Electric SUVs Have Quietly Become the Better Choice, and Our 2027 SUV of the Year Proves It

The car world moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it. Case in point: On October 2, it was announced for the very first time that global sales of purely gasoline-powered cars fell to less than half—49 percent—of new cars sold, according to a study from Mobility Global Data. That’s wild, especially when you consider that in 2021, pure ICE vehicles accounted for 73 percent of sales globally.

Yes, there’s a bachelor’s degree in international trade’s worth of caveats in the fine print to this story, but the big picture is that EVs are taking over the automotive industry, even if America is behind the rest of the world. But if you look around, are we?

Only 117 Coda electric cars were ever sold in the U.S.

Of Long Gone EVs and V-8s

I remember the first electric car I ever drove at a MotorTrend Of the Year event. Nope, it wasn’t the Tesla Model S, it was a Coda, back in 2012. You probably don’t remember the Coda, as the company only ever sold 117 of them here. Based on the Chinese market Hafei Saibao III, which itself was based on a ’90s-era Mitsubishi Lancer, the Coda had 88 miles of range and a less than zero percent chance of winning Car of the Year. While it wasn’t ready for prime time, I do remember thinking the Coda was more fun on a handling course than it had any right to be. Times have changed, as evidenced by our 2027 SUV of the Year program, where 13 of the 23 models we evaluated were electric. One could argue 12 of the 23, as the Nissan Rogue Hybrid is technically a hybrid, but the gasoline engine never actually drives the wheels; it only charges the battery. Either way, the EVs outnumbered the gas burners. Perhaps odd to an outsider, but none of us thought anything of it.

Save one person, an outsider, guest judge and former head of design at Mercedes-Benz, Gorden Wagener. Throughout the week, Gorden and I spent lots of time talking about … cars. Collectively, the two of us have over half a century of professional experience in the industry. We were out in the Mojave Desert evaluating cars 10 hours a day for multiple days, and every chance we got, we spent talking about cars. (My wife thinks I have a condition.)

Gorden Wagener

Over and over again, Gorden told me he’s not so enthusiastic about our electric future. He gets why it’s happening, but he finds it boring. What excites him are big, fat, performance V-8s. So much so that he recently purchased a Jeep Wrangler Rubicon 392 complete with a 6.4-liter naturally aspirated V-8 good for 470 horsepower. Exactly what you’d expect from a German who spent more than 30 years at Mercedes and only wears white pants.

We Didn’t Even Notice

Halfway through the OTY (Of the Year) program, we cut the field down from a whole mess of contenders to a more focused group of finalists. It’s usually a more fevered discussion than what took place this year, as about two thirds of the field were painlessly eliminated. I think I may have been the only judge who was disappointed by a couple of our decisions, as I really thought either the Subaru Trailseeker (0–60 mph in 3.9 seconds) or the essentially identical Toyota bZ Woodland (0–60 mph in 3.8) should have made it through. On everything else, we were largely aligned. But there was one thing we didn’t notice at the time. Counting the Rogue as an EV, eight of the nine finalists were EVs.

Thinking about it all after the fact, many of the ICE SUVs that didn’t make the cut got the boot because of an engine. This hit Kia especially hard, as both the base Seltos (with a slow by every standard 0–60 time of 11 seconds) and the non-hybrid Telluride were victims of engines our judges didn’t think were good enough. Sometimes it was a combination of factors, like in the case of the Infiniti QX65, where it was both a disappointing engine and lots of other poor stuff.

Contrast that with the EVs that didn’t make the finals, and not one was cut because the electric motors weren’t deemed up to snuff. The Toyobaru twins (as well as the two smaller examples, the Subaru Uncharted and Toyota C-HR) got the axe because they didn’t do enough EV stuff well enough. The 670-hp Jeep Recon EV has a great powertrain, but everything else, especially range, wasn’t up to the task. With the Tesla Model Y, well, not only did it get political (I’ll take all the blame), but it’s basically the same vehicle that didn’t win the Golden Calipers the first time around.

On to the road evaluation loops for finalists, and it still hadn’t dawned on the judges that we’d mostly selected EVs as finalists. Sure, there was a scramble to get all the SUVs charged the night before, but there always is. As far as we were concerned, it was just business as usual. Then at lunch, someone (I think it was Gorden?) pointed out that eight of the nine finalists were in fact electric vehicles. My memory of that moment is that we all sort smirked at each other, nodded, said some version of, “imagine that,” and went back to our sandwiches.

A Fitting Coda

An outsider can draw several conclusions here. One is that MotorTrend is in the tank for Big Battery. Another is that all things being equal—and that’s why we judge using our six key criteria—the electric vehicles on hand were simply better. Just like how even the homely (though designed by Pininfarina) Coda could rip it up on a handling circuit, the electric SUVs drove great. Now wrap that powertrain inside a proper Genesis, Mercedes, or Volvo, and you just have a terrific product.

Could it be a combination of the two? Well, MotorTrend is based in EV-loving California, after all. That said, three of this year’s judges currently reside in Michigan, and another is right over the border in Canada. And while Gorden does live in Southern California, see above about the Rubicon 392. Point is, electric vehicles have become such a ubiquitous part of our jobs and lives that we don’t actively see a difference anymore, other than Vehicle X is better than Vehicle Y.

This brings us back to the latter of the two points: EVs are just better cars at this point in time. Even Mr. V-8 himself Wagener had this to say after we were done driving: “In the mainstream segment, apart from performance V-8s, the electric drivetrain is actually so much better than a rough four-cylinder. Much more powerful, agile, and fun to drive.”

Nothing drives this point home deeper than the Volvo EX60, my third-place vote. As luck would have it, a week before SUVOTY, I had a Volvo V60 Cross Country in for evaluation. Although I’ve literally been marked down on job performance reviews because of my irrational love of station wagons, the Volvo’s 247-hp four-banger left me quite cold. But the electric EX60? If it wasn’t for the dominating Rivian R2 winner and the insanely great Genesis GV60 Magma, I would have voted for it to win. So, what do ya know, the two other SUVs I voted for were also electric.