The more rugged new 2025 Toyota 4Runner after being revealed on a beach in San Diego on April 9.Petrina Gentile/The Globe and Mail
Canadian drivers are becoming increasingly infatuated with sport utility vehicles, and automakers are lining up to deliver more of what they want in 2025.
Last year, for the first time in Canada, more than 60 per cent of new vehicles that rolled off dealership lots were SUVs, according to the Canadian industry analysts at DesRosiers Automotive Consultants.
The sport utility vehicle moniker will continue to be aspirational this year. Neither “sport” nor “utility” is guaranteed. And while most SUVs are similar – varying slightly in size and design and price a bit like button-up shirts at the mall – there are some exceptions.
Here are some SUVs coming up in 2025 that have piqued my interest:
Off-roaders and off-road pretenders
The Ineos Grenadier was one of my favourite cars of 2024, not because it was perfect or even good, but because it was clearly designed with a singular vision as an unapologetically old-school off-roader for would-be adventurers. If, however, the combination of the Grenadier’s six-figure price tag and the fact it comes from a new car company rightly gives you pause, the new 2025 Toyota 4Runner is a worthy (and much less expensive) alternative with prices starting at less than $60,000.
The all-new 4Runner was originally slated to hit showrooms last year, but didn’t. A spokesperson for Toyota confirmed the 4Runner will arrive in Canada this spring. Toyota says the new truck is more comfortable and better on road, but take those claims with a grain of salt. This is still, as fans demanded, a body-on-frame SUV. If it’s as indestructible as the previous 4Runner, it should be a worthy Grenadier alternative for those on a budget. Oh, and the new adventure-prepped 4Runner Trailhunter trim is cool in an apocalypse-starter-kit kind of way.
The all-electric Jeep Recon will include a removable roof and doors.Stellantis/The Globe and Mail
In other off-road SUV news, Jeep’s all-new Recon is an entirely different take on the genre. The company unveiled the battery-powered Recon concept in 2022 and Jeep’s website still says the Recon is expected to be available in Canada in 2024. That didn’t happen, but given the amount of lightly camouflaged Recon prototypes recently spotted, rumour has it the Recon EV should arrive this year. It will reportedly have removable doors and some type of folding roof, which could scratch an itch for anyone who has always wanted an oversized Fiat Jolly (for example, me).
Status trucks (and one budget alternative)
In an entirely predictable turn of events, there’s a lack of exciting new compact and/or budget-friendly SUVs on the market year.
Instead, there’s an abundance of what I’d call “status trucks” – trendy, unapologetically expensive and capable of climbing mountains, but typically spend their lives on pavement. The all-electric 2025 Mercedes-Benz G-Class will finally be hitting Canadian showrooms in 2025. Not to be outdone, Range Rover will open pre-orders for its first EV, the 2026 Range Rover Electric.
It is easy to see the resemblance to the old VW bus in the design.Kunal D'souza/The Globe and Mail
By contrast, the coming 2026 Hyundai Palisade is exciting because the South Korean company continues to edge closer to Range Rover/Mercedes levels of luxury for a fraction of the price. The South Korean-market version of Hyundai’s 2026 Palisade SUV was unveiled late last year and the company’s new flagship crossover looks pretty slick. At the moment, all we’ve got to go on are a handful of photos, but the Canadian version should look similar and is expected later this year.
The Tesla refresh
Any major update to Canada’s best-selling EV – the Tesla Model Y – will be big news for drivers (and Tesla analysts). Reuters first reported the so-called Model Y “Juniper” in March, 2023. Tesla being Tesla, the refreshed Model Y suddenly appeared on the company’s Chinese-market website with not so much as a post from company boss Elon Musk, who’s preoccupied with other things these days.
Assuming the Canadian Model Y Juniper will be similar to what’s on the Chinese website, it seems many of the updates from the Model 3 Highland sedan – a less noisy cabin and a smoother ride – will be carried to the SUV. The Juniper can’t come soon enough; for the first time in the company’s history, Tesla sales saw a slight annual decline last year.
The 2024 Lucid Gravity after it was unveiled at the 2023 Los Angeles auto show.Mark Richardson/The Globe and Mail
Electric SUVs proliferate
The electric SUV market is much more crowded than when the Model Y first hit the road in 2020.
BMW executives have been talking about the Neue Klasse since at least 2021, building up this next generation of vehicles as a major leap of design, manufacturing and technology. We’ll see soon enough if that’s true; the 2026 BMW iX3 electric SUV – the first of the Neue Klasse models – is due late this year. It’ll use the German brand’s sixth-generation electric powertrain, which it claims will offer faster charging and up to 30 per cent more driving range than BMW’s current EVs.
If range anxiety is your main worry, the coming Lucid Gravity SUV could be the electric SUV for you. California-based upstart Lucid Motors made a name for itself with the Air sedan, a hyper-efficient design that resulted in extreme long-range capability. SUVs are fundamentally inefficient, so seeing how Lucid translates its know-how into its first sport utility will be interesting. The company touts prices from $113,500 and a driving range of around 700 kilometres for the $134,500 range-topping Gravity Grand Touring. A spokesperson for the company didn’t have prices or delivery dates for Canada yet, but did say that deliveries would follow the U.S. by a few months.
I did promise a story about new SUVs here, but will include the electric Volkswagen ID.Buzz minivan because it’s humongous like any three-row SUV and people have been waiting a long time for it. VW kept fans in suspense for this reborn microbus since the first ID.Buzz concept in 2017 or, arguably, since the 2001 Microbus concept. Finally, deliveries to Canadian customers will begin in early 2025, a company spokesperson confirmed. The reborn bus is quirky (in a good way) and expensive (in a bad way), but, is worth a closer look as something undeniably different in an automotive landscape that tends toward sameness. I’m also quietly rooting for a minivan comeback in 2025.
A BMW Vision Neue Klasse X at the 2024 Paris Auto Show in Paris, France, on Oct. 14.Benoit Tessier/Reuters
Forbidden fruit
What about something more budget-friendly? Something smaller? It’s not that car companies don’t make new SUVs like that; it’s just that they’re often denied to Canadian drivers because we love our SUVs like we love our burgers: big and beefy.
The Mini Aceman, Dacia Duster and Renault5/Alpine A290 are all, sadly, unlikely to land here. The Mini is a slightly smaller, cheaper and better-looking alternative to the brand’s Countryman SUV. Given that Dacia, Alpine and Renault don’t have any dealerships in North America, those small SUVs will likely remain forbidden fruit, too.
Kia’s coming EV3 is an exception, but a company spokesperson confirmed that the compact, entry-level electric SUV will not arrive in Canada this year.
What do you think about the automotive class of 2025? Let me know in the comments what – if any – new or coming cars, SUVs, trucks (or e-bikes) have piqued your interest this year.
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