Big SUVs all set to displace smaller peers, to be new kings of road

The Mahindra S201, a compact SUV based on the SsangYong Tivoli platform, is expected to go on sale in the beginning of 2019

Sports utility vehicles (SUVs) with less than four metres in length, or compact SUVs, may be ruling the roads for now, but the future belongs to large and premium ones.

If not anything, the launch of over half a dozen new SUVs in the first half of 2019 is likely to further skew the demand in favour of bigger models.

Sales forecast and market research firm IHS Markit expects the large and mid-sized SUVs to see a compounded annual growth rate of 14.37 per cent from 2018 to 2021. Their smaller sub-four metre counterparts are expected to grow at a