A Hyundai IONIQ 5 Is Much Larger Than A Hyundai Santa Fe From 2001

I wrote an article yesterday after a real-world situation hit sort of hard after years of writing about, owning, and advocating for electric vehicles. Even when you see issues from a distance and cover them full time, things just hit a bit different when you experience them offline. But then bringing them back to this tremendous online community is almost guaranteed to stimulate more insights and perspective.

This story can be summed up as follows: A friend of ours was about to buy a Hyundai IONIQ 5, but then changed her mind and got a Hyundai Santa Fe hybrid because of all the extra space it offered. It’s just a family of four (mom, dad, and two kids), and I can’t understand the apparent need for more space. But this kind of decision making is happening constantly, every day in the United States — people are choosing a gas car over an electric for the extra space at the same or a similar price.

One problem for me with this — aside from my aforementioned bewilderment at how many people think they need huge vehicles — is that this is clearly an issue that has grown over the years. (No pun intended.) The eye test can tell you that cars and SUVs are much bigger than they were 10, 20, or 30 years ago. A “large SUV” back then was a Jeep Cherokee that would be small potatoes today. There’s plenty of research on this, too.

But, again, I wasn’t prepared for what one of our longtime readers was going to share. “[By the way,] our last ICE car happened to be a 2001 Santa Fe. It was substantially smaller than today’s Ioniq 5! 6″ less long, 2″ narrower, and 2″ taller.” Look at that — straight, solid proof related to this story that Americans somehow feel a “need” for larger and larger vehicles. A 2001 shopper buying a Hyundai Santa Fe didn’t need the vehicle to be 6″ longer and 2″ wider. But, for whatever reason, shoppers today are sold on the idea that they need bigger vehicles. The average family size last year was 3.15, while it was 3.14 in the year 2000, so nothing’s really changed in that regard.

Of course, there’s marketing, marketing, marketing from automakers making and selling bigger and bigger vehicles. Many people claim that’s what it’s all about. It’s also simply easier to sell people on the idea of buying something bigger than they initially planned. Bigger = better. Bigger = more. Bigger = greater status. Bigger is enticing. Perhaps it’s just so easy to get people to spend more on a bigger vehicle that automakers would be stupid not to do so.

Still, it’s a blockade for higher EV sales, because if you’re comparing an EV with more tech, greater convenience, and a better driving experience to a significantly larger gas-powered car at the same price, many buyers will just choose larger. If they don’t already have an EV, they probably don’t even know about or pay much attention to those EV benefits. Even if they’re presented with these advantages, BIGGER typically has a strong, visceral, overriding draw that wins the day.

Still, though, to think that a 2001 Hyundai Santa Fe is smaller than a 2025 Hyundai IONIQ 5 just makes it that much harder and more frustrating to think about countless buyers choosing a Santa Fe over an IONIQ 5 because they need the extra space. And the same thing is happening across auto brands in the US, and probably in other markets to some degree as well. As I’ve noted before, when I moved to Poland in 2008, there were almost zero SUVs on the road — like, zero — but by 2018, you could spot them on the road all day long.

Hyundai IONIQ 5 photos from Hyundai.

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