Minivan Cars

One-box people carriers built on car platforms, usually with sliding rear doors and three rows of seats.

2 models

The sliding door is the giveaway, and it is not a styling decision. Everything else about the shape follows from a decision to build a passenger car as a box: a low flat floor, a windscreen well forward, three rows within a length that would give a sedan two, and rear seats that fold away instead of coming out. Minivan is the North American word for it, coined in the 1980s to separate this new car-based thing from the commercial van it looked like. That separation still holds, and it is the useful one. A van is engineered around cargo volume and sold to businesses; a minivan is a passenger car whose body happens to be square.

Within the wider MPV family this is the large end, and it is where electric platforms fit unusually well. A flat battery floor is exactly the floor the body style wanted, and the motors leave the space between the axles alone. The Volkswagen ID. Buzz, 4,712 to 4,962 mm long depending on wheelbase, is built that way from scratch, while the Nissan Elgrand at 4,995 mm keeps the Japanese reading of the format, which puts more of the money into the second row than into the third.

Models

Elgrand
Hybrid
Elgrand

The fourth-generation Nissan Elgrand is a full-size hybrid minivan for Japan, its first major redesign since 2010. It runs Nissan's e-POWER series hybrid with e-4ORCE all-wheel drive, and prices start from ¥6,897,000 ($42,470).

AWD
ID. Buzz
EV
ID. Buzz

Volkswagen's retro-styled electric minivan on the MEB platform. Built in Hanover, offered as a five-seat short-wheelbase van and a longer seven-seat version, with 286 hp rear-drive Pro and 335 hp GTX all-wheel-drive variants, an 86 kWh battery and up to about 485 km WLTP range.

286 hp 485 km RWD
Frequently asked questions
Why do minivans have sliding doors?
Because a hinged door needs swing room that a full car park space does not have. A slider opens fully against the body, so the aperture stays the same width however tightly the vehicle is parked, and a child can climb into the second row without the door touching the car alongside. Power operation on both sides has become standard for the same reason.
What is the difference between a minivan and an SUV?
Floor height, and what follows from it. A minivan sits low, so the third row is reachable and the seats fold into the floor rather than on top of it. An SUV of the same length carries a higher floor, a smaller usable cabin and more ground clearance, and is normally rated to tow more. On a like-for-like platform the minivan is also the lighter and more economical of the two.
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