVs, trucks, and crossovers, the industry is planning to invest less in hybrids and BEVs? Cool. Super cool. Totally cool.

And it’s also totally fine that dealers have been pushing buyers into less economically feasible cars on longer term notes as more of them can’t afford to make payments. They can always trade in their upside-down car for a new one and roll the payment into the next note. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the auto industry, and nothing bad will happen in the near future, and I should pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

Long live crossovers. I guess.

Comments
Welcome to zzdcar comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
Culture
This Collapsable Citroën HY-Van Is A Solution To A Problem You'll Pretend To Have Just To Own It
This Collapsable Citroën HY-Van Is A Solution To A Problem You'll Pretend To Have Just To Own It
Citroën HY-vans are wonderful, charming, garden shed-like workhorses, and while now they tend to be most often seen as twee coffee and food trucks, they have a long history of doing Real Work, and, sometimes, that Real Work required some modifications. Those modifications often made an already flexible and useful...
Nov 26, 2025
This Ferrari 250 GTO Onboard Footage Might Teach You A Thing Or Two About Your Footwork
This Ferrari 250 GTO Onboard Footage Might Teach You A Thing Or Two About Your Footwork
This one’s for your foot freaks out there. Too often, an onboard lap at a track-only shows a driver’s hands, not what their feet are doing. How you operate a car’s pedals are just as important. Today’s video shows the footwork that goes into a quick lap as well. Dutch...
Nov 26, 2025
Ferrari's Giant Key Fob Is What Ferrari Buyers Actually Want
Ferrari's Giant Key Fob Is What Ferrari Buyers Actually Want
There are many reasons to buy a Ferrari if you have immoral levels of cash, most of them good. They are fun to drive. They are stylish. The incredibly supple leather coddles your bottom like your mamma did when you were a newborn. But those are not the reasons...
Nov 26, 2025
The 2020 Audi A8 Gets Two Engine Options You'll Actually Want To Spend Oodles Of Money On
The 2020 Audi A8 Gets Two Engine Options You'll Actually Want To Spend Oodles Of Money On
It sucks that we never got the current W12 in the U.S. before, as we were only left with a measly 3.0-liter V6. But now the A8 lineup is expanding with two new powertrains for those who want big beef power, with a twin-turbo V8 in the and a...
Nov 26, 2025
Ford Was Once On The Cutting Edge Of Really Batshit Taillight Ideas
Ford Was Once On The Cutting Edge Of Really Batshit Taillight Ideas
As you are no doubt aware, the worth of a carmaker is only as good as the amount of imagination and daring they are willing to put into taillight research and development. With this idea in mind, I think we can safely say that the Ford Motor Company peaked...
Nov 26, 2025
Words Apparently Matter When It Comes To Car Crashes
Words Apparently Matter When It Comes To Car Crashes
The headline on this blog used the word car “crashes,” not “accidents,” because words matter. That is the conclusion of about how “minor changes in crash coverage can shift a reader’s perceptions of what happened and what to do about it.” To test this, researchers asked 999 randomly selected...
Nov 26, 2025
Copyright 2023-2025 - www.zzdcar.com All Rights Reserved