Home » Skateboard chassis vans are a disappointment

Skateboard chassis vans are a disappointment

The designs are boring. We’re in for a very boxy few decades of van design where everything looks very similar.
George Barrow
George Barrow
February 4, 2025

Skateboards are back in fashion. It might be the Chinese year of the snake, but 2025 will also be the year of the so-called skateboard chassis designs with several major multi-platform vans coming to market.

We’ve already seen one, the Flexis range uses a skateboard design with several new and different body types built on it.

Later in the year we’ll also see the fruits of Mercedes’ labour, with their new van.ea electric platform set to be the base for eveything from Vito vans and V-Class passenger cars, right up to a new size of Sprinter van.

Then there’s Kia’s first foray into the van market. They’ve already shown their hand with concepts of PV3, PV5 and PV7 vans (that’s small, medium and large to us lay-folk) all of which will share a modular skateboard design.

But what is a skateboard design? It’s fast becoming just another word for a chassis, but with a contained floor area to house batteries and motors.

Far from the first utterances of the word where skateboard designs would supposedly allow in-wheel motor platforms to rotate their wheels, spin on the spot and ultimately deliver autonomous driving solutions like nothing we’ve ever seen before, we are instead seeing a much sanitised version of a conventional chassis.

The packaging means that there will be more space on the overall dimensions for cargo, and with drive-by-wire technology we could eventually see some interesting ideas for the cockpit and the driver.

But that’s well in the future, and that’s why it’s disappointing.

The designs are, dare I say it, boring, and far from pleasing on the eye. From what we’ve seen, and the silhouettes being shown of upcoming models, we’re in for a very boxy few decades of van design where everything looks very similar.

Tony Hawk was the great skateboarding innovator, but these new models feel more Bart Simpson.

Definitely more “cowabummer” than “cowabunga”!

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