Bark's Bites: Crossovers Are the Gateway Drug For Self-Driving Cars

Automotive Twitter really is the worst Twitter, for many reasons. First of all, it’s not very “automotive.” With the exception of our dear friend, Bozi Tatarevic, who is a must-follow for his encyclopedic knowledge and Holmesian sleuthing skills, nearly every other autowriter on Twitter views the platform as an opportunity to share the wonkiest political views possible. When they aren’t doing that, they’re all sipping from the same “I am an expert on financial matters but I also dress like a flood victim” Kool-Aid, chanting the same mantra over and over.

Last week was particularly objectionable, what with the GM decision to mostly abandon passenger cars in favor of light and heavy trucks. “People are buying the wrong cars!” they shout to their literally dozens of followers. “Crossover bad! Car good!” they shriek, neglecting to share with you that nearly all of them are childless and nary a one of them has ever tried to fit a collapsing stroller, a diaper bag, and a breast pump into the trunk of a Miata. One particularly stupid individual compared the nation’s overwhelming preference for crossovers to its preference for superhero movies over art films. Sigh.

It takes roughly three functioning brain cells to understand that crossovers are a better fit for the majority of flyover country than small cars are. Of course, once you understand that the majority of the major digital automotive press in this country is based in New York, then it’s not hard to understand that they can’t see outside of their bubbles. You certainly don’t need something like a Chevy Traverse if you are a childless man with a domestic partner who lives in a third-floor Brooklyn walkup with no available parking. But when you live in suburban Indiana with your three kids, all of whom have multiple after school activities, well, crossovers make a little more sense. And since childless couples in NY don’t buy cars and soccer moms in Indiana do, well, it only makes sense that the General is gonna listen to Jennifer from Carmel.

I, however, tend to think that there is an even more sinister goal behind the switch from cars to crossovers. I think it’s to prepare people for the (possibly never) upcoming switch to self-driving cars. Allow me to elaborate.

For those of you who have never driven a crossover of any type (hard to believe that such people exist in 2018, but this is TTAC), let me briefly explain the driving experience that you’ll get behind the wheel of the average RAV4/Rogue/CR-V/Tucson/Sorento/Equinox/Escape:

It’s mindless.

There’s nothing about driving your average small to medium sized crossover that requires much engagement from the driver. Steering motions are soft and willowy. Acceleration is muted. Braking is firm but forgiving. Cornering is stable, safe, and prone to understeer. They’re largely well-engineered. Most of them have very solid reliability records.

They are simply tools used for a job, much like any other large instrument that one uses in daily life. For example, I used my stove to make scrambled eggs this morning. They were not artisanal. They were not haute cuisine. They were just eggs. My stove, which is roughly 11 years old and has no special features whatsoever, was more than adequate to the task. I gained no particular sense of pleasure from making the eggs, but they needed to be made, and so I used the tool at hand to make them. This is what driving a crossover is like. No expertise or significant driving skill is required to pilot one, nor can any particular driving-related joy be derived from one.

My own mother required that my first car be a stickshift, noting that driving a car equipped with an automatic transmission was simply “pointing, not driving.” Most crossovers don’t even point particularly well. There’s not much about driving a crossover that one would call, well, driving. One might determine that the word “operating” would be more appropriate.

Of course this is all intentional on the part of the automaker. Toyota could, no doubt, make a more interesting version of the RAV4. Honda could make a CR-V Si. They don’t. They have no interest in it. Ford does make an Edge ST (which is nearly offensively priced) but it’s more of a top trim package than a truly sporting vehicle (it doesn’t come with a stickshift and it’s far, far too heavy), which just allows Ford to push the transaction price of its stuck-in-the-middle SUV a little higher.

It used to be that automakers spent time, money, and effort into making their cars more engaging and fun to drive. They now do the opposite, focusing on numbing the steering, deadening the noise, and softening to springs. While not every car should be (or needs to be) tuned on the dreaded Nurburgring, mainstream crossovers seem to have been tuned on I-70.

So when it comes time to relinquish those last few vestiges of human-directed car operation, crossover drivers will assuredly be among the first adopters of the technology, if and when it becomes affordable and mainstream. They’ve already demonstrated a lack of interest in driving. If I could have my eggs made automatically by my oven, you can be damn sure that I’d do it. Crossover drivers, who have roughly the same amount of interest in driving that I do in egg-making, will feel the same way about giving up the wheel to the magic box behind the dashboard in favor of more time spent Instagramming their food.

Why do this? Automakers need to have justification for the vast amount of cash they are relentlessly shoveling into the self-driving fire. They need to give us the soma we need in order to have our driving rights taken from us. Crossovers are just what the government-regulated doctor ordered. Make us all forget that driving can be fun, so that when you tell us that we can’t do it anymore, we won’t mind so much.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, my tinfoil hat is getting a bit tight. Time to make a new one.

[Image: Fiat Chrysler Automobiles]