And here I am still waiting on electric minivan. I regularly have to carry six people around, two of which are children and two of which are elderly, so I can't use anything that requires climbing to get into the seats (like every six seat SUV).
Am I really that small of a market that no one wants to make an electric minivan, or is it a technologically difficult problem?
People who used to buy minivans now have 3 options:
- if you don't need to transport more than 5 people, you can get an SUV. There are lots of electric options.
- if you want to transport 5-7 people and want a lot of cargo space, you can get what wikipedia calls a "leisure activity vehicle" (VW Caddy, Renault Kangoo, Mercedes Citan). A new electric Kangoo with longer range is coming, and there's the Mercedes EQT concept based on it which is as close to an electric minivan as you'll get.
- If you want an even bigger car that can transport up to 8 people there's the EQV from Mercedes.
VW is positioning the new T7 as replacement for Touran/Sharan/Alhambra and the ID.Buzz for instance is supposed to be a replacement as well when it's available.
The only thing that might be a problem is that there’s a thickness to the battery. Because SUVs are higher up it’s sort of easy to “hide“. But since minivans are much lower there may not be much space between the battery and the bottom of the car to put one.
But more than anything I would guess it’s a demand thing.
Then If you want more, you have to get a 7-seater. But actually using it as such eliminates any cargo space from the boot.
And this while the outer rear seats are hugely wide and there is a ton of space between theseat and the door. My Passat gte has 20cm on each side where the sitting part of the bench extends further than the back of the bench. That could also have been used to make a comfortable seat in the middle.
I'm guessing you went with a Honda?
But you should still check out the Pacifica. It might be a lot better now, four years later.
edit: It was originally supposed to go on sale "late 2021" now I see it's "late 2022".
For those saying that SUVs can fit this use case...the SUVs are almost entirely small crossovers. They have the shape but you can't fit more people than a car.