The U in SUV must stand for the ‘unflinching’ love of Indian drivers. Sport utility vehicles are a rage in India, outselling the once-popular category of hatchbacks. In September, SUVs outsold hatchbacks by a wide margin.

That love is not unrequited. Automakers are swiftly adding new models and, in the last week alone, at least four new SUVs were launched in India. Mahindra & Mahindra said it clocked 25,000 bookings in 57 minutes for its XUV upgrade XUV700—a milestone that no four-wheeler in India had achieved before. Toyota Kirloskar, Tata Motors, and MG Astor also each crowed about their new SUV’s impressive features, design, and variants. None had an electric variant, though. 

SUVs have taken over our roads; it’s a global trend duly exported by the United States. And if these vehicles continue to ascend the mobility market like they have done so far, they will negate all the decarbonisation gains from electric vehicles. 

In general, an average SUV emits 25% more carbon than other cars. In 2020, 29.6 million SUVs were sold globally compared to 1.9 million EV cars and 1.1 million electric SUVs. 

Global car and SUV sales in 2020. Source: Statista 

While SUVs and crossovers are getting a little lighter, say from two decades ago, they are still heavier than a sedan. “There are few features that add more to your automotive carbon footprint than the sheer weight you carry around,” says Vaclav Smil, professor emeritus at the University of Manitoba in Canada. Author of more than 40 books, Smil is one of the world’s foremost writers on energy, environment, tech, risk assessment, and public policy. He recently wrote:

Even Europe and China have fallen for the large-bodied vehicles.

This is not an SUV-bashing edition. Don’t get me wrong. I like to drive and have always aspired to own an SUV. (I guess that’s a relic from my early days in Bengaluru, when as a new reporter in the city, I’d often get lost in its famous one-way streets. I remember that two classes of drivers, in SUVs and BMTC buses, would glower at my clumsy driving. Secure in my little hatchback, I’d attribute their behaviour to their raised driving position, not to my annoying stop-start driving manners.) 

There’s a lot to like about SUVs, especially when automakers are launching far more new models in this category than in sedans, the prototypical passenger car. But the fact is, SUVs are generally 15-30% less fuel efficient than sedans. 

This rising demand for larger vehicles has led to “slackening, or in some cases even reversal, of national rates of fuel consumption improvements”, says a report from the Global Fuel Economy Initiative, a partnership between the United Nations, the International Energy Agency, and others. 

Source: International Energy Agency

In the midst of the fast-and-furious SUV launches last week, Naveen Munjal, managing director of Hero Electric, the market leader in electric two-wheelers, said something which most SUV makers wouldn’t like. In an interview to a business daily, Munjal said, “Government must set a target for phasing out IC [internal combustion] engines.”

Munjal is known for his counterintuitive and ‘electrifying’ steps. In 2001, he introduced India to electric bicycles and later carved out Hero Electric from the $8 billion automotive giant Hero MotoCorp (formerly Hero Honda). During the pandemic, he hedged on the “unpredictable EV industry” for the third time and came out somewhat successful. He believes if the government gives a target for phasing out IC engines for each vehicle category, the automakers can work backwards on “the infrastructure, supply base, and vendors”. 

Converting IC two-wheelers to electric is very different from converting four-wheelers into electric vehicles. SUVs are even harder to electrify than passenger cars because their larger bodies and powertrains require bigger batteries to crank out more energy. And even if there’s an electric variant of an SUV, it’s awfully expensive.   

Consumer choice is colliding with climate concerns.

For governments, mandatory electrification is a policy option, but it requires a huge political will and an industry buy-in. Last year, China imposed a mandate on its automakers asking them to ensure that 40% of their sales come from electric vehicles by 2040. But there’s a high cost to such mandates. Researchers at MIT estimate the “transition cost to China’s society could equal 0.1% of the nation’s growing gross domestic product every year”. They write: 

I asked Smil if India or other countries could resort to similar mandates to phase out ICs. He thinks it really doesn’t matter what governments say because the reality makes it impossible to replace all IC vehicles with EVs for decades to come. 

Between 1990 and 2020, the world's dependence on fossil fuels as the share of all primary energy fell from 87% to 83%, he says. “What would make you believe that in the next 30 years it will fall from 83% to ZERO?”

Well, I am optimistic but under no illusion that we’ll get near Zero.

“I myself do not and never will have an SUV, nor would I rush to buy an EV and have never argued that they should be mandated. Given the problems with both, I find an efficient small car, driven only when needed, such as my Honda Civic, the best option,” the Canadian professor told me. 

But I’m not sure if consumers, who love the ‘utility’ of an SUV, and the automakers, who love the higher margins they offer, would agree with Smil. It boils down to individual choice. At least for now.