The SUV boom continues. But not every crossover is automatically a gobbler.
New SUV registrations in Germany will exceed the one million mark for the first time in 2019. This is forecast by the Center Automotive Research (CAR) at the University of Duisburg-Essen. The market share of the crossover models therefore rises above the 30 percent limit for the first time.
The ongoing SUV trend is driven not least by smaller models. In recent months and years, many manufacturers have introduced SUVs, especially at the bottom of their model range. VW, for example, the T-Cross in the Polo class and the T-Roc below the Tiguan, Opel the Crossland X or Kia the Stonic. Many of the newer models do without all-wheel drive or only offer it as an option; 58 percent of the SUVs registered in the first four months of 2019 had front-wheel drive. Critics' frequent fuel-consumption argument also applies to the dimensions only to a limited extent; 52 percent of the newly launched SUVs were no longer than a normal VW Golf.
The brand with the highest proportion of SUVs was unsurprisingly off-road specialist Jeep in the first four months with a quota of 100 percent, followed by Land Rover with 95 percent. At the bottom of the ranking were VW (24 percent), Mercedes (21 percent) and Bentley.