Ever since the latest Suzuki Jimny ended its all-too-brief life in Europe, we’d been holding out hope that it would be coming back as an EV. After all, we love the Jimny for its cutesy styling and impressive off-road ability, and its little 1.5-litre petrol engine was hardly a stonking powertrain, so we’d have no issue whatsoever with it being ditched in favour of batteries.
For a while, it seemed that this was all but confirmed – in January last year, Suzuki showed off an infographic that featured the silhouettes of five full EVs it planned to launch in Europe by 2030, one of which was very clearly Jimny-shaped.
Suzuki’s 2023 infographic showing its planned European EV range
Now, though, the company’s president appears to have killed the suggestion that an EV Jimny is on the way, according to Autocar. Speaking at the European launch of the e Vitara – the first of those five silhouetted cars to get a full reveal – Toshihiro Suzuki reportedly said: “If you talk about the Jimny EV, I think it would ruin the best part of the Jimny.
“I think the core strength of the Jimny is the right weight,” he continued. In effect, then, it seems that Suzuki has deemed that an electric Jimny wouldn’t be able to be made light enough as an EV in order to maintain the scant kerb weight that makes it so effective off-road.
Suzuki Jimny – front
Instead, it seems that Suzuki is now focusing on positioning the Jimny as a combustion-powered commercial vehicle, with Suzuki saying: “If we want to keep providing the Jimny to the market as tools for the professionals, maybe the e-fuel, or biofuel utilising the ICE technology would be the way to keep Jimny supported in the future.”
Lately in Europe, a two-seater commercial vehicle was the only form in which the Jimny could be bought. The passenger version was removed from sale in 2020 after just two years on the market as it was likely to cause Suzuki – then without any EVs or even full hybrids – to fall foul of fleet emissions rules, which the commercial version could circumvent.
Suzuki Jimny – rear
This year, though, the commercial Jimny was also dropped from European order books, and with an EV version seemingly on ice, it’s not clear if we’ll ever see it return. We hope Suzuki finds some way of bringing it back, though, because it brought some much needed joy to Britain’s otherwise increasingly bland roads.
