1. In their use as an urban vehicle, SUVs are hopelessly wasteful. They block the view of everyone else, and endanger them too. Their sheer size is what makes their usual application so useless. Unless you're going off-road, there are vehicles that are capable of doing the same tasks in a better way. For their use on the road, 4WD/AWD and the high-rise suspension systems are useless.
Hats off to the people who put SUVs to their intended use, but the urbanites fail.
2. I love a little controversy.
Anyway, people pay a price to be lazy. That is, generally at least $1000 more to start with, approx. -10% efficiency compared to standard, less control, and fewer benefits. As far as I've heard, the automatic
plague (
) is limited mostly to North America. In Europe, Africa, and definately in South America, manuals still seem to be far more popular.