I've no idea what to make of this, but one of the 'shedlets & I sneaked out this morning and drooled over a 'burb.
Got home and started snooping around and came up with this:
Series hybrid Suburban.
(for the link shy or bandwidth limited, it's a plug-in hybrid Suburban with a CVT and an on-board 1.9 L Saturn motor for recharging. Supposedly outperforms the existing 5.3L gas engine and returns 30mpg).
It remains to be seen what can be developed along these lines, but doggone cool idea.