I have been a car buff ever since I move to the US in the early 90s and have been closely following the market in the US. After moving back to India in the 2000s, I follow both the Indian market and to a lesser extent, the US market. My interest lies primarily in the mainstream sedans, sporty coupes and roadsters that lie in the fun-to-drive and more affordable range of the market.
Like many car and driving enthusiasts, I have bemoaned the decline of the conventional 3-box sedans and sports coupes whose low center of gravity is an essential part of the handling and fun-to-drive quotient. The first wave of SUVs hit American roads more than 20 years ago; it is continuing and has hit the Indian market as well. We have seen automakers reducing the number of sedan models. Ford has stopped making sedans period; GM has very few left.
I do see the utility of the higher ground clearance form factors - SUVs and minivans - in terms of their size and capacity to haul more people and cargo. However I remain unconvinced of the value proposition of the compact and subcompact SUVs that have flooded the Indian market. While I am not a fan, most people in India don't seem to agree with my take on this.
Many of these smaller SUVs (e.g. the hot selling Hyundai Creta, Kia Seltos, and umpteen Maruti compact SUV models) actually have smaller cargo capacity than sedans with a full trunk. At the time of writing, there are only three mid-size* non-luxury~ sedans with full trunks that are currently on offer in India - Honda City, Volkswagen Virtus and Skoda Slavia. If you look at the cargo capacity and shoulder- and leg-rooms of these cars, you will see that the sedans have higher cargo capacity, almost the same shoulder room and same or better leg room. I believe folks in India also picks SUVs for their road presence. Looks are subjective, but a very important one for most people, understandably so.
So the case for the small SUV appears to primarily stem from the height factor - higher ground clearance, ease of getting in and out, the higher view it affords the driver along with more head room and the corresponding (perceived or otherwise) road presence advantage. The sedans outperform the small SUVs in fuel efficiency, handling and ease of driving. Those are the trade-offs. The Indian consumers have weighed the benefits from the height factor so heavily, that the sedans may very well become extinct in Indian roads in a couple of decades.
The move to SUVs started in the US and is continuing, although, the compact SUV*s are non-existent since Americans put a much higher premium on space.
If you look at the power/size-of-engine ratio, auto makers have been making steady improvements over the last 4 years. They are squeezing out more Horsepower/Torque from smaller engines due to improvements in the ICE engine itself along with technologies like turbo-charging which are much more common in all cars today. However I do wish car-makers would apportion more of that efficiency to actually improving gas mileage as opposed to increasing horsepower. They seem to do more of the latter. 200HP was plenty in the cars of the 80s and 90s, now it is common to see 300-400HP vehicles.
Of course, the move to electric vehicles is the big trend in cars. I like to believe I was an environmentalist before I had even heard of global warming. Having said that, electrification and electric cars as a way to protect the planet is a highly debatable question. Electric cars do not pollute the localities where they are driven in; this is indeed a factor to consider, especially in the big metros, where air quality has been a big issue.
But if you look at the net carbon footprint during their production and during their use, it gets a lot more complicated. Various sources cite that electric cars have a bigger carbon footprint during production compared to ICE (Internal Combustion Engine) cars. As for when they are driven, we need to note that 75% of electricity in India is generated by coal-fired plants, one of the biggest sources of green-house gases contributing to climate change.
As a techno-phile, I also find myself considering some of the technical aspects of cars, partly for their effect on overall efficiency but also for the sheer coolness factor. As an example, consider regenerative braking. I find regenerative breaking making a case for both hybrids and fully electric cars, since it captures the energy (required to stop the car anyway) lost otherwise as heat energy on the brake pads into electrical energy which is then used to drive the car. It is important to note that renerative braking gives you efficiencies only in city driving where you brake a lot. In the highway, you don't get much from it, so the claimed/predicted range of electrics and the efficiency of hybrids is reduced in highway driving.
On the technology front, full electrics have the benefit of providing a lot of torque across a broad RPM range, because of which they do not need multiple gears. That means, they don't need a transmission, i.e. they have literally fewer moving parts to build and maintain. Given the much higher cost of the battery, the torque benefit requiring no transmission has not resulted in overall cost savings (for purchase). It should still show up as reduced maintenance cost in the long run - although I have not seen actual studies. The absence of a transmission also translates to space savings; this is one of the reasons, why many fully-electric cars are equipped with frunks (front-trunk) for additional storage up front.
So, all of that said, the more I think about it and the more I read, I have been and continue to be a big proponent of hybrids. Because they have much smaller batteries than full-electrics and hence less dependent on those rare earth minerals. They don't need >40 minute stops for refueling and don't have the so-called range-anxiety of full electrics, especially considering the small (though growing as we speak) number of charging stations in India. Hybrids simply offer much better gas mileage by using electrical energy generated by regenerative braking for propulsion.
I wish the Indian government would reduce the GST for Hybrid cars at least to some extent; as of writing, fully electric cars get a much lower 5% GST, but you pay the full 18% for hybrids, the same as ICEs.
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I wrote a draft of this post almost a year ago, and somehow resisted posting it right away.
I come back and read it today and find it still largely relevant; in the last year, I have gone and purchased an ICE Honda City - one of the three sedans mentioned above. Honda City does have a hybrid version; but it has a Rs. 4 lakh premium compared to the ICE version and a reduced trunk capacity to accommodate the battery. This led me to not consider the hybrid, going against my own recommendation above. I look forward to more hybrid options which don't compromise on cargo capacity in the future. Electric is still an option if the charging network improves in India and I can assuage my environmental qualms.
Compelling electric sedans are unfortunately not available in the affordable end of the market. BYD - considered by some as the maker of the most advanced electric batteries for cars - has a nice sedan for close to Rs. 50 lakhs. Tata and Mahindra have introduced some exciting vehicles - SUVs, but still - where they seem to have really innovated in syling: the new coupe style SUVs as they call it, as seen in the truly elegant Tata Curvv.ev and more radical (less to my taste) Mahindra XEV9e and BE 6.
R. Balaji
* - I am using the Indian nomenclature when refering to the sizes. Note that what are called compact car in the US would be called mid-size in India - so essentially you have to shift the size names (sub-compact, compact, mid-size, full-size) one notch when you are talking about the same car in both the markets.
~ - I am not considering cars in the >Rs. 40 lakh range, where there are quite a few luxury sedans available.
