Despite efforts to make urban mobility less polluting, public preference for larger vehicles continues.
Car industry watchers have noticed the trend, and organizers of this year’s Montreal International Auto Show at Montreal’s Palais des congrès expect that most people attending will show more interest in SUVs and trucks.
According to Stephen Beatty, Vice President of Toyota Canada Inc., that interest doesn’t come as a surprise.
“In general in the country it runs about two-thirds, one third, SUV and trucks to cars,” Beatty told Global News.
In Quebec, he adds, the split is close to 50/50, but car sales are dropping, too.
He thinks one reason for the trend is that customers want space and comfort, as well as something that meets all their needs — “whether it’s getting to work or getting the kids to school, or getting out to things you enjoy doing on the weekends,” he explains.
Others, like Auto Show spokesperson Betrand Godin, think there’s now less stigma against SUVs and trucks, as manufacturers make some of these vehicles less polluting.
He adds that more and more of these larger vehicles are fully electric, or hybrid, which makes them more environmentally friendly.
WATCH: Montreal Auto Show draws crowd (2018)
David Sherrard agrees. He heads product management at Mercedes-Benz Canada and is at the Auto Show, where the company unveiled, among other products, the Mercedes-Benz GLE SUV hybrid.
“You can actually find a lot of ways now with the mild hybridization, to pull a lot more power out of the combustion engine,” he explained. “Making it a lot more efficient and greener at the same time.”
The options for greener vehicles are increasing, too. For example, EcoTuned, a Quebec-based company, manufactures electric engines that can be used to replace combustion engines in old vehicles.
Now the company supply engines to organizations that have fleets of trucks, but management at the company wants to eventually make engines for cars, too, and sell the engines to the public.
But Beatty thinks the trend could switch again in favour of small cars. For one thing, he points out, cars are generally more fuel efficient.
“There’s nothing that prevents them from offering the same sorts of benefits that people have been looking for in their SUV’s,” Beatty said. “But without all of the cost.”
Comments