I wish the US would also move away from larger vehicles that have no reason to be as large - except for the sake of some imaginary cool points. We need more regulations on cars and sizes and their...
I wish the US would also move away from larger vehicles that have no reason to be as large - except for the sake of some imaginary cool points.
We need more regulations on cars and sizes and their safety, that's the only way to get the sizes back in check.
You probably implied this, but I want to make it explicit: we need to highlight and regulate cars’ safety to others. This would be market regulated, except that the insurance industry has very...
You probably implied this, but I want to make it explicit: we need to highlight and regulate cars’ safety to others.
This would be market regulated, except that the insurance industry has very successfully lobbied for reduced liability. Liability caps are set at what was barely apprin the 90s, and are now way to low to compensate people
For their actual losses, let alone more intangible losses. That would be almost stomach-able if healthcare costs, like those incurred in an injury, and disability support, for permanent loss of function, were not so abysmal and getting worse, or that cars are i creasi gly less safe to others.
The easiest and most palatable way to do this would probably be to enforce stricter fuel efficiency requirements on behalf of automakers. At a certain point, they can’t magically innovate their...
The easiest and most palatable way to do this would probably be to enforce stricter fuel efficiency requirements on behalf of automakers. At a certain point, they can’t magically innovate their way around the fact that a heavy, blocky SUV is worse at moving than a light and aerodynamic sedan.
Specifically, very tough fuel-independent energy efficiency requirements for manufacturers that can apply to both ICEs and EVs with either a progressive tax for violations or a tax credit for non-violations. This is a market-based approach, but not consumer-focused, which means there will be less uninformed public outrage and more uniform compliance. It has added environmental benefits. Ultimately, energy efficiency benefits consumers, even if they don’t realize it.
We could use more de-incentives for consumers too. Weight-based registration fees should scale at least quadratically, in proportion with the damage that heavier vehicles do to roadways and to public health. A (much) higher gas tax indirectly addresses the issue for ICEs but has significantly more collateral damage and is irrelevant for EVs, so it’s not my preference.
Strictly speaking, any country could just ban automakers from making vehicles above a certain weight, or classify all such vehicles in such a way that a typical driver’s license no longer covers them, or both. Direct action is certainly effective. But you don’t really want to inspire a bunch of reactionary headlines with this sort of thing. “Govt banning SUVs” is a bad look; “Govt forcing industry to create better and cheaper products” is something politicians can actually support.
Ironically, as I understand it, the biggest reason why every single vehicle on the market has inflated in size is because of fuel efficiency standards. It's why today's Honda Civic is the size of...
Ironically, as I understand it, the biggest reason why every single vehicle on the market has inflated in size is because of fuel efficiency standards. It's why today's Honda Civic is the size of a Honda Accord from 20 years ago (to say nothing of 30 years ago).
Essentially, the larger the footprint of the vehicle, the lower the fuel economy standards. The idea being that it's not fair to make a Ford F-150 (America's favorite vehicle) meet the same fuel efficiency standards as, say, a Toyota Yaris. The knock-on effect of this has been that there is now an incentive for car manufacturers to make things larger.
On top of that, there is the market demand for ever larger vehicles. Because most Americans live in places that are pretty roomy, there's not much of an automatic disincentive to have a bigger vehicle. Why get a two-row SUV when you could get a three-row SUV and have all that extra room in the back? Both will fit just fine in your typical suburban parking lot.
So we have a combination of both regulatory pressure and market pressure to have gigantic, stupid SUVs that are a threat to everything else on the road but themselves. The sedan is slowly dying in the American market. Wagons and vans are both considered ugly. So everything is a CUV/SUV. And they keep getting bigger.
But, wait, there's more. As we are transitioning from ICE vehicles to EVs, the weight of the vehicles is increasing massively, too. The most egregious example of which is the GMC Hummer EV with its a curb weight of 9,063 lb. The old Hummer H2 was no lightweight at 6,600 lb, but that's still a 36% increase in weight. (Another example from 20 years ago? A 2003 Ford Explorer had a curb weight of 4,159 to 4,381 lbs. Or even better: a 2003 Toyota Camry was 3,086 to 3,362 lbs.) Unfortunately, lithium ion batteries with good range are heavy. And as you mentioned, this is doing extra damage to the roads. (Which are not currently being adequately paid for by gas taxes.)
The root problem remains one that every transportation related topic eventually devolves into; anything we can do will have real world ramifications that will make life worse for people who are...
The root problem remains one that every transportation related topic eventually devolves into; anything we can do will have real world ramifications that will make life worse for people who are forced into the car market by the requirement to drive.
What I would like to see in the US are some very steep taxes put on cars made after a certain point, and the creation of a new class of small lightweight vehicles that are exempt from those taxes a la Japanese kei cars. And personally I'd also like to see that class have speed limitations on them as well.
To be honest, I'd kind of like the government to just put their foot down on car manufacturers for a number of things. The way that headlights are being designed now are dangerous the way they are being built. Cars are being made higher and higher, and that means that headlights are starting to get higher as well, and even if they aren't they're being made with color temperatures that make them appear brighter, and I even see cases where they are different distracting colors, or where the turn signals have distracting animations to them. We desperately need new regulations to keep us safe, and I'm rather pissed off how regulators have bent over backwards to allow for autonomous car testing but they can't be bothered to fix something simple like lights.
There have actually been some pretty amazing innovations in headlight technology that weren't legal in the United States until relatively recently. For example, Audi's laser headlights as...
There have actually been some pretty amazing innovations in headlight technology that weren't legal in the United States until relatively recently. For example, Audi's laser headlights as demonstrated here.
A 2022 regulation allowed the technology in the U.S. for the first time, but more than a year later, no vehicles with it are available for sale.
[...]
NHTSA is still evaluating the petitions for reconsideration. For now, automakers say they have no clear timeline of when they will be able to introduce the technology in the U.S. When they do, it is likely to cost far more than current systems.
Of course, as the article points out, that's not a complete panacea for this problem.
But glare is more a function of where headlights are aimed, rather than how bright they feel. And as taller vehicles like pickup trucks and large SUVs gain popularity, those headlights are more likely to shine into the eyes of drivers in lower mounted vehicles.
For Bullough, misalignment is the biggest issue. His research has found the majority of vehicles on the road have at least one mis-aimed headlight.
Coincidentally I saw a local TV news station doing a story about headlights recently and it pointed to this exact thing as a solution to it. I actually yelled at the TV because of how stupid that...
Coincidentally I saw a local TV news station doing a story about headlights recently and it pointed to this exact thing as a solution to it. I actually yelled at the TV because of how stupid that assertion was. The solution is not telling people to turn their headlights into DLP projectors with fallible computer vision systems. The solution is simple regulation and active enforcement. Only a handful of states even have laws that allow cops to issue fix-it tickets for misaligned headlamps, and that's only one of many other problems with car lights that cause safety issues.
Yeah, I was in a parking lot the other day, waiting for my wife and daughter. In the parking spot in front of me, some guy got into his gigantic truck and sat there with the engine running for a...
Yeah, I was in a parking lot the other day, waiting for my wife and daughter. In the parking spot in front of me, some guy got into his gigantic truck and sat there with the engine running for a few minutes. His blindingly bright headlights were right in my face sitting in my Toyota Camry. I don't think adaptive matrix headlights would be any help in that situation. Hell, I don't even know if misalignment was the problem either. His headlights are just way above my hood and pointing right in my face from not very far away.
Maybe that's an edge case that there is no real answer for (besides lowering hood heights of trucks, which I'm sure tons of American truck and SUV owners would object to). But it was a good reminder of this issue.
The answer is regulations with teeth. Hoods should also be lowered because they're a completely unnecessary safety risk as well, but there need to be more strict requirements for the placement and...
The answer is regulations with teeth. Hoods should also be lowered because they're a completely unnecessary safety risk as well, but there need to be more strict requirements for the placement and design of lights to prevent this from being a problem.
The mismatched heights of headlights and bumpers are an example of something that should be absurdly easy for regulators to fix. It’s not clear to me why there is no such mandate here. Entrenched...
The mismatched heights of headlights and bumpers are an example of something that should be absurdly easy for regulators to fix.
It’s not clear to me why there is no such mandate here. Entrenched auto manufacturer interests aside, surely the current administration can appreciate the issue.
Yeah, but truck and SUV owners would riot if you made them have bumpers that hung low enough to interact better with cars in an accident and sloped enough to be less of a risk to pedestrians....
Yeah, but truck and SUV owners would riot if you made them have bumpers that hung low enough to interact better with cars in an accident and sloped enough to be less of a risk to pedestrians. Their trucks and SUVs might look like minivans then!
On a similar note, France is also looking at providing a variable rate rebate incentive of up to €7,000 (~$7,600) for buying European-made EVs. That includes Tesla and other brands with factories...
Wish we’d say piss off to them in Aus cities. Way too big for our roads and it’s hard not to see their growing numbers and the increasingly chaotic weather as at least a bit related.
Wish we’d say piss off to them in Aus cities. Way too big for our roads and it’s hard not to see their growing numbers and the increasingly chaotic weather as at least a bit related.
I think a lot of people defend SUVs and similar vehicles because they overestimate how often they actually use the additional utility. Even in large countries like the US and Canada, the majority...
I think a lot of people defend SUVs and similar vehicles because they overestimate how often they actually use the additional utility.
Even in large countries like the US and Canada, the majority of people live in metropolitan areas and stick to highways on long trips. In these cases, it would make more sense to hire something large for the once every couple of months they really need it.
Of course there will always be outliers, and I have nothing against those who need the additional functionality often. Statistically speaking, however, people are moving towards urban centres rather than away from them.
Precisely. One thing I think that we need to realize as we talk about this issue is that a good amount of it is cultural - weather we like it or not - and as such we will offend people when we...
I think a lot of people defend SUVs and similar vehicles because they overestimate how often they actually use the additional utility.
Precisely.
One thing I think that we need to realize as we talk about this issue is that a good amount of it is cultural - weather we like it or not - and as such we will offend people when we suggest they make changes. Almost every time I suggest that most people should drive a small efficient vehicle I get pushback. I get people who feel like I'm calling them out for living in a rural area even when it's pretty clear I wasn't talking about them. But of course, the most common are people who imagine that it makes more sense for them because they want to pull trailers, haul cargo, go camping, or take a road trip. The minor inconvenience of renting a truck when they need it becomes an impassible wall in their minds.
I broadly agreed that most trucks are simply cultural and/or vanity, but to be fair dealing with renting a truck regularly would be a huge pain in the neck and add a significant time component to...
I broadly agreed that most trucks are simply cultural and/or vanity, but to be fair dealing with renting a truck regularly would be a huge pain in the neck and add a significant time component to using a truck. Particularly if you do tow a trailer regularly for a hobby and would like to be able to do that whenever you like (for instance, if you've got a small fishing boat that isn't suitable to transport on a car roof).
I'm in this sort of situation - I don't own a truck but live semi-rurally and situations come up regularly where it'd be really nice to just have a truck easily accessible so I can do whatever it is I want to do. As it is, I need to borrow or rent one, which means whatever it is that I'd like to do is delayed or doesn't get done. I refuse to replace my car until it's good and dead on principle but when that time comes, a compact truck is definitely something I'm considering (or midsize/full size if it's all-electric).
Don't take this personally, but you've managed to demonstrate what I meant about the kind of pushback I tend to get for expressing my opinion on this. If you are towing a trailer regularly then...
Don't take this personally, but you've managed to demonstrate what I meant about the kind of pushback I tend to get for expressing my opinion on this.
If you are towing a trailer regularly then you are part of the minority for whom owning a more heavy-duty vehicle would make sense. And it really is a minority - I just googled it and it looks like only about a quarter of pickup truck owners actually use their towing capabilities more than once a year.
I actually really love small compact trucks, but the problem with them in the US is that they don't really make them anymore. They've all become unnecessarily huge. The closest thing you can get today are "utility vehicles", which are sort of like industrial golf carts in that they are meant to be run at relatively low speeds and short distances, and naturally aren't sold at your average car dealership.
This is exactly what we do. My wife and I both drive old, debt-free Hondas, but we rent a minivan twice a year for our long road trips with the kids to visit my family. We've gotten the annual...
it would make more sense to hire something large for the once every couple of months they really need it.
This is exactly what we do. My wife and I both drive old, debt-free Hondas, but we rent a minivan twice a year for our long road trips with the kids to visit my family. We've gotten the annual mileage put on our cars way down.
We had to switch to an SUV for accessibility reasons - if I could do it over again I'd probably have gotten a mini van but we got a good deal on a CR-V. But my partner could no longer sit "down"...
We had to switch to an SUV for accessibility reasons - if I could do it over again I'd probably have gotten a mini van but we got a good deal on a CR-V. But my partner could no longer sit "down" into a car comfortably.
Now we have the CR-V and a wheelchair van so I feel like I'm the antithesis of my own goals when it comes to this sort of thing. I'll almost certainly pivot to a sedan - hybrid or electric if I can afford it - when I have to get a new car. But I'm also keeping this as long as I can
If you live in an urban environment, and a relatively small country that can be crossed in a few hours, like France, buying small vehicles makes sense. When you live in a country with 10 million...
If you live in an urban environment, and a relatively small country that can be crossed in a few hours, like France, buying small vehicles makes sense.
When you live in a country with 10 million sq kilometres and your road trips will take you on two lane highways that are rife with semi trucks, large vehicles and a random assortment of deer/moose/buffalo (yes, we have those too) then buying a very large vehicle absolutely makes sense. NO ONE wants to drive these roads in a subcompact - you might save a bit on gas but what's the point if a deer can take you out?
Part of the point is how absurd it is that someone should have to buy a big car to protect themselves from the other people who wanted to buy a big car. And deer related vehicle deaths are likely...
rife with semi trucks, large vehicles and a random assortment of deer/moose/buffalo
Part of the point is how absurd it is that someone should have to buy a big car to protect themselves from the other people who wanted to buy a big car. And deer related vehicle deaths are likely not statistically significant in the total number of vehicle deaths per year (a quick google shows about 200/year in the u.s.), especially when the number of pedestrian and cyclist deaths would likely drop more than that with smaller vehicles on the roads.
Obviously I dont live urban anymore (40 years of it was enough) but indeed animal collisions are a major reason for driving large vehicles when you live in the parts of the country where they are...
Obviously I dont live urban anymore (40 years of it was enough) but indeed animal collisions are a major reason for driving large vehicles when you live in the parts of the country where they are very common. Its not just the possibility of death, but the much more likely chance of major injury.
Have you heard of the moose test? Its the test for safety when colliding with a 400 kg animal that stands with the bulk of its weight 3 ft above the ground. Its pretty scary to think of 400 kg of animal flying into your face at 100 km/h.
Here's the collision test with a 'dummy' moose: https://youtu.be/4rRQTHbKbS8?t=94. Thats in a Volvo, one of the safest cars on the road. Imagine doing that in a less safety focussed compact car.
In Canada last year we had 1,630 moose collisions and 8,185 serious injuries. That's not a minor amount.
On a personal note, I pass deer or moose in the ditches or right beside the road at least a dozen times every winter. It gets very sketchy at night because by the time you see them you're very close and you hope they jump AWAY from the road and not toward it. I've had both happen.
This is a tangential and unrefined thought, but the prevalence of wildlife collisions in rural places should perhaps give us pause. Purchasing a large vehicle to have a better hypothetical risk of...
This is a tangential and unrefined thought, but the prevalence of wildlife collisions in rural places should perhaps give us pause.
Purchasing a large vehicle to have a better hypothetical risk of defeating a moose in single combat is a band-aid solution to roadway wildlife conflicts. It doesn’t prevent the collision, it just maybe (or maybe not) keeps the driver safer. In either case the car is totaled and the animal is probably dying—not sure about moose, but deer are done for at 60mph even if they hobble off.
When new railway projects get funded, local opposition often forces major wildlife crossings into the final design, perhaps along specific migratory routes or perhaps a bit more randomly. This seems to be done in bad faith at least sometimes, but is popular among environmentalists, whom the railways want to appease. Once in a while we hear about these on major highways, though it seems to me not so much. And virtually never on any smaller road.
I wonder if it would be a better use of resources for us to tackle the problem of wildlife conflicts by addressing the underlying cause—that travel routes for animals are blocked by our linear transportation infrastructure. Better fencing and more dedicated crossings could make a big difference to road safety and simultaneously strengthen the resiliency of the local ecosystem.
Its definitely a matter Ive considered. The biggest problem is the vastness of the area that would need to be mitigated. Even fencing along major roadways is not very effective. A deer can easily...
Its definitely a matter Ive considered. The biggest problem is the vastness of the area that would need to be mitigated. Even fencing along major roadways is not very effective. A deer can easily jump a 7 ft fence and to fence thousands of miles of highway and maintain that fencing isn't very feasible. Nor should it be as it would keep them from moving around to find new feeding and breeding grounds.
The best we seem to have come up with in my area is VERY wide cleared ditches between the forested areas and the highway. In many places thats a few hundred feet of cleared forest so drivers have the chance to see deer and slow down to prevent a collision. It comes down to the deer's last minute choice. Usually they jump away from the noise of a vehicle, and I honk while approaching, but occasionally they dodge right into it.
There are other devices that have been tried, like the animal alert whistles that used to be fairly common on semi trucks, but proved to be pretty ineffective. Now, sadly, the more common solution is to put bull bars, huge iron bars, in front of truck grills in the hopes that the deer/moose dont do much damage and more than likely killing the animal.
It really does bother me to see wildlife dead in the ditch. A lot. If there is any consolation at all, and its a small one, its that I often observe other predators get a free meal of carrion, a gift in the harshness of a cold winter when hunting is harder.
I actually listened to a podcast about this not too long ago. I can't remember what they advocated for, but I think it was a problem we didn't have a very good solution for short of getting rid of...
This is satire right? I mean, you hit the nail exactly on the head. To a lot of people that own these vehicles, the rationale is based on irrational fear.
This is satire right?
I mean, you hit the nail exactly on the head. To a lot of people that own these vehicles, the rationale is based on irrational fear.
France is not a “small country” nor largely metropolitan (it is mostly farms); and Europe is not a small continent, nor is it devoid of truck traffic or wildlife. I don’t know where...
Exemplary
France is not a “small country” nor largely metropolitan (it is mostly farms); and Europe is not a small continent, nor is it devoid of truck traffic or wildlife. I don’t know where Americans/Canadians get these ideas. Driving from Calais to Marseille takes ten hours: it’s like going from Calgary to Vancouver.
I recognize the experience behind your statement, and I think it describes a place like Alberta accurately. Even if I disagree with the necessity of owning an oversized vehicle there, I understand the appeal. It’s just strange to treat France like tiny Luxembourg, and then to suppose that it’s apt to compare a cross-continental trip in NA to a regional trip in EU. How often do people actually drive from Vancouver to Québec? Probably about as often as Europeans go from Lisbon to Moscow, or from Athens to Edinburgh.
“North America is too big for us to have small cars” would be a particularly strange thing to say to the Finnish, or the Russians, whose countries are geographically similar to much of western NA and not at all dense like the Low Countries, but who manage to get by just fine with far smaller vehicles on average.
The overall observation would be more pertinent if it were true that the only North Americans buying large vehicles were the ones who live in rural areas and frequently take 500-mile road trips. But most NA residents don’t have this high-VMT use-case, and most people don’t live in relatively rural areas. Vehicle size is increasing almost everywhere. They are driving larger cars in New York: every taxi now is an SUV. Where are the moose in Manhattan? In the overwhelming majority of cases, the problem of larger vehicles derives from two tendencies of individuals:
Social feelings of competition and ego—a desire to have a larger, higher, powerful, more dominant, and more luxurious vehicle than other drivers. Case in point: the smugness of an SUV driver in “winning” a lane merge over a sedan.
A perception that SUVs are “safer” for the driver in case of a collision than sedans, which is reflected in the literature in the narrow definition of driver safety; but they just transfer the risk of death to other people.
The former is a personal issue and the latter one (a quite reasonable concern as an individual or parent) ought to be addressed by infrastructure and policy. The article talks much about Paris, as Anglophone outlets are wont to do, but France and the European Union have some greater collective, structural de-incentives not to drive large cars too, including somewhat higher weight-based registration fees and a general practice of not widening roads and parking spaces to accommodate pointlessly oversized vehicles. As the article says, more regulations are still needed. This way, individuals are not asked to make morally uncomfortable and unavoidably self-centered judgement calls on who lives and who dies (whether or not that’s how they see it); the issue may be addressed systemically. Otherwise, as we see now in North America, the tragedy of the commons takes hold and everyone becomes more unsafe.
I will stand by my first statement as France at 550,000 sq km is less than 6% the size of Canada and therefore is indeed a relatively small country. And yes most of the people I know DO drive huge...
I will stand by my first statement as France at 550,000 sq km is less than 6% the size of Canada and therefore is indeed a relatively small country.
And yes most of the people I know DO drive huge distances to visit friends and family. Like a lot of people our family has moved great distances for jobs. Or marriage. Personally my family is spread from Vancouver (sister) to Toronto (son in law) a distance of 4500 km or so. Paris to Marseille is only 800 km - thats how far I drive to get to my rental house without even leaving my home province, so yes, driving in France is similar to not leaving your home province, but its not like living in Canada.
Granted I live rurally so Im not a typical urban driver anymore, but if you're only going to buy one car, you're not going to be buying a compact car even if you only do a big road trip a couple of times a year. There's very little advantage (mostly gas mileage) and ton of disadvantages:
Most SUVs have 4 wheel drive, a definite advantage in winter snow and in any gravel road during a rain. In a foot deep dump of snow, its a huge advantage for traction and stability.
Lots of room to haul. We no longer have kids at home, but two dogs over 80 lbs each. Add in their beds, food, plus our luggage and you'd be hard pressed to enjoy a road trip in a Honda Civic.
Flexibility/Utility. Yes, if you're urban you likely won't be plowing a driveway. I do. With my SUV. I also haul a car trailer, a trailer with garbage for the dump and a boat. NOT things you can do with a compact car. I'd say most of my neighbors use their SUV or trucks to haul too.
Safety. Between a higher seating position, the 4WD, and the reality that in an accident a heavier vehicle is more likely to drive the other vehicle out of the way rather than be crushed in front of it thanks to good ol' inertia, that's what I want my family to be in. Its not "literature", it's just science.
Its a truck. It gets used as a truck. Ive hauled everything from firewood to large saws and air compressors in the back. Not very possible in a Civic.
So I know Im taking this on a personal level but your idea that we drive an SUV for "social competition" or smugness is pretty prejudicial. Its called a Sport UTILITY Vehicle for a reason - it's got great utility. Its merely the 'station wagon' of this decade. And if you're old enough you'll recall that station wagons were ubiquitous back in the day, the vehicle of choice for anyone with a family, and a lot of businesses, because of their utility.
Even if you live in Manhattan, there are less, but still many great reasons to own an SUV - that term covers everything from a fairly small vehicle like a Honda CR-V, to the massive Cadillac Escalade, so it would likely be more useful to have the CR-V, but there are lots of choices for those who dont want to drive a behemoth: Toyota RAV4 Prime, Kia Sportage or a Hyundai Tucson, all of which get over 55 km on electric only before switching to their gas engine. Take your pick. It's still an SUV.
I've lived the rural/urban/suburban life too....and even coming from a world where everything you say about large animals is 100% true, the absolute largest (by size and quantity) vehicles I see...
I've lived the rural/urban/suburban life too....and even coming from a world where everything you say about large animals is 100% true, the absolute largest (by size and quantity) vehicles I see being driven are wealthy soccer moms toting 1-2 children between school and after-school activities for a distance of less than 10 miles at approximately 10mpg (because stop and go traffic on short distances is way less than the EPA rating). Generally while never putting down their cellphones. I'd have a more charitable interpretation if these vehicles were older...but they're also usually less than 2 years old.
Large daily-driver vehicles have their place, you'll get no arguement from me there.....but anywhere with a population density over 1,500/sqmi is probably not it. And for most of America (and I daresay the world), they should really be highly-specialized items, possibly requiring more stringent permitting, not so much the default.
We don't let average people drive Mac Trucks without extra training...I'm starting to think many SUVs are large enough we should require it.
That's a really bad comparison. Most of Canada is uninhabited by humans. A much more fair comparison would be the roads. Canada has about 1.1M kilometers of roads In the meanwhile, France has...
I will stand by my first statement as France at 550,000 sq km is less than 6% the size of Canada and therefore is indeed a relatively small country.
That's a really bad comparison. Most of Canada is uninhabited by humans. A much more fair comparison would be the roads. Canada has about 1.1M kilometers of roads In the meanwhile, France has about... 1.1M kilometers of roads. But actually, the statistics for canada use two-lane equivalents, so it looks like France may actually have more.
Except that you cant get in your vehicle and travel for 3 days to get to grandma's house unless you like driving in circles :) You most definitely can do that in Canada. It's not the amount of...
Except that you cant get in your vehicle and travel for 3 days to get to grandma's house unless you like driving in circles :) You most definitely can do that in Canada.
It's not the amount of road, its the vast distance between destinations.
I think my point and that of Akir was more that comparing travel within France to travel within and without Alberta is apples to oranges. The Schengen Area and other travel agreements mean many...
I think my point and that of Akir was more that comparing travel within France to travel within and without Alberta is apples to oranges.
The Schengen Area and other travel agreements mean many Europeans live abroad. So your example of traveling hundreds of miles to see a family member who moved across the country is not really different than my English friend driving to Sicily to see his expatriated niece. (Much of that drive is through France.)
For language reasons, I think it’s fair to say that geographic diaspora is more pronounced in the US or Canada than it is in Europe—if you speak French, you’re more likely to go somewhere with other French speakers than not. But my impression is that these cases are still relatively similar. The data is clear that most trips in North America are short.
Half of Canada lives in a metropolitan region comparable in size and density to Paris. Something like 2/3rds of the population lives within the 10 biggest metropolitan areas of the country. Only...
Half of Canada lives in a metropolitan region comparable in size and density to Paris.
Something like 2/3rds of the population lives within the 10 biggest metropolitan areas of the country. Only like 20% of the population even lives in a rural area, and most of them probably live either close enough to their relatives to drive.
We all have to stop pretending this country is a giant rural plain devoid of density. It's a bunch of dense cities clustered together in like 3 or 4 major zones.
What I wished I had phrased more articulately is not that I am commenting on SUVs as a specific class but largeness as a quality of all vehicle classes becoming excessively desirable. Even sedans...
What I wished I had phrased more articulately is not that I am commenting on SUVs as a specific class but largeness as a quality of all vehicle classes becoming excessively desirable. Even sedans have gotten a bit bigger over time. SUVs are just low-hanging fruit.
I think you are significantly overestimating the number of trips over 500 miles (arbitrary number) that Canadians actually take per year. I don’t have a dataset offhand, but the US Bureau of Transportation Statistics has a nice breakdown of trips by distance in different American municipalities. Even in states similar to Alberta, like Montana, a massive road trip is three orders of magnitude less frequent than trips under a mile. And I disagree with the assertion that road trips don’t work in compact vehicles.
I would remark that transportation needs today are not markedly different than 30 years ago—a time when it was unusual for everyone to have such large cars. In general, this is a matter of preference (one might say luxury) and not need. The people who need (I use this term loosely) to haul a boat around today had a large-ish vehicle for that 30 years ago too. They’re not the variable that’s changed.
This is a case where people’s perceptions/expectations inform their car purchases, not their actual requirements. In the US, and I assume in Canada, including in areas that are not rural, car buyers make decisions not rationally or statistically—based on what they would realistically use their vehicle for—but what they might want to use their vehicle for in extraordinary hypothetical circumstances (EV range anxiety exemplifies this tendency). The thought process is fundamentally irrational, unnecessary, and inefficient. Because their impulses are not checked by safety regulations on, say, vehicle weight, we end up with a lot of overbuying. People on the road do not know how to control large vehicles and never have (most never will).
There is ultimately a significant social cost to this, for example in terms of traffic fatalities caused by large SUVs and pickup trucks.
So I know Im taking this on a personal level but your idea that we drive an SUV for "social competition" or smugness is pretty prejudicial. It’s called a Sport UTILITY Vehicle for a reason - it's got great utility.
I think you, personally, are an extraordinary edge case in every sense of the term. I mean that not unkindly. But the extent to which you use vehicles for utilitarian purposes is aberrant.
Virtually all urban and suburban (82% of the population) SUV/light truck owners purchase their vehicle partially for social status. They’re big, they’re spacious, they’re expensive, and they’re something to show off. The amount of hauling, plowing, and loading that they do with it is virtually zero. In most cases it is actually zero.
There is absolutely an element of superiority in driving a large vehicle. The psychology of the purchase is stamped on its physical design and endlessly reiterated in marketing materials. This is most ostentatiously demonstrated in the uselessly large pickup trucks that have proliferated continent-wide.
One is being dishonest with themselves if they don’t recognize how much their attitude toward shared road space changes across different vehicle classes. Some of it may be subconscious. The respect they deign to give other drivers is a direct function of the relative disparity of the size of their vehicles.
It is telling to sit, as a passenger, and watch how a driver who perceives themselves to be in a rush feels entitled to treat the space around smaller vehicles as their own. This includes people who are otherwise typical and unaggressive drivers—actually this category is the most striking. Everyone has such moments; a gigantic vehicle simply incentivizes worse behavior.
In few cases is anyone enlightened enough to consistently escape the power dynamic that inevitably manifests on the road. That category is comprised of 1) demigods, and 2) those more fearful of hurting others than being hurt. I know a lot of people who think they are great drivers, good drivers, observant drivers, calm drivers, respectful drivers: the key word is think. I am not an exception.
But people got along in the U.S. and Canada just fine without big trucks and SUVs until the 1990s. What changed? My guess is it’s multifactoral: Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) and crash...
But people got along in the U.S. and Canada just fine without big trucks and SUVs until the 1990s. What changed? My guess is it’s multifactoral:
Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) and crash regulations are less stringent for light trucks, which as a category isn’t strongly defined (which allowed for more crossovers).
SUVs and trucks got nicer, look at an F-150 from the 60s versus one today. The older models are utilitarian and rough to ride. New ones are plush and comfy.
Poorer road quality: with more and more roads, and a less than adequate funding base, roads go longer between patches and repaving, with more divets and potholes.
Coolness: Trucks and SUVs were cooler than the minivans and wagons they replaced.
Fuel economy: ironically, the improvements in engine tech mean that your choice isn’t a 25 mpg sedan or a 10 mpg body-on-frame SUV, it’s between a 35 mpg sedan and a 30 mpg crossover.
Ride/entry-height: easier to get in and out over, easier to see at medium/long distances. Obviously doesn’t apply to stupidly lifted ones.
Perceived/actual safety: trucks have more volume around occupants (more crumple zones), they feel more substantial (perceived).
:) rural Nova Scotian here driving an "intermediate" car that we bought back when we lived in the city. I do wish I have more trunk room for longer dimensional lumber and farm things, but it...
:) rural Nova Scotian here driving an "intermediate" car that we bought back when we lived in the city. I do wish I have more trunk room for longer dimensional lumber and farm things, but it doesn't make sense environmentally to stop driving the small car. We live in the thick of deer country and moose are a real thing on the side of the road. 95%+ of my driving are on 100km/hr highways.
My extended family that live and drive exclusively in the heart of the city had always driven minivans and SUVs though. No moose.
I've hit a deer once, and fortunately it bounced up and hit the roof instead of going directly into the windshield. Not sure if it killed the deer as far as we could tell (it was at night) but...
I've hit a deer once, and fortunately it bounced up and hit the roof instead of going directly into the windshield. Not sure if it killed the deer as far as we could tell (it was at night) but scared the bejeezus out of my wife and kids. I have an acquaintance who crested a hill and hit a stray cow of all things. It DID go directly into his face. His life hung in the balance for days and then he spent months and months in hospital and in rehab. Large animals on the road are no minor matter.
My wife drives past moose and deer regularly on her way to work in the early morning in winter. You have to always be scanning the ditch. She's in a mid size SUV and we have a small EV she COULD be driving, but given the options of "saving the world" and saving my wife, I'm pretty happy she prefers the SUV.
it's pretty amazing how much we take for granted being on the road: traveling at ludicrous velocity "in the wild", as it were, where anything could come at us (or rather, mostly, us at them). It's...
it's pretty amazing how much we take for granted being on the road: traveling at ludicrous velocity "in the wild", as it were, where anything could come at us (or rather, mostly, us at them). It's understandable human emotion for folks to choose the safest thing they can buy. And you know, my aforementioned family with no deer/moose risk also say the same thing about being in a city SUV.
I mean the guys not completely wrong but it’s hard to take him seriously when this is in his closing statement lmao:
I mean the guys not completely wrong but it’s hard to take him seriously when this is in his closing statement lmao:
The next time I go back to the US, I wouldn’t be surprised to find someone driving an actual tank down the street, probably on their way to Krispy Kreme.
I'm gonna fact check, because I feel this way too. All measurements in ft. Vehicle Length Width Height 2000 Honda Civic 14.59 5.59 4.50 2024 Ford Expedition Max 18.49 6.67 6.4 Bradley tank 21.5 12...
I'm gonna fact check, because I feel this way too. All measurements in ft.
So yes, it's untrue that it's the size of a Bradley tank. But the 2024 Ford Expedition is larger than one of the most influential tanks in history. It would not be unreasonable to class modern SUVs as "Light Tanks."
Wow! I didn't realize the Expedition Max was SO big. The 2024 Hummer is 18.06' long, 7.39' wide, and 6.58' tall. I would have put money down that the Hummer is bigger.
Wow! I didn't realize the Expedition Max was SO big. The 2024 Hummer is 18.06' long, 7.39' wide, and 6.58' tall. I would have put money down that the Hummer is bigger.
I think to some degree those L/W/H are dictated by infrastructure standards. Length and width are defined by parking space dimensions, height is probably parking garage height. It's still pretty...
I think to some degree those L/W/H are dictated by infrastructure standards. Length and width are defined by parking space dimensions, height is probably parking garage height. It's still pretty absurd we're letting the maximums of our infrastructure define build dimensions rather than utility, but we're a pretty absurd country
Edit: Also, I hope it's not lost that we're comparing vehicles that are supposed to be designed for transport to ones designed for war. One of. these should be big enough to withstand purposeful attach from explosives, the other picks up groceries.
Fair enough. Besides, a more apt comparison would be an MRAP vs American SUV. I'm sure all of them look gigantic on French streets either way. Thanks for the numbers!
Fair enough. Besides, a more apt comparison would be an MRAP vs American SUV. I'm sure all of them look gigantic on French streets either way. Thanks for the numbers!
My local police station has an honest-to-god, all-black Hum-Vee with "God We Trust" and a blacked-out American flag on it. The only thing missing is the machine gun mounted to the top.
My local police station has an honest-to-god, all-black Hum-Vee with "God We Trust" and a blacked-out American flag on it.
The only thing missing is the machine gun mounted to the top.
I mean, the DoD gives away M998s for a song and once you've got it you get to deal with the maintenance which means making it a display piece is probably the cheapest option. They probably pay out...
I mean, the DoD gives away M998s for a song and once you've got it you get to deal with the maintenance which means making it a display piece is probably the cheapest option.
They probably pay out the ass for a Bearcat for the SWAT team either way.
Personally I have problem with anyone who uses "hellscape" seriously, bonus points for "capitalist hellscape". Big SUVs do seem really stupid and impractical for pretty much any european city though.
Personally I have problem with anyone who uses "hellscape" seriously, bonus points for "capitalist hellscape".
Big SUVs do seem really stupid and impractical for pretty much any european city though.
It has been said that science is the art of seeing similarities in things that, at first glance, seem very different; while art is seeing the differences in things that, at first glance, seem the...
It has been said that science is the art of seeing similarities in things that, at first glance, seem very different; while art is seeing the differences in things that, at first glance, seem the same.
This desperately click-baity article lacks the objectivity of science and the nuanced scrutiny of art. The only real content of the article is buried in the second to last paragraph, and amounts to the headline, "Paris leadership proposes higher parking fees for larger vehicles." But this inartful piece and its writer can't stand on the merits of what's actually happening in Europe, so better * * checks notes * * insult Americans for rage clicks.
I suppose my point is that this piece is inartful in its inability to appreciate that Europe, much less Paris, is not America and that drivers have different patterns of life that necessitate different vehicle aspirations (road trips, suburbs, vast interior, culture). At the same time the piece is unscientific in randomly selecting a ten year rise in vehicle fatalities and, without analysis or evidence, attributing causality to large vehicles sizes.
A swing and a miss. There's room for good discussion here, but the source material is tainted.
Modern cars are still considerable bigger than the cars in the 70s and 80s. If you ever see cars from that period next to modern cars you'll realize how ridiculously big modern SUVs have gotten.
It's funny but from my point of view growing up with 70s - 80s American vehicles the current ones really don't seem huge to me
Modern cars are still considerable bigger than the cars in the 70s and 80s. If you ever see cars from that period next to modern cars you'll realize how ridiculously big modern SUVs have gotten.
I mean yes, of course modern cars are "bigger," sit higher, and are physically taller. Also, I did post this article and thought that this discussion would probably come up, so I want to touch on...
I mean yes, of course modern cars are "bigger," sit higher, and are physically taller. Also, I did post this article and thought that this discussion would probably come up, so I want to touch on what I think the parent post is probably getting at, which is that cars from the 70s and 80s (and I'll include the 60s in this too) could, but didn't always, have enormous width and length dimensions and displacements that dwarf modern cars' (up to 9.2L). Sedans got substantially smaller from the 80s onward, in part due to industry changes, and in part due to legislative changes impacting the industry. Whether we remember those old land yachts or not, and in what time period (people holding onto their huge cars due to an economic downturn, for instance) plays a role in how big we perceive other vehicles to be -- trucks got smaller for a while too. But a lot of this comes down to what we remember and how we remember it.
So just to play devil's advocate a little/remind people that some of the old cars really were enormous: Back in the 70s and 80s some cars had enormous turning circles. They physically felt large and cumbersome. Modern cars are designed, and have more modern equipment, allowing for much tighter radii -- including modern SUVs. SUVs have better handling, acceleration, and occupant safety than the "land yachts" that used to be more common on American roads. The sub-compact and compact classes of SUVs are still on the heavier side, but their lengths and wheelbases are substantially smaller than what early SUVs (and station wagons from that era) were. That said, SUV EVs are very heavy, even when compared to their ICE counterparts (see the Chevy Blazer models listed below).
On the point of land yachts versus today's SUVs, the Ford Expedition Max (2018 onwards) has almost identical length and width as a 1970s Chevy Caprice or a Chrysler New Yorker. The modern Ford Explorer is shorter, narrower, and has a shorter wheelbase than a Chevy Impala from 1977-1985. Chevy sold about 1.3 million Impalas in that 9 year period. Wiki doesn't list the weights of a lot of these vehicles, but on their land yacht page they explain that the heaviest non-limosine cars could weigh up to 5,712 lb (2,591 kg), but SUVs over their history have been extremely heavy and definitely there are heavier examples (the platform for the Hummer EV and its compatriots will result in vehicles with kerb weights of 9,000 lbs+ (4,090 kg+).
Land Yachts vs Ford SUVs:
Make/Model
Length
Wheelbase
Width
Weight
Ford Bronco II (1984-1990)
158.3-161.9 in (4.0-4.1 m)
94.0 in (2.4 m)
68.0 in (1.7 m)
x
Ford Explorer (1991-1994)
174.5-184.3 in (4.4-4.7 m)
102.1-111.9 in (2.6 m)
70.2 in (1.8 m)
x
Ford Explorer (2020-)
198.8 in (5.0 m)
119.1 in (3.0 m)
78.9 in (2.0 m)
4,345–4,727 lb (1,971–2,144 kg)
Ford Expedition (1997-2002)
204.6 in (5.2 m)
119.0 in (3.0 m)
78.6 in (2.0 m)
x
Ford Expedition Max (2020-)
221.9 in (5.6 m)
131.6 in (3.3 m)
79.9 in (2.0 m)
≥ 5,368 pounds (2,435 kg)
Lincoln Town Car (1981-89)
219.2 in (5.6 m)
117.3 in (3.0 m)
78.1 in (2.0 m)
3,993-4,120 lbs (1,811-1,869 kg)
Chevy Caprice (1971-76)
219.9-222.9 in (5.6-5.7 m)
121.5 in (3.1 m)
79.5 in (2.0 m)
4321 lbs (1960 kg)
Chevy Impala (1977-85)
212.1 in (5.4 m)
116 in (2.9 m)
75.5 in (1.9 m)
3670 lbs (1665 kg)
Chrysler New Yorker (1974-81)
221.5-232.7 in (5.6-5.9 m)
118.5-124.0 in (3.0-3.1 m)
77.1-79.5 in (1.9-2.0 m)
4,832 lb (2,192 kg)
Chrysler New Yorker (mid-80s)
187.2 in (4.7 m)
103.3 in (2.6 m)
68.0 in (1.7 m)
2745 lbs (1,245 kg)
Other SUV comparisons:
Make/Model
Length
Wheelbase
Width
Weight
BMW X5 (mid-size, 2019-)
193.8-199.2 in (4.9-5.0 m)
117.1-122.2 in (2.9-3.1 m)
78.9 in (2.0 m)
4,540–5,040 lb (2,060–2,286 kg)
BMW X1 (subcompact, 2022-)
177.2-181.7 in (4.5-4.6 m)
106.0-110.3 in (2.7-2.8 m)
72.6 in (1.8 m)
3,307–3,726 lb (1,500–1,690 kg)
Chevy Equinox (Gen 3)
183.1 in (4.7 m)
107.3 in (2.7 m)
72.6 in (1.8 m)
x
Chevy Blazer (Modern)
191.4-196.8 in (4.9-5.0 m)
112.7 in (2,863 mm)
76.7-76.9 in (1.9-1.9 m)
3,810-4,409 lb (1,728-2,000 kg)
Chevy Blazer (EV)
192.2 in (4,882 mm)
121.8 in (3,094 mm)
78.0 in (2.0 m)
5,337 lb (2,421 kg)
*Quick Note: Did a lot of generous rounding of units originally in millimeters to meters. But they're close.
I notice that you don't include height in your measurement comparisons. Was this deliberate? Vehicle height is one of the most unsafe parts of modern SUVs.
I notice that you don't include height in your measurement comparisons. Was this deliberate? Vehicle height is one of the most unsafe parts of modern SUVs.
Yeah, I omitted it because it's obvious that an SUV is going to be taller than a sedan from the 60s through some models in the 80s. And the hood is obviously higher. No one actually "remembers"...
Yeah, I omitted it because it's obvious that an SUV is going to be taller than a sedan from the 60s through some models in the 80s. And the hood is obviously higher. No one actually "remembers" sedans being taller than modern or 90s SUVs. I wasn't addressing anything about safety here, just that some people do, correctly, remember that cars they'd have seen on the roads in the 70s were larger than a modern Ford Explorer by length, wheelbase, and width in cases such as the Chevy Caprice. And in the case of the Caprice the vehicle weighed about as much as a modern Explorer. So indeed they were large by every metric except height.
As to safety, there are a lot of other discussions on the topic so I didn't want to go in that direction again, but I do want to point out that people back then sometimes said that bigger cars were safer (for the occupant). This was a prevalent comment in my family and the reason some of my relatives stuck with big American cars. But they're probably not actually safer and I think is probably not inherently true of SUVs -- it's the modern mandated/sought-after advancements like seat-belts, crash zones/crumple zones, and things like that that have improved occupant safety. And for various reasons some people are more interested in occupant safety than pedestrian safety when it comes to vehicle ownership in cities, so that's an issue that needs to be addressed. But it's not just a matter of making the car safer for pedestrians (lowering the hood), but also mandating safety features like pedestrian-detection and automatic breaking.
SUVs are nice when you have a family, but don't need as much space as a minivan (like 1 or 2 kids), but otherwise, I understand where you're coming from.
SUVs are nice when you have a family, but don't need as much space as a minivan (like 1 or 2 kids), but otherwise, I understand where you're coming from.
A wagon would be better for that, buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut. No dice in the US. (I'm excessively salty my Mazda option was a CX-5 instead of a Mazda 6 wagon, tbh)
A wagon would be better for that, buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut. No dice in the US.
(I'm excessively salty my Mazda option was a CX-5 instead of a Mazda 6 wagon, tbh)
I'm currently rocking a Subaru Outback, which is about the closest thing in an affordable price range anymore. In order to find anything hybrid with the legroom needed, I'd have to add $10k or...
I'm currently rocking a Subaru Outback, which is about the closest thing in an affordable price range anymore. In order to find anything hybrid with the legroom needed, I'd have to add $10k or more to the price. It's really hard to find something that is comfortable for a 6'3" driver, with a backseat comfortable for children whom will also probably be 6' before the car is sold.
The best review before I bought one "It's a big car when you need it to be one, and a small car when you need it to be one.
It has passed both the "Haul used furniture home" test and the "parallel park in South Philadelphia" test since. I'm a believer. Minivan and most SUVs fail that second test. The RAV4 Hybrid I had passed the second, but not the first.
One thing I have noticed about car design is that cars don't actually need to be tall to acomodate tall people, they just need to be designed for it in regards to legroom and seat design. My...
One thing I have noticed about car design is that cars don't actually need to be tall to acomodate tall people, they just need to be designed for it in regards to legroom and seat design.
My husband is over 6' tall. He does not even remotely fit in the Toyota bz4x. But he fits perfectly well into my Bolt EV in spite of the fact that the Bolt is slightly smaller!
Oh 100%. I was perfectly content driving in a Saturn Ion for many years, till I found out GM nearly killed me at least. The problem boils down to wanting both comfort for tall driver, comfort for...
Oh 100%. I was perfectly content driving in a Saturn Ion for many years, till I found out GM nearly killed me at least. The problem boils down to wanting both comfort for tall driver, comfort for tall back passengers, and large cargo space in back. It very much is a "pick two" situation unless the car gets larger, though preferably longer than taller. The Toyota Scion was actually really great for the driver/passenger combo, sad to see that one gone. And sadly I need the extra cargo space if I want to remain a single-car household, which would be preferrable as long as possible. The Outback will hold me well many years, and will let the second car be a tinier EV if/when it becomes essential to have one.
Tall cars freak me out. The rollover risk with these new vehicles is absurd.
That's not really true, though. There are electric cars that are over 100 years old at this point. Electric motors are not complex, and the rest of the car is practically a solved problem. The...
That's not really true, though. There are electric cars that are over 100 years old at this point. Electric motors are not complex, and the rest of the car is practically a solved problem. The batteries are the thing that have had big innovations, and those are the big expense of an EV, but it stands to reason that a smaller more efficient car wouldn't need as high a capacity so it would cost less.
Besides that there are many companies making small efficient EVs throughout Europe and Asia already, so it's not like it's a difficult ask.
The fact that there were electric cars over a hundred years ago is completely irrelevant to how long the manufacturing and supply chains have been around for modern cars. I also don't see why...
The fact that there were electric cars over a hundred years ago is completely irrelevant to how long the manufacturing and supply chains have been around for modern cars.
I also don't see why there would be many small EVs when there aren't any small IC cars.
How alien do you think EVs are? Something like 95% of the parts going into any given EV outside of Tesla is going to be something shared with ICE cars. The lack of small cars being a problem is...
How alien do you think EVs are? Something like 95% of the parts going into any given EV outside of Tesla is going to be something shared with ICE cars.
The lack of small cars being a problem is exactly what this topic thread is about. And globally, yes, there are small ICE car markets.
Am I missing something in this thread? Two of the best selling makes of cars decades ago were the Fiat 500 and the Mini Cooper. Two of the best selling makes of cars today globally are the Fiat...
when there aren't any small IC cars.
Am I missing something in this thread? Two of the best selling makes of cars decades ago were the Fiat 500 and the Mini Cooper. Two of the best selling makes of cars today globally are the Fiat 500 and the Mini. Do those not count as small?
The Civic Hatchback is one of the few still standing, though it's more of a fastback. So it doesn't have the same vertical rear window, but once you lift the hatch it's otherwise the same.
The Civic Hatchback is one of the few still standing, though it's more of a fastback. So it doesn't have the same vertical rear window, but once you lift the hatch it's otherwise the same.
Honestly a van kicks an SUVs ass even in that regard. I have two kids, as well as an older SUV that is my project car. The lower load height, plus sliding doors, plus optional third row or storage...
Honestly a van kicks an SUVs ass even in that regard. I have two kids, as well as an older SUV that is my project car. The lower load height, plus sliding doors, plus optional third row or storage space. Not to mention, even with the third row, the van has superior storage in the back already, plus again gets better mileage, as well as being cheaper to run based on smaller, lighter, longer lasting tires, better handling, more comfortable ride. The van wins every time. And there's not even a big discrepancy in make or year here, I'm talking about a 98 Grand Cherokee and an 04 Dodge Grand Caravan.
The only thing my SUV can do that my van can't is have a nice V8 burble and do the off road trails and more remote camping I want to do. For road going, which is 99% of my life? No contest.
I wish the US would also move away from larger vehicles that have no reason to be as large - except for the sake of some imaginary cool points.
We need more regulations on cars and sizes and their safety, that's the only way to get the sizes back in check.
You probably implied this, but I want to make it explicit: we need to highlight and regulate cars’ safety to others.
This would be market regulated, except that the insurance industry has very successfully lobbied for reduced liability. Liability caps are set at what was barely apprin the 90s, and are now way to low to compensate people
For their actual losses, let alone more intangible losses. That would be almost stomach-able if healthcare costs, like those incurred in an injury, and disability support, for permanent loss of function, were not so abysmal and getting worse, or that cars are i creasi gly less safe to others.
Absolutely! This is such a complex and multi-faceted issue that it will take a lot of work to get it fixed.
The easiest and most palatable way to do this would probably be to enforce stricter fuel efficiency requirements on behalf of automakers. At a certain point, they can’t magically innovate their way around the fact that a heavy, blocky SUV is worse at moving than a light and aerodynamic sedan.
Specifically, very tough fuel-independent energy efficiency requirements for manufacturers that can apply to both ICEs and EVs with either a progressive tax for violations or a tax credit for non-violations. This is a market-based approach, but not consumer-focused, which means there will be less uninformed public outrage and more uniform compliance. It has added environmental benefits. Ultimately, energy efficiency benefits consumers, even if they don’t realize it.
We could use more de-incentives for consumers too. Weight-based registration fees should scale at least quadratically, in proportion with the damage that heavier vehicles do to roadways and to public health. A (much) higher gas tax indirectly addresses the issue for ICEs but has significantly more collateral damage and is irrelevant for EVs, so it’s not my preference.
Strictly speaking, any country could just ban automakers from making vehicles above a certain weight, or classify all such vehicles in such a way that a typical driver’s license no longer covers them, or both. Direct action is certainly effective. But you don’t really want to inspire a bunch of reactionary headlines with this sort of thing. “Govt banning SUVs” is a bad look; “Govt forcing industry to create better and cheaper products” is something politicians can actually support.
Ironically, as I understand it, the biggest reason why every single vehicle on the market has inflated in size is because of fuel efficiency standards. It's why today's Honda Civic is the size of a Honda Accord from 20 years ago (to say nothing of 30 years ago).
Essentially, the larger the footprint of the vehicle, the lower the fuel economy standards. The idea being that it's not fair to make a Ford F-150 (America's favorite vehicle) meet the same fuel efficiency standards as, say, a Toyota Yaris. The knock-on effect of this has been that there is now an incentive for car manufacturers to make things larger.
On top of that, there is the market demand for ever larger vehicles. Because most Americans live in places that are pretty roomy, there's not much of an automatic disincentive to have a bigger vehicle. Why get a two-row SUV when you could get a three-row SUV and have all that extra room in the back? Both will fit just fine in your typical suburban parking lot.
So we have a combination of both regulatory pressure and market pressure to have gigantic, stupid SUVs that are a threat to everything else on the road but themselves. The sedan is slowly dying in the American market. Wagons and vans are both considered ugly. So everything is a CUV/SUV. And they keep getting bigger.
But, wait, there's more. As we are transitioning from ICE vehicles to EVs, the weight of the vehicles is increasing massively, too. The most egregious example of which is the GMC Hummer EV with its a curb weight of 9,063 lb. The old Hummer H2 was no lightweight at 6,600 lb, but that's still a 36% increase in weight. (Another example from 20 years ago? A 2003 Ford Explorer had a curb weight of 4,159 to 4,381 lbs. Or even better: a 2003 Toyota Camry was 3,086 to 3,362 lbs.) Unfortunately, lithium ion batteries with good range are heavy. And as you mentioned, this is doing extra damage to the roads. (Which are not currently being adequately paid for by gas taxes.)
The root problem remains one that every transportation related topic eventually devolves into; anything we can do will have real world ramifications that will make life worse for people who are forced into the car market by the requirement to drive.
What I would like to see in the US are some very steep taxes put on cars made after a certain point, and the creation of a new class of small lightweight vehicles that are exempt from those taxes a la Japanese kei cars. And personally I'd also like to see that class have speed limitations on them as well.
To be honest, I'd kind of like the government to just put their foot down on car manufacturers for a number of things. The way that headlights are being designed now are dangerous the way they are being built. Cars are being made higher and higher, and that means that headlights are starting to get higher as well, and even if they aren't they're being made with color temperatures that make them appear brighter, and I even see cases where they are different distracting colors, or where the turn signals have distracting animations to them. We desperately need new regulations to keep us safe, and I'm rather pissed off how regulators have bent over backwards to allow for autonomous car testing but they can't be bothered to fix something simple like lights.
There have actually been some pretty amazing innovations in headlight technology that weren't legal in the United States until relatively recently. For example, Audi's laser headlights as demonstrated here.
However, as this NBC News article says...
Of course, as the article points out, that's not a complete panacea for this problem.
Coincidentally I saw a local TV news station doing a story about headlights recently and it pointed to this exact thing as a solution to it. I actually yelled at the TV because of how stupid that assertion was. The solution is not telling people to turn their headlights into DLP projectors with fallible computer vision systems. The solution is simple regulation and active enforcement. Only a handful of states even have laws that allow cops to issue fix-it tickets for misaligned headlamps, and that's only one of many other problems with car lights that cause safety issues.
Yeah, I was in a parking lot the other day, waiting for my wife and daughter. In the parking spot in front of me, some guy got into his gigantic truck and sat there with the engine running for a few minutes. His blindingly bright headlights were right in my face sitting in my Toyota Camry. I don't think adaptive matrix headlights would be any help in that situation. Hell, I don't even know if misalignment was the problem either. His headlights are just way above my hood and pointing right in my face from not very far away.
Maybe that's an edge case that there is no real answer for (besides lowering hood heights of trucks, which I'm sure tons of American truck and SUV owners would object to). But it was a good reminder of this issue.
The answer is regulations with teeth. Hoods should also be lowered because they're a completely unnecessary safety risk as well, but there need to be more strict requirements for the placement and design of lights to prevent this from being a problem.
Sadly, I'm certain the political will for that does not exist in the United States.
The mismatched heights of headlights and bumpers are an example of something that should be absurdly easy for regulators to fix.
It’s not clear to me why there is no such mandate here. Entrenched auto manufacturer interests aside, surely the current administration can appreciate the issue.
Yeah, but truck and SUV owners would riot if you made them have bumpers that hung low enough to interact better with cars in an accident and sloped enough to be less of a risk to pedestrians. Their trucks and SUVs might look like minivans then!
On a similar note, France is also looking at providing a variable rate rebate incentive of up to €7,000 (~$7,600) for buying European-made EVs. That includes Tesla and other brands with factories in Europe and excludes their vehicles manufactured in China or America.
Wish we’d say piss off to them in Aus cities. Way too big for our roads and it’s hard not to see their growing numbers and the increasingly chaotic weather as at least a bit related.
I think a lot of people defend SUVs and similar vehicles because they overestimate how often they actually use the additional utility.
Even in large countries like the US and Canada, the majority of people live in metropolitan areas and stick to highways on long trips. In these cases, it would make more sense to hire something large for the once every couple of months they really need it.
Of course there will always be outliers, and I have nothing against those who need the additional functionality often. Statistically speaking, however, people are moving towards urban centres rather than away from them.
Precisely.
One thing I think that we need to realize as we talk about this issue is that a good amount of it is cultural - weather we like it or not - and as such we will offend people when we suggest they make changes. Almost every time I suggest that most people should drive a small efficient vehicle I get pushback. I get people who feel like I'm calling them out for living in a rural area even when it's pretty clear I wasn't talking about them. But of course, the most common are people who imagine that it makes more sense for them because they want to pull trailers, haul cargo, go camping, or take a road trip. The minor inconvenience of renting a truck when they need it becomes an impassible wall in their minds.
I broadly agreed that most trucks are simply cultural and/or vanity, but to be fair dealing with renting a truck regularly would be a huge pain in the neck and add a significant time component to using a truck. Particularly if you do tow a trailer regularly for a hobby and would like to be able to do that whenever you like (for instance, if you've got a small fishing boat that isn't suitable to transport on a car roof).
I'm in this sort of situation - I don't own a truck but live semi-rurally and situations come up regularly where it'd be really nice to just have a truck easily accessible so I can do whatever it is I want to do. As it is, I need to borrow or rent one, which means whatever it is that I'd like to do is delayed or doesn't get done. I refuse to replace my car until it's good and dead on principle but when that time comes, a compact truck is definitely something I'm considering (or midsize/full size if it's all-electric).
Don't take this personally, but you've managed to demonstrate what I meant about the kind of pushback I tend to get for expressing my opinion on this.
If you are towing a trailer regularly then you are part of the minority for whom owning a more heavy-duty vehicle would make sense. And it really is a minority - I just googled it and it looks like only about a quarter of pickup truck owners actually use their towing capabilities more than once a year.
I actually really love small compact trucks, but the problem with them in the US is that they don't really make them anymore. They've all become unnecessarily huge. The closest thing you can get today are "utility vehicles", which are sort of like industrial golf carts in that they are meant to be run at relatively low speeds and short distances, and naturally aren't sold at your average car dealership.
This is exactly what we do. My wife and I both drive old, debt-free Hondas, but we rent a minivan twice a year for our long road trips with the kids to visit my family. We've gotten the annual mileage put on our cars way down.
We had to switch to an SUV for accessibility reasons - if I could do it over again I'd probably have gotten a mini van but we got a good deal on a CR-V. But my partner could no longer sit "down" into a car comfortably.
Now we have the CR-V and a wheelchair van so I feel like I'm the antithesis of my own goals when it comes to this sort of thing. I'll almost certainly pivot to a sedan - hybrid or electric if I can afford it - when I have to get a new car. But I'm also keeping this as long as I can
If you live in an urban environment, and a relatively small country that can be crossed in a few hours, like France, buying small vehicles makes sense.
When you live in a country with 10 million sq kilometres and your road trips will take you on two lane highways that are rife with semi trucks, large vehicles and a random assortment of deer/moose/buffalo (yes, we have those too) then buying a very large vehicle absolutely makes sense. NO ONE wants to drive these roads in a subcompact - you might save a bit on gas but what's the point if a deer can take you out?
Part of the point is how absurd it is that someone should have to buy a big car to protect themselves from the other people who wanted to buy a big car. And deer related vehicle deaths are likely not statistically significant in the total number of vehicle deaths per year (a quick google shows about 200/year in the u.s.), especially when the number of pedestrian and cyclist deaths would likely drop more than that with smaller vehicles on the roads.
Obviously I dont live urban anymore (40 years of it was enough) but indeed animal collisions are a major reason for driving large vehicles when you live in the parts of the country where they are very common. Its not just the possibility of death, but the much more likely chance of major injury.
Have you heard of the moose test? Its the test for safety when colliding with a 400 kg animal that stands with the bulk of its weight 3 ft above the ground. Its pretty scary to think of 400 kg of animal flying into your face at 100 km/h.
Here's the collision test with a 'dummy' moose: https://youtu.be/4rRQTHbKbS8?t=94. Thats in a Volvo, one of the safest cars on the road. Imagine doing that in a less safety focussed compact car.
In Canada last year we had 1,630 moose collisions and 8,185 serious injuries. That's not a minor amount.
On a personal note, I pass deer or moose in the ditches or right beside the road at least a dozen times every winter. It gets very sketchy at night because by the time you see them you're very close and you hope they jump AWAY from the road and not toward it. I've had both happen.
This is a tangential and unrefined thought, but the prevalence of wildlife collisions in rural places should perhaps give us pause.
Purchasing a large vehicle to have a better hypothetical risk of defeating a moose in single combat is a band-aid solution to roadway wildlife conflicts. It doesn’t prevent the collision, it just maybe (or maybe not) keeps the driver safer. In either case the car is totaled and the animal is probably dying—not sure about moose, but deer are done for at 60mph even if they hobble off.
When new railway projects get funded, local opposition often forces major wildlife crossings into the final design, perhaps along specific migratory routes or perhaps a bit more randomly. This seems to be done in bad faith at least sometimes, but is popular among environmentalists, whom the railways want to appease. Once in a while we hear about these on major highways, though it seems to me not so much. And virtually never on any smaller road.
I wonder if it would be a better use of resources for us to tackle the problem of wildlife conflicts by addressing the underlying cause—that travel routes for animals are blocked by our linear transportation infrastructure. Better fencing and more dedicated crossings could make a big difference to road safety and simultaneously strengthen the resiliency of the local ecosystem.
Its definitely a matter Ive considered. The biggest problem is the vastness of the area that would need to be mitigated. Even fencing along major roadways is not very effective. A deer can easily jump a 7 ft fence and to fence thousands of miles of highway and maintain that fencing isn't very feasible. Nor should it be as it would keep them from moving around to find new feeding and breeding grounds.
The best we seem to have come up with in my area is VERY wide cleared ditches between the forested areas and the highway. In many places thats a few hundred feet of cleared forest so drivers have the chance to see deer and slow down to prevent a collision. It comes down to the deer's last minute choice. Usually they jump away from the noise of a vehicle, and I honk while approaching, but occasionally they dodge right into it.
There are other devices that have been tried, like the animal alert whistles that used to be fairly common on semi trucks, but proved to be pretty ineffective. Now, sadly, the more common solution is to put bull bars, huge iron bars, in front of truck grills in the hopes that the deer/moose dont do much damage and more than likely killing the animal.
It really does bother me to see wildlife dead in the ditch. A lot. If there is any consolation at all, and its a small one, its that I often observe other predators get a free meal of carrion, a gift in the harshness of a cold winter when hunting is harder.
I actually listened to a podcast about this not too long ago.
I can't remember what they advocated for, but I think it was a problem we didn't have a very good solution for short of getting rid of roads entirely.
This is satire right?
I mean, you hit the nail exactly on the head. To a lot of people that own these vehicles, the rationale is based on irrational fear.
France is not a “small country” nor largely metropolitan (it is mostly farms); and Europe is not a small continent, nor is it devoid of truck traffic or wildlife. I don’t know where Americans/Canadians get these ideas. Driving from Calais to Marseille takes ten hours: it’s like going from Calgary to Vancouver.
I recognize the experience behind your statement, and I think it describes a place like Alberta accurately. Even if I disagree with the necessity of owning an oversized vehicle there, I understand the appeal. It’s just strange to treat France like tiny Luxembourg, and then to suppose that it’s apt to compare a cross-continental trip in NA to a regional trip in EU. How often do people actually drive from Vancouver to Québec? Probably about as often as Europeans go from Lisbon to Moscow, or from Athens to Edinburgh.
“North America is too big for us to have small cars” would be a particularly strange thing to say to the Finnish, or the Russians, whose countries are geographically similar to much of western NA and not at all dense like the Low Countries, but who manage to get by just fine with far smaller vehicles on average.
The overall observation would be more pertinent if it were true that the only North Americans buying large vehicles were the ones who live in rural areas and frequently take 500-mile road trips. But most NA residents don’t have this high-VMT use-case, and most people don’t live in relatively rural areas. Vehicle size is increasing almost everywhere. They are driving larger cars in New York: every taxi now is an SUV. Where are the moose in Manhattan? In the overwhelming majority of cases, the problem of larger vehicles derives from two tendencies of individuals:
The former is a personal issue and the latter one (a quite reasonable concern as an individual or parent) ought to be addressed by infrastructure and policy. The article talks much about Paris, as Anglophone outlets are wont to do, but France and the European Union have some greater collective, structural de-incentives not to drive large cars too, including somewhat higher weight-based registration fees and a general practice of not widening roads and parking spaces to accommodate pointlessly oversized vehicles. As the article says, more regulations are still needed. This way, individuals are not asked to make morally uncomfortable and unavoidably self-centered judgement calls on who lives and who dies (whether or not that’s how they see it); the issue may be addressed systemically. Otherwise, as we see now in North America, the tragedy of the commons takes hold and everyone becomes more unsafe.
I will stand by my first statement as France at 550,000 sq km is less than 6% the size of Canada and therefore is indeed a relatively small country.
And yes most of the people I know DO drive huge distances to visit friends and family. Like a lot of people our family has moved great distances for jobs. Or marriage. Personally my family is spread from Vancouver (sister) to Toronto (son in law) a distance of 4500 km or so. Paris to Marseille is only 800 km - thats how far I drive to get to my rental house without even leaving my home province, so yes, driving in France is similar to not leaving your home province, but its not like living in Canada.
Granted I live rurally so Im not a typical urban driver anymore, but if you're only going to buy one car, you're not going to be buying a compact car even if you only do a big road trip a couple of times a year. There's very little advantage (mostly gas mileage) and ton of disadvantages:
Most SUVs have 4 wheel drive, a definite advantage in winter snow and in any gravel road during a rain. In a foot deep dump of snow, its a huge advantage for traction and stability.
Lots of room to haul. We no longer have kids at home, but two dogs over 80 lbs each. Add in their beds, food, plus our luggage and you'd be hard pressed to enjoy a road trip in a Honda Civic.
Flexibility/Utility. Yes, if you're urban you likely won't be plowing a driveway. I do. With my SUV. I also haul a car trailer, a trailer with garbage for the dump and a boat. NOT things you can do with a compact car. I'd say most of my neighbors use their SUV or trucks to haul too.
Safety. Between a higher seating position, the 4WD, and the reality that in an accident a heavier vehicle is more likely to drive the other vehicle out of the way rather than be crushed in front of it thanks to good ol' inertia, that's what I want my family to be in. Its not "literature", it's just science.
Its a truck. It gets used as a truck. Ive hauled everything from firewood to large saws and air compressors in the back. Not very possible in a Civic.
So I know Im taking this on a personal level but your idea that we drive an SUV for "social competition" or smugness is pretty prejudicial. Its called a Sport UTILITY Vehicle for a reason - it's got great utility. Its merely the 'station wagon' of this decade. And if you're old enough you'll recall that station wagons were ubiquitous back in the day, the vehicle of choice for anyone with a family, and a lot of businesses, because of their utility.
Even if you live in Manhattan, there are less, but still many great reasons to own an SUV - that term covers everything from a fairly small vehicle like a Honda CR-V, to the massive Cadillac Escalade, so it would likely be more useful to have the CR-V, but there are lots of choices for those who dont want to drive a behemoth: Toyota RAV4 Prime, Kia Sportage or a Hyundai Tucson, all of which get over 55 km on electric only before switching to their gas engine. Take your pick. It's still an SUV.
I've lived the rural/urban/suburban life too....and even coming from a world where everything you say about large animals is 100% true, the absolute largest (by size and quantity) vehicles I see being driven are wealthy soccer moms toting 1-2 children between school and after-school activities for a distance of less than 10 miles at approximately 10mpg (because stop and go traffic on short distances is way less than the EPA rating). Generally while never putting down their cellphones. I'd have a more charitable interpretation if these vehicles were older...but they're also usually less than 2 years old.
Large daily-driver vehicles have their place, you'll get no arguement from me there.....but anywhere with a population density over 1,500/sqmi is probably not it. And for most of America (and I daresay the world), they should really be highly-specialized items, possibly requiring more stringent permitting, not so much the default.
We don't let average people drive Mac Trucks without extra training...I'm starting to think many SUVs are large enough we should require it.
That's a really bad comparison. Most of Canada is uninhabited by humans. A much more fair comparison would be the roads. Canada has about 1.1M kilometers of roads In the meanwhile, France has about... 1.1M kilometers of roads. But actually, the statistics for canada use two-lane equivalents, so it looks like France may actually have more.
Except that you cant get in your vehicle and travel for 3 days to get to grandma's house unless you like driving in circles :) You most definitely can do that in Canada.
It's not the amount of road, its the vast distance between destinations.
I think my point and that of Akir was more that comparing travel within France to travel within and without Alberta is apples to oranges.
The Schengen Area and other travel agreements mean many Europeans live abroad. So your example of traveling hundreds of miles to see a family member who moved across the country is not really different than my English friend driving to Sicily to see his expatriated niece. (Much of that drive is through France.)
For language reasons, I think it’s fair to say that geographic diaspora is more pronounced in the US or Canada than it is in Europe—if you speak French, you’re more likely to go somewhere with other French speakers than not. But my impression is that these cases are still relatively similar. The data is clear that most trips in North America are short.
Half of Canada lives in a metropolitan region comparable in size and density to Paris.
Something like 2/3rds of the population lives within the 10 biggest metropolitan areas of the country. Only like 20% of the population even lives in a rural area, and most of them probably live either close enough to their relatives to drive.
We all have to stop pretending this country is a giant rural plain devoid of density. It's a bunch of dense cities clustered together in like 3 or 4 major zones.
Spoken like a true eastern Canadian. Welcome to the prairies :)
What I wished I had phrased more articulately is not that I am commenting on SUVs as a specific class but largeness as a quality of all vehicle classes becoming excessively desirable. Even sedans have gotten a bit bigger over time. SUVs are just low-hanging fruit.
I think you are significantly overestimating the number of trips over 500 miles (arbitrary number) that Canadians actually take per year. I don’t have a dataset offhand, but the US Bureau of Transportation Statistics has a nice breakdown of trips by distance in different American municipalities. Even in states similar to Alberta, like Montana, a massive road trip is three orders of magnitude less frequent than trips under a mile. And I disagree with the assertion that road trips don’t work in compact vehicles.
I would remark that transportation needs today are not markedly different than 30 years ago—a time when it was unusual for everyone to have such large cars. In general, this is a matter of preference (one might say luxury) and not need. The people who need (I use this term loosely) to haul a boat around today had a large-ish vehicle for that 30 years ago too. They’re not the variable that’s changed.
This is a case where people’s perceptions/expectations inform their car purchases, not their actual requirements. In the US, and I assume in Canada, including in areas that are not rural, car buyers make decisions not rationally or statistically—based on what they would realistically use their vehicle for—but what they might want to use their vehicle for in extraordinary hypothetical circumstances (EV range anxiety exemplifies this tendency). The thought process is fundamentally irrational, unnecessary, and inefficient. Because their impulses are not checked by safety regulations on, say, vehicle weight, we end up with a lot of overbuying. People on the road do not know how to control large vehicles and never have (most never will).
There is ultimately a significant social cost to this, for example in terms of traffic fatalities caused by large SUVs and pickup trucks.
I think you, personally, are an extraordinary edge case in every sense of the term. I mean that not unkindly. But the extent to which you use vehicles for utilitarian purposes is aberrant.
Virtually all urban and suburban (82% of the population) SUV/light truck owners purchase their vehicle partially for social status. They’re big, they’re spacious, they’re expensive, and they’re something to show off. The amount of hauling, plowing, and loading that they do with it is virtually zero. In most cases it is actually zero.
There is absolutely an element of superiority in driving a large vehicle. The psychology of the purchase is stamped on its physical design and endlessly reiterated in marketing materials. This is most ostentatiously demonstrated in the uselessly large pickup trucks that have proliferated continent-wide.
One is being dishonest with themselves if they don’t recognize how much their attitude toward shared road space changes across different vehicle classes. Some of it may be subconscious. The respect they deign to give other drivers is a direct function of the relative disparity of the size of their vehicles.
It is telling to sit, as a passenger, and watch how a driver who perceives themselves to be in a rush feels entitled to treat the space around smaller vehicles as their own. This includes people who are otherwise typical and unaggressive drivers—actually this category is the most striking. Everyone has such moments; a gigantic vehicle simply incentivizes worse behavior.
In few cases is anyone enlightened enough to consistently escape the power dynamic that inevitably manifests on the road. That category is comprised of 1) demigods, and 2) those more fearful of hurting others than being hurt. I know a lot of people who think they are great drivers, good drivers, observant drivers, calm drivers, respectful drivers: the key word is think. I am not an exception.
But people got along in the U.S. and Canada just fine without big trucks and SUVs until the 1990s. What changed? My guess is it’s multifactoral:
:) rural Nova Scotian here driving an "intermediate" car that we bought back when we lived in the city. I do wish I have more trunk room for longer dimensional lumber and farm things, but it doesn't make sense environmentally to stop driving the small car. We live in the thick of deer country and moose are a real thing on the side of the road. 95%+ of my driving are on 100km/hr highways.
My extended family that live and drive exclusively in the heart of the city had always driven minivans and SUVs though. No moose.
I've hit a deer once, and fortunately it bounced up and hit the roof instead of going directly into the windshield. Not sure if it killed the deer as far as we could tell (it was at night) but scared the bejeezus out of my wife and kids. I have an acquaintance who crested a hill and hit a stray cow of all things. It DID go directly into his face. His life hung in the balance for days and then he spent months and months in hospital and in rehab. Large animals on the road are no minor matter.
My wife drives past moose and deer regularly on her way to work in the early morning in winter. You have to always be scanning the ditch. She's in a mid size SUV and we have a small EV she COULD be driving, but given the options of "saving the world" and saving my wife, I'm pretty happy she prefers the SUV.
it's pretty amazing how much we take for granted being on the road: traveling at ludicrous velocity "in the wild", as it were, where anything could come at us (or rather, mostly, us at them). It's understandable human emotion for folks to choose the safest thing they can buy. And you know, my aforementioned family with no deer/moose risk also say the same thing about being in a city SUV.
I mean the guys not completely wrong but it’s hard to take him seriously when this is in his closing statement lmao:
I mean, he's not wrong. Some of those SUVs are nearly the size of a Bradley... Well, at least almost as long.
I'm gonna fact check, because I feel this way too. All measurements in ft.
So yes, it's untrue that it's the size of a Bradley tank. But the 2024 Ford Expedition is larger than one of the most influential tanks in history. It would not be unreasonable to class modern SUVs as "Light Tanks."
Wow! I didn't realize the Expedition Max was SO big. The 2024 Hummer is 18.06' long, 7.39' wide, and 6.58' tall. I would have put money down that the Hummer is bigger.
I think to some degree those L/W/H are dictated by infrastructure standards. Length and width are defined by parking space dimensions, height is probably parking garage height. It's still pretty absurd we're letting the maximums of our infrastructure define build dimensions rather than utility, but we're a pretty absurd country
Edit: Also, I hope it's not lost that we're comparing vehicles that are supposed to be designed for transport to ones designed for war. One of. these should be big enough to withstand purposeful attach from explosives, the other picks up groceries.
Fair enough. Besides, a more apt comparison would be an MRAP vs American SUV. I'm sure all of them look gigantic on French streets either way. Thanks for the numbers!
I'm from the US and honestly I wouldn't be too surprised either. Especially given how militarized our police forces are.
My local police station has an honest-to-god, all-black Hum-Vee with "God We Trust" and a blacked-out American flag on it.
The only thing missing is the machine gun mounted to the top.
I mean, the DoD gives away M998s for a song and once you've got it you get to deal with the maintenance which means making it a display piece is probably the cheapest option.
They probably pay out the ass for a Bearcat for the SWAT team either way.
Personally I have problem with anyone who uses "hellscape" seriously, bonus points for "capitalist hellscape".
Big SUVs do seem really stupid and impractical for pretty much any european city though.
It has been said that science is the art of seeing similarities in things that, at first glance, seem very different; while art is seeing the differences in things that, at first glance, seem the same.
This desperately click-baity article lacks the objectivity of science and the nuanced scrutiny of art. The only real content of the article is buried in the second to last paragraph, and amounts to the headline, "Paris leadership proposes higher parking fees for larger vehicles." But this inartful piece and its writer can't stand on the merits of what's actually happening in Europe, so better * * checks notes * * insult Americans for rage clicks.
I suppose my point is that this piece is inartful in its inability to appreciate that Europe, much less Paris, is not America and that drivers have different patterns of life that necessitate different vehicle aspirations (road trips, suburbs, vast interior, culture). At the same time the piece is unscientific in randomly selecting a ten year rise in vehicle fatalities and, without analysis or evidence, attributing causality to large vehicles sizes.
A swing and a miss. There's room for good discussion here, but the source material is tainted.
Modern cars are still considerable bigger than the cars in the 70s and 80s. If you ever see cars from that period next to modern cars you'll realize how ridiculously big modern SUVs have gotten.
I mean yes, of course modern cars are "bigger," sit higher, and are physically taller. Also, I did post this article and thought that this discussion would probably come up, so I want to touch on what I think the parent post is probably getting at, which is that cars from the 70s and 80s (and I'll include the 60s in this too) could, but didn't always, have enormous width and length dimensions and displacements that dwarf modern cars' (up to 9.2L). Sedans got substantially smaller from the 80s onward, in part due to industry changes, and in part due to legislative changes impacting the industry. Whether we remember those old land yachts or not, and in what time period (people holding onto their huge cars due to an economic downturn, for instance) plays a role in how big we perceive other vehicles to be -- trucks got smaller for a while too. But a lot of this comes down to what we remember and how we remember it.
So just to play devil's advocate a little/remind people that some of the old cars really were enormous: Back in the 70s and 80s some cars had enormous turning circles. They physically felt large and cumbersome. Modern cars are designed, and have more modern equipment, allowing for much tighter radii -- including modern SUVs. SUVs have better handling, acceleration, and occupant safety than the "land yachts" that used to be more common on American roads. The sub-compact and compact classes of SUVs are still on the heavier side, but their lengths and wheelbases are substantially smaller than what early SUVs (and station wagons from that era) were. That said, SUV EVs are very heavy, even when compared to their ICE counterparts (see the Chevy Blazer models listed below).
On the point of land yachts versus today's SUVs, the Ford Expedition Max (2018 onwards) has almost identical length and width as a 1970s Chevy Caprice or a Chrysler New Yorker. The modern Ford Explorer is shorter, narrower, and has a shorter wheelbase than a Chevy Impala from 1977-1985. Chevy sold about 1.3 million Impalas in that 9 year period. Wiki doesn't list the weights of a lot of these vehicles, but on their land yacht page they explain that the heaviest non-limosine cars could weigh up to 5,712 lb (2,591 kg), but SUVs over their history have been extremely heavy and definitely there are heavier examples (the platform for the Hummer EV and its compatriots will result in vehicles with kerb weights of 9,000 lbs+ (4,090 kg+).
Land Yachts vs Ford SUVs:
Other SUV comparisons:
*Quick Note: Did a lot of generous rounding of units originally in millimeters to meters. But they're close.
I notice that you don't include height in your measurement comparisons. Was this deliberate? Vehicle height is one of the most unsafe parts of modern SUVs.
Yeah, I omitted it because it's obvious that an SUV is going to be taller than a sedan from the 60s through some models in the 80s. And the hood is obviously higher. No one actually "remembers" sedans being taller than modern or 90s SUVs. I wasn't addressing anything about safety here, just that some people do, correctly, remember that cars they'd have seen on the roads in the 70s were larger than a modern Ford Explorer by length, wheelbase, and width in cases such as the Chevy Caprice. And in the case of the Caprice the vehicle weighed about as much as a modern Explorer. So indeed they were large by every metric except height.
As to safety, there are a lot of other discussions on the topic so I didn't want to go in that direction again, but I do want to point out that people back then sometimes said that bigger cars were safer (for the occupant). This was a prevalent comment in my family and the reason some of my relatives stuck with big American cars. But they're probably not actually safer and I think is probably not inherently true of SUVs -- it's the modern mandated/sought-after advancements like seat-belts, crash zones/crumple zones, and things like that that have improved occupant safety. And for various reasons some people are more interested in occupant safety than pedestrian safety when it comes to vehicle ownership in cities, so that's an issue that needs to be addressed. But it's not just a matter of making the car safer for pedestrians (lowering the hood), but also mandating safety features like pedestrian-detection and automatic breaking.
SUVs are nice when you have a family, but don't need as much space as a minivan (like 1 or 2 kids), but otherwise, I understand where you're coming from.
A wagon would be better for that, buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut. No dice in the US.
(I'm excessively salty my Mazda option was a CX-5 instead of a Mazda 6 wagon, tbh)
I'm currently rocking a Subaru Outback, which is about the closest thing in an affordable price range anymore. In order to find anything hybrid with the legroom needed, I'd have to add $10k or more to the price. It's really hard to find something that is comfortable for a 6'3" driver, with a backseat comfortable for children whom will also probably be 6' before the car is sold.
The best review before I bought one "It's a big car when you need it to be one, and a small car when you need it to be one.
It has passed both the "Haul used furniture home" test and the "parallel park in South Philadelphia" test since. I'm a believer. Minivan and most SUVs fail that second test. The RAV4 Hybrid I had passed the second, but not the first.
One thing I have noticed about car design is that cars don't actually need to be tall to acomodate tall people, they just need to be designed for it in regards to legroom and seat design.
My husband is over 6' tall. He does not even remotely fit in the Toyota bz4x. But he fits perfectly well into my Bolt EV in spite of the fact that the Bolt is slightly smaller!
As a side note, I find it a bit weird how there's no decent small EVs in the US. The only one I was ever aware of was the ElectraMeccanica Solo, but even though they got to market they recalled and bought back every model they made.
I used to know a 6'4" gentleman who fit nicely into some variant of a Mini Cooper better than any SUV he could find. I found that deeply amusing.
Oh 100%. I was perfectly content driving in a Saturn Ion for many years, till I found out GM nearly killed me at least. The problem boils down to wanting both comfort for tall driver, comfort for tall back passengers, and large cargo space in back. It very much is a "pick two" situation unless the car gets larger, though preferably longer than taller. The Toyota Scion was actually really great for the driver/passenger combo, sad to see that one gone. And sadly I need the extra cargo space if I want to remain a single-car household, which would be preferrable as long as possible. The Outback will hold me well many years, and will let the second car be a tinier EV if/when it becomes essential to have one.
Tall cars freak me out. The rollover risk with these new vehicles is absurd.
EV tech is still relatively new so they're harder to make inexpensively, which means bigger/luxury models will be more common.
That's not really true, though. There are electric cars that are over 100 years old at this point. Electric motors are not complex, and the rest of the car is practically a solved problem. The batteries are the thing that have had big innovations, and those are the big expense of an EV, but it stands to reason that a smaller more efficient car wouldn't need as high a capacity so it would cost less.
Besides that there are many companies making small efficient EVs throughout Europe and Asia already, so it's not like it's a difficult ask.
The fact that there were electric cars over a hundred years ago is completely irrelevant to how long the manufacturing and supply chains have been around for modern cars.
I also don't see why there would be many small EVs when there aren't any small IC cars.
How alien do you think EVs are? Something like 95% of the parts going into any given EV outside of Tesla is going to be something shared with ICE cars.
The lack of small cars being a problem is exactly what this topic thread is about. And globally, yes, there are small ICE car markets.
Am I missing something in this thread? Two of the best selling makes of cars decades ago were the Fiat 500 and the Mini Cooper. Two of the best selling makes of cars today globally are the Fiat 500 and the Mini. Do those not count as small?
Wrong continent:
I get more and more upset when I think about the fact that the only easily available hatchbacks in the US are SUVs - I get it.
The Civic Hatchback is one of the few still standing, though it's more of a fastback. So it doesn't have the same vertical rear window, but once you lift the hatch it's otherwise the same.
Honestly a van kicks an SUVs ass even in that regard. I have two kids, as well as an older SUV that is my project car. The lower load height, plus sliding doors, plus optional third row or storage space. Not to mention, even with the third row, the van has superior storage in the back already, plus again gets better mileage, as well as being cheaper to run based on smaller, lighter, longer lasting tires, better handling, more comfortable ride. The van wins every time. And there's not even a big discrepancy in make or year here, I'm talking about a 98 Grand Cherokee and an 04 Dodge Grand Caravan.
The only thing my SUV can do that my van can't is have a nice V8 burble and do the off road trails and more remote camping I want to do. For road going, which is 99% of my life? No contest.