@notjustbikes Hello Jason! I watched your video about SUVs and it answered so many questions I frequently encountered on the road as a pedestrian.
This SUV hype is really everywhere. Here in China, 42% of new cars are SUVs, which explains why cars on the road are becoming bigger and bigger. Plug-in electric SUVs and BEV crossover SUVs are already a thing here. In fact, the clip you used in your SUV video at 17:51 is the demonstration by Chinese automaker Great Wall Motors at the 2019 Frankfurt International Motor Show, where the company is showing their premium EV and PHEV brand Wey. Guess what kinds of cars do Wey specialise in? SUVs and crossover SUVs!
This seems totally unreasonable from the surface: why are EV companies jumping into the SUV bandwagon as well? How can EV and PHEV designers ignore basic physics? This is at least partially due to the current shortcomings of EV technologies: lithium ion and polymer batteries for EVs are still too large for practical ranges. Size is the problem. This means automakers who choose to get rid of petrol-only and non-plug-in HEVs right now or never produced them in the first place, such as Tesla and BYD, can use battery size as an excuse to make larger cars. That is why a Tesla Model 3 is much heavier than a Toyota Yaris (or maybe a Corolla, adjusted for vehicle class). This also answered my question of why EVs in China all look weird in some way: it is possibly becasue of all these spaces the batteries have taken.
This problem has serious implications because it means EVs are still less efficient than their promises claimed. They are still not one-to-one replacements for petrol cars, even with more charging stations. Unless there are new breakthroughs in EV technologies, this SUV trend probably will continue. But even if there will be smaller batteries for better ranges, the mindset must change. We probably don't need so many cars, and not everyone need to learn driving for daily life or finding a non-driver job.