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The future of automotive design looks awfully familiar.
If you survey Americans who are considering an electric vehicle, some of their opinions are perfectly predictable. New polling released last week by the car publication Edmunds found that U.S. car shoppers want more range, they want more affordable options, and they want lots of SUVs and crossovers. Few respondents were excited about electric pickup trucks. Hardly anybody — just 5% — wanted a minivan EV.
Poor, poor pitiful minivan. Even as its bigger sibling undergoes a renaissance as the road-tripping influencer’s ride of choice, few people are out there posting thirsty #MinivanLife pics of a Chrysler Town & Country. People are importing vintage Japanese microvans and embracing other oddball shapes to stand out against a world full of Toyota RAV4s. Yet, despite ongoing rumblings about a comeback, the true minivan remains mired in tired stereotypes: It is the dorky dadmobile that appears in your driveway the day you buy a white pair of New Balance sneakers.
The thing is, a minivan is exactly what people want. And in the EV age, it could get even better.
Heatmap’s Shift Key podcast recently compared the biological concept of carcinization — the way everything wants to become a crab — to the convergent evolution of cars. In Robinson Meyer’s metaphor, automotive designs keep coming back to the minivan. After all, it has the primary features most families seek, namely three-row seating and lots of cargo space for kid stuff. But because the minivan is a loathed emblem of domesticity, carmakers continue to disguise its function in other forms.
This has been going on for generations. The bulbous station wagon, effectively a shorter minivan, was once the country’s de facto family car. Its parental uncoolness led to the rise of the minivan — which then became loaded with its own “soccer mom” cultural baggage and fell out of favor. In the 1990s, parents in search of a hipper, rugged alternative embraced the squared-off SUV instead. Three decades later, those boxes on wheels have mostly morphed into the rounded crossovers that dominate the roads today — vehicles that are, fundamentally, just minivans stretched into a shape that shouts, “I am anything but.”
Tastes change, of course. And if Americans are going to switch to electric cars, then it’s imperative the car companies electrify the vehicles they want. The problem with the never-ending SUV-crossover craze is that minivans are objectively better for the lives we actually lead.
A minivan handles better because it generally has a lower center of gravity than high-riding SUVs, which were built as if their owners were going to ford a riverbed on the way to their middle child’s xylophone recital. This is one reason car journalists have continued to praise the minivan over the years even as car buyers have spurned them.
Minivans have a variety of other features that make them better family cars than crossovers are. They’re roomy. They’re easy to get into and out of, especially when you’re loading or unloading children or car seats. The sliding doors prevent your offspring from dinging the next car over in the parking lot.
But because minivans have only a cult following these days and don’t sell big numbers, the electrified options are few. Online discussions about the best EV family car often come back to the plug-in hybrid Chrysler Pacifica because three-row EV crossovers are still rare and the all-electric Volkswagen ID.Buzz, a revival of the old VW bus that would be America’s first mainstream minivan EV, hasn’t arrived yet.
Volkswagen
There are cool concepts like Mercedes-Benz’s and interesting international options like the Volvo EM90, touted as a “living room on wheels” made with a signature clean Scandinavian aesthetic. They are aimed at the Chinese market because of America’s minivan disdain.
Mercedes-Benz
Sadly, it’s looking less and less likely that the startup Canoo’s space-pod people-conveyors, which one would call “vans” for lack of a better term, will ever come to fruition. No fully electric EV minivan is on sale here so far. Google “EV minivan” and you might get sponsored ads for Tesla, Rivian, and Subaru — whose electric offerings are decidedly not vans — as well as Reddit threads that ask why we don’t have more electrified minivan options yet.
Canoo
It’s too bad, because vans are great and could get even better via electrification. A long, heavy battery slung along the bottom of a van will add to its low center of gravity while providing a large number of kilowatt-hours. The voluminous cargo space inside EV minivans (and full-size vans like the electric Sprinter) will give small businesses a way to decarbonize. A fun bonus of EV life is being able to use the battery’s electricity to power the climate control and other accessories without having to run a combustion engine the whole time. That makes it easier to keep the whole family happy even if you’re waiting in the parking lot, and it will make the cabin an enjoyable place to kill time once AI starts doing all the driving. (There is one big problem still to be solved: making a minivan’s fold-flat seats, a game-changing feature, work when there’s a big battery down there.)
As we recently noted, the family-car-sized hole in the EV market is starting to be filled in. The Kia EV9 has introduced a true three-row crossover EV to the U.S., and more like it will soon follow. It stands to reason that, eventually, today’s minivan standards like the Toyota Sienna and Honda Odyssey will electrify alongside everything else, creating a battery-powered offering for the small but growing niche populated by van people.
Still, the minivan deserves better. Perhaps when its EV version finally arrives, drivers will get bored of the conformist crossover and realize that the electric van can.
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And more of this week’s top renewable energy fights across the country.
1. Otsego County, Michigan – The Mitten State is proving just how hard it can be to build a solar project in wooded areas. Especially once Fox News gets involved.
2. Atlantic County, New Jersey – Opponents of offshore wind in Atlantic City are trying to undo an ordinance allowing construction of transmission cables that would connect the Atlantic Shores offshore wind project to the grid.
3. Benton County, Washington – Sorry Scout Clean Energy, but the Yakima Nation is coming for Horse Heaven.
Here’s what else we’re watching right now…
In Connecticut, officials have withdrawn from Vineyard Wind 2 — leading to the project being indefinitely shelved.
In Indiana, Invenergy just got a rejection from Marshall County for special use of agricultural lands.
In Kansas, residents in Dickinson County are filing legal action against county commissioners who approved Enel’s Hope Ridge wind project.
In Kentucky, a solar project was actually approved for once – this time for the East Kentucky Power Cooperative.
In North Carolina, Davidson County is getting a solar moratorium.
In Pennsylvania, the town of Unity rejected a solar project. Elsewhere in the state, the developer of the Newton 1 solar project is appealing their denial.
In South Carolina, a state appeals court has upheld the rejection of a 2,300 acre solar project proposed by Coastal Pine Solar.
In Washington State, Yakima County looks like it’ll keep its solar moratorium in place.
And more of this week’s top policy news around renewables.
1. Trump’s Big Promise – Our nation’s incoming president is now saying he’ll ban all wind projects on Day 1, an expansion of his previous promise to stop only offshore wind.
2. The Big Nuclear Lawsuit – Texas and Utah are suing to kill the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s authority to license small modular reactors.
3. Biden’s parting words – The Biden administration has finished its long-awaited guidance for the IRA’s tech-neutral electricity credit (which barely changed) and hydrogen production credit.
A conversation with J. Timmons Roberts, executive director of Brown University’s Climate Social Science Network
This week’s interview is with Brown University professor J. Timmons Roberts. Those of you familiar with the fight over offshore wind may not know Roberts by name, but you’re definitely familiar with his work: He and his students have spearheaded some of the most impactful research conducted on anti-offshore wind opposition networks. This work is a must-read for anyone who wants to best understand how the anti-renewables movement functions and why it may be difficult to stop it from winning out.
So with Trump 2.0 on the verge of banning offshore wind outright, I decided to ask Roberts what he thinks developers should be paying attention to at this moment. The following interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
Is the anti-renewables movement a political force the country needs to reckon with?
Absolutely. In my opinion it’s been unfortunate for the environmental groups, the wind development, the government officials, climate scientists – they’ve been unwilling to engage directly with those groups. They want to keep a very positive message talking about the great things that come with wind and solar. And they’ve really left the field open as a result.
I think that as these claims sit there unrefuted and naive people – I don’t mean naive in a negative sense but people who don’t know much about this issue – are only hearing the negative spin about renewables. It’s a big problem.
When you say renewables developers aren’t interacting here – are you telling me the wind industry is just letting these people run roughshod?
I’ve seen no direct refutation in those anti-wind Facebook groups, and there’s very few environmentalists or others. People are quite afraid to go in there.
But even just generally. This vast network you’ve tracked – have you seen a similar kind of counter mobilization on the part of those who want to build these wind farms offshore?
There’s some mobilization. There’s something called the New England for Offshore Wind coalition. There’s some university programs. There’s some other oceanographic groups, things like that.
My observation is that they’re mostly staff organizations and they’re very cautious. They’re trying to work as a coalition. And they’re going as slow as their most cautious member.
As someone who has researched these networks, what are you watching for in the coming year? Under the first year of Trump 2.0?
Yeah I mean, channeling my optimistic and Midwestern dad, my thought is that there may be an overstepping by the Trump administration and by some of these activists. The lack of viable alternative pathways forward and almost anti-climate approaches these groups are now a part of can backfire for them. Folks may say, why would I want to be supportive of your group if you’re basically undermining everything I believe in?
What do you think developers should know about the research you have done into these networks?
I think it's important for deciding bodies and the public, the media and so on, to know who they’re hearing when they hear voices at a public hearing or in a congressional field hearing. Who are the people representing? Whose voice are they advancing?
It’s important for these actors that want to advance action on climate change and renewables to know what strategies and the tactics are being used and also know about the connections.
One of the things you pointed out in your research is that, yes, there are dark money groups involved in this movement and there are outside figures involved, but a lot of this sometimes is just one person posts something to the internet and then another person posts something to the internet.
Does that make things harder when it comes to addressing the anti-renewables movement?
Absolutely. Social media’s really been devastating for developing science and informed, rational public policymaking. It’s so easy to create a conspiracy and false information and very slanted, partial information to shoot holes at something as big as getting us off of fossil fuels.
Our position has developed as we understand that indeed these are not just astro-turf groups created by some far away corporation but there are legitimate concerns – like fishing, where most of it is based on certainty – and then there are these sensationalized claims that drive fears. That fear is real. And it’s unfortunate.
Anything else you’d really like to tell our readers?
I didn’t really choose this topic. I feel like it really got me. It was me and four students sitting in my conference room down the hall and I said, have you heard about this group that just started here in Rhode Island that’s making these claims we should investigate? And students were super excited about it and have really been the leaders.