Depending on how wide the stripe is and where it's placed, it's either just a style choice or for anti-glare. The Wilderness trims of Subarus for example have a black patch in the middle of the hood. But since you specifically mentioned "stripe", I'm guessing it's just styling.
Pretty wide on the SUVs, narrow on the Toyota crossover. Ive never gotten glare off of my hood, in any vehicle I've ever owned or driven, ever. That sounds like marketing to me. Like, are they trying to say it's like a football players eye-black?
You can't see the hood on most new cars, but it really did used to be an issue. Racecars blacked out their hoods and then it became a factory option. It continued as a styling thing to show why your version is cooler.
I have driven cars for 26 years and never had that problem. Even long hooded sports cars. The glare has never come from my hood. Although, I live in the north so maybe that's why, where 8 months of the year the sun is always just over the horizon either in front or behind you. And it always manages to find a way to be in front. The vast majority of my equatorial driving was in a camo matte HMMV.
I have a matte black vinyl wrapped hood to reduce sun glare on my car. I live in a place with a lot of hills, and a '68 Ford Galaxie has a massive flat hood that is 5ft x 5ft. Just the matte vinyl on the hood alone reduces sun glare by like 60%, because now the sun glare I get is direct and not reflected off of my hood directly into my eyeballs. The car never came from the factory with that as an option, but its functionality is more important to me than how it makes the car look.
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