Today, the advent of a slew of battery-electric vehicles marketed as SUVs or crossovers only complicates the classification of things. Reducing wind resistance is crucial to achieving greater range from battery cars and the easiest way to achieve this is to use teardrop shapes that minimize cross section, but the resulting vehicle is much more low and less aggressive in your rearview mirror. . A shape with a lower nose and less square lines.

Next time you see one on the street, take a closer look at a Ford Mustang Mach-E, Hyundai Ioniq 5, Kia EV6, Nissan Ariya, Tesla Model Y, or Volkswagen ID.4. All are crossovers, but none have the same shape as, say, a Subaru Forester or Ford Bronco Sport. Their looks are nicer. Softer. You have aerodynamics to thank for that: its effect on electric vehicles will likely reverse this trend of SUVs getting bigger and badder with each new generation.

A history of light trucks and safety to match

The initial reason why SUVs were sold was largely specious: a taller, heavier, heavier vehicle was widely assumed to be “safer”, and automakers did nothing to dispel that concept, even though largely not true. Part of the reason for this is that in the 1980s and 1990s SUVs fell into the “light truck” category originally intended only for pickups and things like the Chevy Suburban, meaning that they had to meet less stringent safety and emissions requirements.

During the decade from 1990 to 2000, the safety shortcomings of truck-based SUVs came to light. They were larger and heavier vehicles than the vans on which the first models were based. (If you want a fuller story, the whole story is covered at length by Keith Bradsher in his 2002 book, High and Mighty: SUVs: The World’s Most Dangerous Vehicles and How They Got Here.) By 2000, things like the massive recall of Firestone tires involved in Ford Explorer rollovers convinced the public they wanted safer SUVs.

Perhaps to alleviate some of this confusion, the automotive industry has developed the term “crossover utility vehicle” to refer to a vehicle Like an SUV but which was based on a unibody passenger car platform. (It’s still unclear whether car buyers understand what a “crossover” is or how it differs from a “real” SUV.)

No compact crossovers use a body-on-frame truck chassis these days, and only a few midsize vehicles do. Even full-size SUVs like the Chevy Tahoe and Suburban, Ford Expedition, and Jeep Grand Wagoneer use a modified truck chassis with independent rear suspension to improve their ride and handling. And today, buyers are demanding — and manufacturers are delivering — the same top safety ratings for commercial vehicles that they’ve long demanded for cars.

But there’s no doubt that SUVs of all sizes have grown in popularity, not just in North America, but around the world. Recent data from the International Energy Agency indicates that SUVs are on track to account for 45% of global sales this year. Fortunately, electric vehicle sales are also growing fast enough that the the extra fuel consumed by SUVs compared to conventional passenger cars is almost offset.

Electric vehicles the size of an SUV meet and will meet these same safety standards. Because many are tech halo cars for their manufacturers, they are often equipped with the most advanced technology and active safety features on offer. So crash safety is unlikely to be an issue. And alarmist headlines aside, battery fires show few signs of risk either.

The real question is whether buyers will see these EVs as SUVs or utility vehicles.

Lower, sleeker, more confusing

Almost all EVs are lower and sleeker than almost anything sold as an SUV today. They must be. Because the wind resistance is proportional to the square of the speed of the car, you use five times more energy to move at 70 mph than at 30 mph. But because gasoline cars waste about three quarters of their energy in heat and noise, this increase only comes from the 25% fuel used to propel the car forward, so the change in fuel efficiency is much smaller. Electric vehicles regenerate energy to recharge the battery when they slow down (which no gas-powered car does), so they are more efficient at lower speeds than at higher speeds, the reverse of cars gasoline.

Electric vehicles use so much more of their on-board energy to move the vehicle (versus those gas-wasting cars) that reducing wind resistance is essential to delivering that all-important EPA range rating. The smaller and sleeker the electric vehicle, the less wind it has to fend off. The wind resistance of a high-speed car is a function of its drag coefficient and its frontal area, or cross-section. In real life, the width of a vehicle may not vary that much, but reducing its height by lowering the roof reduces the cross-section considerably.

The next car is closer in design and dimensions to traditional wagons or hatchbacks, two terms that send salespeople fleeing the room in terror. It turns out that American car buyers love SUVs, but hate hatchbacks. And they’ve largely forgotten that carts exist, except in parents’ or grandparents’ nostalgic memories of the good old days (you know, the 1980s).

Oh, no, no, no. Not a sedan!

Consider the Volkswagen ID.4 against its conventional compact crossover counterpart, the Tiguan. With a more upright tailgate, has the proportions of a wagon (although it does not share sheetmetal with any sedan, the definition of a wagon for many decades). It’s also half an inch wider, but almost two inches lower than the Tiguan. The Tesla Model Y is arguably a larger Model 3 with a hatch; it has nothing to do with the two-box shape of an SUV. The Mustang Mach-E may be its own controversial category, but its shape is much closer to that of a gas-powered Mustang fastback than an SUV.