No reason really, I just found the reply to the original post amusing
I was assuming the OP had already bought a model to which a powered rear door cannot be economically retrofitted. Given that (and a complaint from his wife), I was pointing out that with a bit of planning, you will not miss the powered rear door as much as the powered side doors.
When we first got our van, I found the side doors to be a nuisance because they took so long to open/close compared to just pulling the doors on our old van. After a while I figured out that a bit of planning made them convenient. So now when we park the car after a trip the first thing I do is hit the open buttons for both doors. They are open by the time I get to the car seat to let the kids out. I push the close buttons after we're out and walk away from the car and hit the lock button a few times until I hear the horn chirp to let me know the doors closed and locked. I had found waiting for the doors to close (while standing and watching them) is more time consuming than just pulling the door closed and hitting the lock button. With my new "procedure" it is actually quicker.
As to your trim level comment; we tried to buy a van that had all of the important stuff for us. What we found was that unless you buy the top model, you miss some options that you'd like. So we didn't get XM, Leather, Rear Parking Sensor, Cooling Box, Power Rear Hatch. But the van was $5,500 CDN less than the EX-L model with that stuff. I miss the XM, but hadn't really thought much about the rear hatch.
All I was saying was given the number of times we access the rear, vs the side doors, the OP's wife should be able to get by with a change in the way she loads the kids (like we do).
Anyway, you can get by without all of the options, but people like stuff to make their lives easier or they think the option is cool. Nothing wrong with that and I wouldn't expect to have to justify my more "spartan" model any more than someone would have to justify buying a loaded model.
This is America (and Canada), we can do what we want, as long as we have enough money (or can borrow it).
