VW Design Boss Says SUVs Are Dinosaurs, Autonomous Vehicles Will Spell Their Extinction

Crossovers and SUVs are experiencing a sales boom and almost every automaker wants a piece (or 10) of the action.

However, the SUV ascension could be eventually brought down by the arrival of self-driving cars, according to the Volkswagen Executive Director of Design, Klaus Bischoff, who recently spoke to AutoExpress on the matter.

Bischoff believes that autonomous vehicles have what they need in order to break the increased SUV demand and sees the large four-by-fours compared to dinosaurs, in the not-so-distant future.

“At the moment, we see the rise of SUVs, and the descent of limousines [sedans] and MPVs. We’ve found something that attracts people, that answers a question customers maybe didn’t even know they had. Maybe SUV’s will start to look old at some point and people will point at them and say, ‘he’s driving a dinosaur’. We don’t see that now, but I strongly believe that we’re going to see much different vehicles when we get to Level Five autonomy, and then it becomes much more open.“

Volkswagen has already taken a first step closer towards launching a fully autonomous vehicle onto the road in less than 10 years, with the introduction of the I.D. Concept, at the 2016 Paris Auto Show. Besides its futuristic design and MEB (Modular Electric Drive) architecture, the study can tackle the road on its own, thanks to the four roof-mounted laser scanners, front and side cameras, radar sensors and ultrasonic sensors.