In an era when automakers face the prospect of having to increase fleet average fuel economy from 35.1 mpg in 2016 to 54.5 mpg in 2025, the idea of building still more SUVs would seem to be completely anathema. Despite that Ford vice-president of marketing and sales Mark LaNeve kicked off the 2016 Chicago Auto Show last week by announcing the addition of four new SUV nameplates to the global Ford lineup.
LaNeve didn’t give any specifics about exactly where those new products would fit in the lineup which led to some speculation that perhaps Ford was going back to the bad old days of a decade ago. At that time the U.S.-based automakers built trucks and SUVs as fast they could while ignoring fuel efficiency just as fuel prices were about to spike and the economy would collapse. That impression is further enhanced by Fiat Chrysler’s recent announcement that it would end production of the Chrysler 200 and Dodge Dart in 2017 to focus on larger vehicles.
While the makings of a catastrophic misstep can’t be ruled out, the situation is in several important ways quite different today than it was a decade ago. A mid-term review of the fuel economy standards is pending before 2018 and it’s certainly possible that NHTSA and the EPA will reduce the future targets but that is by no means a certainty and the automakers cannot afford to assume that there will be a change. The planning for vehicles coming to market in 2019-2020 is already well under way and the 2025 generation will get started soon.
At the same time Ford and everyone else has to face the realities of the market where gasoline is cheap and likely to stay that way for some time to come and consumers are increasingly showing a preference for higher riding utility vehicles.
During his Chicago keynote, LaNeve made it clear that while Ford was using the term SUV, that should not in any way imply that he was talking exclusively about adding more gigantic body-on-frame utilities like the much-derided Excursion of the late-1990s. In today’s Ford parlance, the generic term SUV includes everything from the big Expedition to unibody crossovers like the current Explorer and tall sub-compacts like the EcoSport sold in other parts of the world.
LaNeve went on to discuss the general trend that each subsequent generation of car buyers tends to have a preference for something different from what their parents drove. That explains the general aversion to the minivans that ruled the late-1980s and into the 1990s and more recently the move away from midsize and larger cars to smaller cars and now to small and midsize crossovers.
The crossover itself is a rapidly evolving form. The modern crossover came into being in the early-1990s when Toyota began scaling down the look of traditional truck-based SUVs and applying it to compact car platforms with the original RAV4. Today, those vehicles run the gamut from the sub-compact Mazda CX-3 to hulking three-row utilities like the Honda Pilot and Chevrolet Traverse.
More recently automakers have been experimenting with new forms that combine the taller hip-point and added visibility that customers claim to like about utilities with a decidedly un-truck-like style. Taking a hint from the early 1980s AMC Eagle, BMW brought us the sport utility coupe with the X6 and X4, a shape that has been emulated by other automakers with varying degrees of success or failure (we’re looking at you Acura ZDX).
At an event in December 2015, Ford of Europe president Jim Farley spoke animatedly of high-riding vehicles that strip away even more vestiges of truckishness like the Renault Captur, Citroen Cactus, Mercedes-Benz GLA and of course the Nissan Juke. These neo-utilities are the fastest growing segment in Europe and Farley seemed intact on competing with something wearing the blue oval.
While it’s widely assumed that the next-generation EcoSport will be coming to the North American market, LaNeve confirmed in Chicago that no existing nameplates would be among the four additional models so it’s possible that American customers could actually get five new choices. Along with the EcoSport, I’m making the following projections:
- Lincoln needs to expand its lineup and while us enthusiasts would love to see a Mark IX coupe based on the Mustang platform, that’s unlikely to happen anytime soon. Instead, a new three-row Aviator based on a redesigned Explorer in the 2018 time-frame. With the new 400-horsepower 3.0-liter EcoBoost V6 underhood this would be a solid performer at the top end to take on the Audi Q7 and upcoming BMW X7 as well as the Acura MDX.
- As an entry-point to the premium range, the smallest vehicle ever to where the Lincoln star, a variant of the next-generation EcoSport. The Mercedes-Benz GLA and Audi Q2 would be the direct targets.
- On the Ford brand side of the house, hard-core SUV fans have long clamored for something akin to the original Bronco of the early-1970s before it grew into an F-150-based beast. With the midsize Ranger pickup truck generally believed to be replacing the Focus at Ford’s Wayne, Mich assembly plant in 2018, a Bronco derived from that platform could finally be a really challenger to Fiat Chrysler’s cash cow Jeep Wrangler.
- Finally, Farley will almost certainly get a neo-utility unlike anything Ford has built to date. This different kind of crossover could be derived from either the next-generation Fiesta or Focus platforms which should debut in 2017 and 2018 respectively. This one might even get a performance-oriented ST or even RS variant.
But what about fuel economy? Back in December Ford declared that it would be adding 13 new electrified nameplates by 2020 and it’s a safe bet that at least three if not all four of these new utilities will be among them. With Ford talking about spending $4.5 billion on electrification in the next five years, the plan will encompass a range of technologies from 48-volt mild hybrids to full battery electric powertrains. Ford engineers and executives have been particularly bullish in numerous speeches and presentations on the potential for 48-volt electrical systems to provide cost effective improvements in fuel efficiency by enabling the electrification of sub-systems like coolant and oil pumps as well as electric turbocharging.
We’ll likely see automatic stop-start as a minimum on each of these new models. The Aviator if it happens would likely get either a plug-hybrid or perhaps a battery electric system to go up against what the European premium brands are doing in this segment. The Bronco may be the only outlier although a mild-hybrid is a distinct possibility.
The SUV is back, for now at least but it’s a different animal from the gas-guzzling Hummers of a decade ago. Even Tesla knows this and has shown it can’t ignore the market with the Model X and a rumored crossover variant of the Model 3. Ford’s product planners understand the realities of both the marketplace and the environmental regulations they are faced with in the coming decade. With oil prices projected to stay low through at least 2020, they have to develop product portfolio appeals enough to consumers at a price they can afford to enable them to meet all of those regulatory mandates. For now a proliferation of utilities seems to be the way to go.
Disclaimer: While I worked with Ford’s communications team from late-2011 to mid-2014, none of what is written here is based on information I had prior to taking my current job as a transportation technology analyst with Navigant Research. It is based entirely on publicly available information and discussions with Ford representatives in public and media forums.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/samabuelsamid/2016/02/16/new-ford-suv-onslaught-doesnt-mean-ignoring-fuel-efficiency/
2016-02-16T15:18:00+00:00