The Corner Office
Has a Sliding Door

The Van. The MPV. A word that for decades has been synonymous with everything the automotive world pretends not to care about — cumbersome, overlooked, slow, shaped like something designed by a committee that had never seen a car before. A vehicle, it has long been joked, made exclusively for parents who never quite figured out family planning. And yet.

Pull back the curtain on history and the van has outlasted almost everything. It has carried more weight — literally and figuratively — than the sports cars that got all the magazine covers. It has built more cult followings than the sedans that won all the awards. It has served more purposes, crossed more borders, and survived more market cycles than any single vehicle class in automotive history. The question worth asking is not why the van refuses to go the way of the dodo. The answer to that is obvious: adaptability. The real question — the one the industry is only now beginning to wrestle with — is why the luxury van is quietly becoming the most significant and exciting vehicle category of the next decade, and why the manufacturers who figure that out first are going to own the room.

—Origin Story — Or the Lack of One

Unlike the great vehicles of automotive mythology, the MPV does not arrive with a cinematic backstory. There is no legendary team of visionary engineers locked in a room in Stuttgart or Maranello, obsessing over aerodynamics and defying physics over cold coffee and nervous energy. The van was born from a purely practical necessity — to carry people and their belongings from one point to the next — and it has been doing exactly that since vehicles were made from wood and powered by engines that struggled to embarrass a healthy horse.

The word itself tells you everything. Van derives from caravan — the movement of people traveling together, organized and purposeful, a concept as old as civilization itself. The wheel was invented. Humans immediately used it to go somewhere together and bring their things. The van, in spirit, was there from the beginning. Due to its inherent flexibility it became, over time, the most widely deployed vehicle on earth — from the cobblestone streets of Europe to the chaotic energy of Southeast Asian cities, from the Americas to Africa, across every infrastructure model and income bracket the world has to offer.

And yet, for all of this ubiquity and utility, the van has always been treated as the workhorse — respected enough to keep around, never glamorous enough to celebrate. That is about to change in a significant and financially meaningful way.

—Defining the Moment

Before we talk about where the luxury van is going, we need to establish where it currently sits in a market that is both larger and more complex than most people realize.

MARKET SIZE

The global luxury van market was valued at $21.84 billion in 2024. Projected to reach $23.02 billion in 2025. By 2034 — $36.95 billion. That is not a niche conversation. That is a category on the verge of a structural shift.

And that growth is not evenly distributed. Asia Pacific already holds the largest share of the luxury van market, and it is pulling away from everyone else. By volume, the world bought roughly 437,000 luxury vans in 2024; by 2030, that number is on track to climb past 567,000 — with China expanding faster than any other region. North America, by contrast, is the sleeping giant: a market worth $18.63 billion in 2024, projected to reach nearly $28 billion by 2032, and one that has only just begun to understand what it is looking at. The center of gravity is already in the East. The largest untapped opportunity is in the West.

To understand why the luxury van is positioned for this kind of growth, you first have to understand what luxury means right now — how it is defined, perceived, and pursued across a global market that has fundamentally changed in the last twenty years.

—What Luxury Means Today

The luxury automotive segment has historically been dominated by a relatively small number of European manufacturers producing ultra-high-end sports cars and sedans. Not much has changed in terms of who those manufacturers are. What has changed — dramatically — is what they are selling. Over the last two decades, every major luxury automotive brand has been forced to adapt to a market that shifted decisively toward the SUV. The reasons are well-documented: size, practicality, perceived safety, commanding road presence, and the simple fact that buyers found SUVs more useful in their actual lives than a low-slung sedan.

The result is that the luxury SUV now dominates the premium segment globally. Buyers who once chose a 7-Series or an S-Class are now choosing an X7 or a GLS, and the manufacturers have followed them there without losing the customer — just replacing the vehicle. The traditional luxury sedan, once the definitive statement of success, has quietly moved toward the margins. What was once the aspirational default is now, increasingly, a specialty.

This is not the first time the market repositioned what luxury looks like. And if the pattern holds, it will not be the last.

The SUV displaced the sedan. The luxury van, slowly and then suddenly, will begin to displace the SUV. Not entirely. Not overnight. But meaningfully, and among exactly the kind of buyers who set the agenda for everyone else.

—Global Impact and Market Dominance

Sometimes the most interesting opportunities live in the spaces that the dominant players have been too comfortable to notice. The luxury van understood this before the industry did, and it capitalized quietly and effectively — particularly in two markets that now represent the future center of gravity for all luxury goods: Europe and China, with China deserving its own sentence.

China is, right now, the most important luxury automotive market in the world. The combination of rapidly expanding prosperity, growing disposable income, and an accelerating population of ultra-high-net-worth individuals — defined as those with $30 million or more available for investment, beyond primary assets — has created ideal conditions for luxury growth at a pace that neither North America nor Europe can currently match. The ultra-high-net-worth population is expanding. So is the high-net-worth tier — those managing between $1 million and $20 million in investable assets — and crucially, both groups are appearing in new geographies.

We are no longer in a world where luxury automotive growth is driven primarily by the coasts of America and the cities of Western Europe. The circle has expanded materially to Asia, the Middle East, and select markets in Latin America. With new geographies come new buyers with new cultural reference points, new ideas about what success looks like, and new expectations about what a vehicle should do for them and for their image.

In this context, the luxury van has found its audience. Brands like the Lexus LM, the Buick GL8, the Mercedes V-Class and its electric counterpart the EQV, the Toyota Vellfire, the Hongqi HQ9, the Bestune M9, and the Zeekr 009 Grand have not just entered the Chinese market — they have built meaningful businesses there. Volvo went so far as to create an entirely new electric luxury van — the EM90 — purpose-built for China and, for now, sold there exclusively, with a wider global rollout floated but not yet confirmed. Mercedes, meanwhile, has replaced the V-Class outright with the all-new, all-electric VLE — revealed in March of 2026 and headed to the United States before the year is out. The manufacturers are reading the room. The room is changing.

—The Boss in the Back Seat

To understand why a van — a van — became the vehicle that wealthy Asia covets, you have to absorb a single cultural fact that the West still resists: in much of Asia, the most important seat in the car has never been the one behind the wheel. It is the one directly behind the driver.

The template for all of it is the Toyota Alphard. To Western eyes it reads like an airport shuttle. To buyers in Tokyo, Hong Kong, Bangkok, Jakarta, Singapore, and Kuala Lumpur, it functions much the way the S-Class does in Germany — an unambiguous signal that you have arrived. As Monocle observed, in Asia “travelling in comfort is the ultimate status symbol.” You do not drive an Alphard; you are driven in one, reclined in one of two captain’s chairs behind the front row while someone else negotiates the traffic. The affordability of professional drivers across the region is not a footnote here — it is the entire point. The back seat is the office, the lounge, and the throne, all at once.

Toyota understood exactly what it had. In 2019 it took the Alphard, wrapped it in a Lexus skin and a grille roughly the size of a small building, and called it the LM — for “Luxury Mover.” The four-seat version deletes the third row entirely and replaces it with an “Emperor Suite”: two reclining thrones, a 48-inch screen, and a glass partition separating the occupants from the help. Top Gear described it as gate-crashing the world of VVIP travel — the realm of “the real-world Logan Roys, Bobby Axelrods and Hollywood high rollers” — with the dry addition that this time you don’t have to bend down to get in. It is the most expensive Lexus since the LFA supercar, opening in the UK at over £90,000. Demand routinely outruns supply, and across Southeast Asia these vehicles regularly change hands above sticker, through official and grey-market channels alike. A van. Selling above MSRP. Let that sit for a second.

In Asia, the most important seat in the car has never been the one behind the wheel.

—The Chinese Onslaught

Then China looked at all of this, and decided to build its own — at scale, on electric power, and faster than anyone outside the country thought possible.

The numbers are not small. China’s domestic MPV market moved roughly 1.09 million units in 2024, according to the China Passenger Car Association. The undisputed king of that market is the Denza D9 — a product of the joint venture between BYD and Mercedes-Benz, and a quiet masterclass in irony, given that Mercedes had earlier trimmed its stake in Denza from 50% down to 10%, right before BYD turned the brand into a juggernaut. The D9 has been China’s best-selling MPV of any kind for two consecutive years — 117,978 units in 2023 and 102,810 in 2024 — with its 300,000th example delivered by late 2025. Depending on trim it runs between roughly $47,000 and $84,000, and it arrives with equipment that used to live only in the back of a flagship sedan: multi-point massage, a thirty-speaker Devialet sound system, lidar-assisted highway autopilot.

And the D9 is merely the leader of a stampede. The Zeekr 009 (Geely) opens around $60,000 and offers up to 560 miles of range. The Li Auto MEGA, the Xpeng X9, the Voyah Dreamer — which alone sold more than 55,000 units in 2024 — the Maxus MIFA 9, the Hongqi flagship: every major Chinese automaker now fields a large, electric, rear-seat-obsessed luxury van, and almost none of them are positioned as compromises. They are flagships. The catalyst, in part, was demographic — China’s relaxation of its one-child policy in 2021 created sudden, genuine demand for vehicles that could carry three rows of family in real comfort. The result is the most competitive luxury van market on earth, and it exists almost entirely inside a country that, twenty years ago, the European luxury establishment treated as an export afterthought.

China didn’t enter the luxury van market. It is becoming the luxury van market.

—Following the Money

None of this is happening in a vacuum. It is happening because the money is moving, and the money is moving east.

According to Knight Frank’s 2026 Wealth Report, mainland China is now home to 121,677 ultra-high-net-worth individuals — the $30-million-and-up tier — a figure that has climbed 23% in five years and is forecast to reach 144,602 by 2031. UBS counted 386 new millionaires created in China every single day across 2024. Asia-Pacific as a whole now holds nearly a third of the world’s ultra-wealthy population, and the analysts at Altrata project that Asia will post the strongest ultra-wealth growth of any region in the years ahead. Look past China and the pattern repeats: the ultra-wealthy populations of India, Indonesia, and Vietnam are growing at 60 to 80 percent over five years. These are not incremental shifts. They are new oceans of wealth forming in precisely the markets where the luxury van is already the default expression of having made it.

Overlay the wealth map onto the product map and the picture resolves instantly. The buyers are appearing in the East. The vehicles are being built in the East. The luxury van is not chasing a trend — it is riding a tectonic shift in where the world’s money actually lives.

—The Buyer Shift — and What It Means

Luxury buyers have always been a specific kind of consumer. What has changed in the last ten years is what that consumer expects — and the divergence between regional expectations is now wide enough to shape product strategy at a global level.

There are broadly two philosophies at work in the luxury automotive market today. In Asia and the Middle East, buyers are prioritizing technology, digital connectivity, autonomous capability, and the quality of the in-cabin experience above almost everything else. The vehicle as a mobile environment. A space to inhabit, to be productive in, to be transported by — rather than to actively pilot. In Europe and the Americas, buyers still care deeply about driving dynamics, performance, styling, and the visceral relationship between driver and machine.

These two philosophies are not converging. They are separating. And the honest truth — uncomfortable as it is to say in certain rooms — is that one of them represents the future of the mainstream luxury market, and the other is moving toward the position of a specialized, passion-driven sector. Much like the horse, driving for the pure experience of driving will not disappear. It will simply become the pursuit of enthusiasts rather than the default of the mainstream.

Every step toward automation removes a measure of engagement. The automatic transmission was the beginning. Level 4 autonomy is the logical conclusion.

Every ADAS feature, every driver-assistance system, every level of autonomy added to a vehicle returns a measure of ease and removes a measure of engagement. The vehicle becomes an appliance. A very expensive, very sophisticated, very comfortable appliance — but an appliance nonetheless. For the luxury van, this is not a threat. It is an invitation.

—The Future — EV, Autonomy, and Why the Van Wins

You cannot talk seriously about the future of luxury without talking about electrification and autonomy. What began as a solution to mass-market environmental concerns has evolved, as most things do in a market economy, into something quite different — a status symbol. The EV has become a marker of a particular kind of wealth, a particular kind of self-awareness, a particular way of announcing one’s place in the world. Whether that was the original intention is irrelevant. That is where we are.

The luxury segment will be dominated by the EV market within the next decade. Buyers who already own premium or ultra-premium combustion vehicles are the most likely early adopters of luxury EVs — not because they have to be, but because they are attracted to what the EV offers: simplicity, refinement, the absence of mechanical drama, and the presence of technological sophistication. The EV aligns with a certain luxury philosophy: that the best experience is effortless. That true quality removes friction rather than adding complexity.

For luxury brands, the EV is also the single greatest opportunity to push design and technology forward in a compressed timeframe. Remove the constraints of combustion engineering, add a flat battery floor and powerful compact electric motors, and suddenly the interior of a vehicle becomes a genuinely blank canvas. Particularly in a vehicle that is already architecturally liberated from the conventions of the sedan and the SUV.

The SUV has long dominated the luxury segment because of its perceived safety, commanding size, and practical versatility. Consider this: everything the SUV does, the luxury van does better — and then does things the SUV physically cannot. The van rides lower to the ground than an SUV, meaning better stability, less body roll, and superior cornering dynamics in a large vehicle. At the same time, the seating position is elevated compared to a car, offering the visibility and sense of presence that premium buyers associate with commanding the road.

—The Interior Argument — Where the Van Actually Wins

A van, by its fundamental geometry, is not beholden to the design limitations that constrain every other vehicle segment. There is no transmission tunnel bisecting the floor. There is no roofline tapering aggressively for aerodynamic visual appeal at the cost of headroom. There is no compromise between having three rows and having them be usable. The luxury van’s interior is a room. A real room. Designed by people who are free to design it as a room.

Captain’s chairs that travel further forward and further back than anything in an SUV — with full 180-degree recline, swivel capability, heating, cooling, and multi-zone massage systems tuned from soft to firm depending on whether you are finishing a deal or finishing a nap. Ambient lighting calibrated to your preference. Temperature managed by zone. Fragrance systems built into the climate control. Sound that fills the cabin the way it fills a properly designed listening room.

And then there is the third row, which in a luxury van is not a punishment but an actual destination. No contortion required. No knees pressed against the seat in front. No negotiation for a shared armrest the width of a pencil. You walk to the third row. You sit in it. You are comfortable. That sentence should not sound revolutionary. In every other vehicle segment, it is.

WHY ENTRY & EGRESS MATTERS

Getting into an SUV requires either bending and dropping into a low opening or climbing into a truck platform — neither of which is the experience luxury should provide. The sliding door of a luxury van offers something different: you step in. Upright. Easily. With your dignity entirely intact. It sounds like a small thing. It is not a small thing.

Add to all of this the EV platform — with its flat floor, long wheelbase, smooth and near-silent power delivery, and the complete absence of mechanical vibration — and you have a vehicle that delivers a cabin experience nothing else on the market can currently match.

—The West Wakes Up

So the East has its answer. What about everyone else?

Start with that VLE. It broke cover in Stuttgart on the 10th of March, 2026, and it is not a warmed-over V-Class at all — it is the first vehicle built on Mercedes-Benz’s clean-sheet VAN.EA electric architecture, and it goes on sale in North America before the end of the year. The specification reads like a luxury sedan that swallowed a living room: an 800-volt system, a 115-kWh battery, more than 435 miles of range, 315-kilowatt charging that recovers a couple hundred miles in fifteen minutes, and seating for up to eight. Above it, Mercedes will place an even grander model — the VLS — positioned explicitly as the S-Class of vans, due later in 2026. Pricing is expected to land somewhere near $130,000. And Mercedes has been refreshingly blunt about the target: not commercial buyers, not shuttle fleets, but the affluent customers who would otherwise walk into a showroom and drive out in a large luxury SUV.

Here is the uncomfortable part, and it is worth saying plainly: the West — and America in particular — may not be ready. The United States spent thirty years abandoning the minivan in favor of the SUV, and it did so with near-religious conviction that a van is what you drive once you have given up. Mercedes already tried a version of this with the Metris, and it went nowhere. The Chrysler Pacifica soldiers on as the quiet default for families who never got the SUV memo. Volkswagen’s retro-cool ID. Buzz will probe the playful end of the market, but the broader cultural resistance is real — and it is exactly the stigma the Lexus LM never had to fight in Singapore or Shanghai. Europe is the easier sell; it already understands the executive shuttle, and the V-Class spent two decades training buyers to see a premium van as a legitimate object of desire. America is the harder convert. The U.S. luxury van market is real and growing — $18.63 billion in 2024, on its way to nearly $28 billion by 2032 — but the question is no longer whether the product is good enough. The product is extraordinary. The question is whether the West can get over itself.

The vehicle has arrived in the West. The open question is whether the West is ready for it.

—The Road Ahead

For the luxury van to achieve the kind of market penetration the SUV achieved over the last thirty years, it will need to do what the SUV did: move beyond its initial buyer base and find relevance across a broader spectrum of income levels and use cases. The SUV started as a lifestyle statement for a specific demographic and became the default family vehicle for the middle class within a generation. The luxury van is at the beginning of an analogous journey.

The image of what comes next is not difficult to visualize. A luxury van arriving at a red carpet event, sliding door opening with the grace and authority of a private jet cabin. A board meeting being conducted in motion — participants relaxed, focused, unrushed, in a space that functions as a mobile executive suite. A family arriving at a weekend destination not frazzled by the journey but actually rested by it, the drive having been an experience in itself rather than a necessary inconvenience.

Luxury has always been a feeling. The feeling of having something made specifically for you, that fits your life in a way nothing else quite does.

The SUV delivered a version of that feeling for thirty years. It was a good run. The luxury van is what comes next — and the manufacturers, the buyers, and the market are all beginning to arrive at the same conclusion at the same time. That, historically, is when things get interesting.