Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Monsters of the Road: What Should the UK Do About SUVs?

theguardian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 194 posts

Re: Monsters of the Road: What Should the UK Do About SUVs?

#81

Post by jimnotgym »

I live in the UK countryside. I drive a Ford focus a lot of the time, it is nice to drive and does about 53mpg according to the trip computer. Unfortunately the undertray grounds out on some of the roads around here due to the camber. Many of our lanes are single track and the passing places are not maintained so they tend to have giant potholes and you can easily get stuck. I occasionally need to go down roads that knock the undertray clean off. I kept the Focus for my commute and bought an old 4x4 to deal with the rougher roads. This is great, but I pay double road tax (it is a lot on the old 4x4, despite it doing very few miles), double insurance, double MOT. I think I am doing the best I can in the circumstances, but I think I would be financially better off commuting in an SUV.

Why should I be financially penalised because these cars are inappropriate for London?

Re: Monsters of the Road: What Should the UK Do About SUVs?

#82

Post by ndsipa_pomu »

TerrifiedMouse wrote: post #75
ndsipa_pomu wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weight is an important metric as it has a big influence on two very important external affects. Road wear/damage is proportional to roughly the fourth power of weight. However, this won't have much impact on SUVs directly, but on large lorries and buses. (It's easy to see the damage at bus stops where the slowing to a stop and starting from a stop, both noticeable deform the road after a time. This is also visible at…

> However, this won't have much impact on SUVs directly Why not? Even an increase from 1.5 tons to 2 tons results in 3.16x the damage on the road. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_power_law

If that weight difference results in a noticeable tax difference, then lorries will be virtually priced off the road due to the tax. Realistically, the tax would have to be affordable for heaviest vehicles which would make the tax difference between 1.5 to 2 tons negligible.

Maybe one way round it is to have tax bands for heavy commercial vehicles and weight-based tax for cars and SUVs.

Edit: thought I'd try to work out an example of pricing.

If a fourth power tax rate on weight works out to a £100 difference between 2 tons and 1.5 tons, then an 8 ton vehicle would be paying over £37,000

Re: Monsters of the Road: What Should the UK Do About SUVs?

#83

Post by spaer »

nologic01 wrote: post #12

Oversized SUV's littering urban landscapes (taking effectively twice the space of a small electric car) are the tangible evidence of how society grows not just unsustainable and unequal, but aggressive and in-your-face. I don't think there is any other period where the front "face" of a car aimed to create such an ugly, intimidating impression (i am huge and i will tear you apart). Their popularity speaks volumes abo…

I don’t think the size differences are as drastic as that. An opel Astra hatchback is 4374mm long and 2062mm wide, while a Volvo XC90 is 4950mm long and 1923mm wide. As long as they both fit comfortably in a normal parking space the dimensions are not going to contribute meaningfully to more congestion or other inconvenience.

In the Netherlands I often see people with Dodge rams that are noticeably wider and longer than every other passenger car. If this was a large or growing category I can see myself being inconvenienced and annoyed more

Re: Monsters of the Road: What Should the UK Do About SUVs?

#84

Post by Mountain_Skies »

samwillis wrote: post #27
kergonath wrote: post #4

Cars should be taxed based on their weight and there should be much stricter standards regarding visibility. There is no reason why most of us should subsidise a few people’s status symbol and their entirely unnecessary use of public resources. Ultimately you should not be able to buy these, at least in their current form, as they serve no purpose whatsoever besides inflating their owner’s ego at a significant cost t…

Even better tax based on weight to number of permanent seats ratio. 7 seaters for larger families shouldn't be penalised, but structure it so manufactures can't just throw a couple of fold down seats in the back of a large SUV as a work around. But everything about road tax needs to change with the reduction of fuel duty due to electric cars. The public haven't seen this coming yet, but it's going to be a difficult t…

Sounds like a good way to end up with unintended consequences like happened with the chicken tax and the Subaru Brat.

Re: Monsters of the Road: What Should the UK Do About SUVs?

#85

Post by numpad0 »

nologic01 wrote: post #12

Oversized SUV's littering urban landscapes (taking effectively twice the space of a small electric car) are the tangible evidence of how society grows not just unsustainable and unequal, but aggressive and in-your-face. I don't think there is any other period where the front "face" of a car aimed to create such an ugly, intimidating impression (i am huge and i will tear you apart). Their popularity speaks volumes abo…

IMO, everyone should start from phasing out street parking. Mandatory private parking would create selection pressure towards smaller and less obnoxious cars, proportionate to mental as well as financial investments by its owner.

Re: Monsters of the Road: What Should the UK Do About SUVs?

#86

Post by resuresu »

stuaxo wrote: post #71
nologic01 wrote: post #12

Oversized SUV's littering urban landscapes (taking effectively twice the space of a small electric car) are the tangible evidence of how society grows not just unsustainable and unequal, but aggressive and in-your-face. I don't think there is any other period where the front "face" of a car aimed to create such an ugly, intimidating impression (i am huge and i will tear you apart). Their popularity speaks volumes abo…

It's amazing how ugly cars have become. The upsizing is stupid - lots of cars either new versions of renamed versions of old ones but with another layer sandwiched in to make it higher, or just grow all dimensions and more clearance. A lot of them don't even have much / any more room inside.

They exist for a reason. Some people have more to haul than just groceries.

Re: Monsters of the Road: What Should the UK Do About SUVs?

#87

Post by mike_hock »

samwillis wrote: post #27
kergonath wrote: post #4

Cars should be taxed based on their weight and there should be much stricter standards regarding visibility. There is no reason why most of us should subsidise a few people’s status symbol and their entirely unnecessary use of public resources. Ultimately you should not be able to buy these, at least in their current form, as they serve no purpose whatsoever besides inflating their owner’s ego at a significant cost t…

Even better tax based on weight to number of permanent seats ratio. 7 seaters for larger families shouldn't be penalised, but structure it so manufactures can't just throw a couple of fold down seats in the back of a large SUV as a work around. But everything about road tax needs to change with the reduction of fuel duty due to electric cars. The public haven't seen this coming yet, but it's going to be a difficult t…

No, why should I subsidize somebody else's children any more than I should subsidize somebody else's ego booster?

Ignoring the fact that this wouldn't even work because SUVs would just get extra seats to work around the tax structure.

7-seat private buses wear down the road just as much as private tanks, so tax them equally.

Re: Monsters of the Road: What Should the UK Do About SUVs?

#88

Post by jimnotgym »

stuaxo wrote: post #80
michpoch wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Cars should be taxed based on their weight Why weight in particular? Two arguments here: 1. SUVs are already taxed on weight indirectly - they consume more fuel which is heavily taxed (50+% in most of Europe). 2. SUVs are already taxed higher because they're more expensive. In some places in the world (e.g. some parts of Switzerland) there's already a tax on car weight. I do not see it being particularly effective.…

SUVs bonnets are the height of my 6 year old, she can easily be out of visibility, as there are plenty of non SUVs around I can see it's not the case for the them. The exhaust is not at just the right height for kids in buggies when you cross the road.

Yet in the countryside, the higher driving position gives better visibility, with grass verges etc blocking the view around corners. That is what I see from my 20 year old non status symbol 4x4.

Should I be taxed because my car is inappropriate for London, where it will never go?

Re: Monsters of the Road: What Should the UK Do About SUVs?

#89

Post by OJFord »

_Microft wrote: post #51
audunw wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issues talked about here are mostly about size (width, length), not weight. Yes, the higher weight of EVs is a bit of an issue. But not as much as people make it out to be. But there are a lot of big EVs now. I think it’s mainly due to all car manufacturers coming out with a new generation of EVs and the first models they make are the ones with the highest margins. I.e. big cars. In the previous generations you h…

> Yes, the higher weight of EVs is a bit of an issue. But not as much as people make it out to be. Not to detract from the discussion‘s topic but weight is an issue. Road damage scales with fourth power of axle load. That’s is, a car with 2t instead of 1.5t does three times the damage. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_power_law

> Road damage scales with fourth power of axle load.

Why? That's not intuitive to me. (I'm not saying you're wrong, just want to understand.)

Re: Monsters of the Road: What Should the UK Do About SUVs?

#90

Post by yodelshady »

jdietrich wrote: post #23

Note to American readers: The most popular "SUVs" in Britain are small crossovers that are compact or subcompact cars by American standards. The Ford Puma is currently the best-selling car in the UK and while it's marketed as an SUV, it's based on the same platform as the Ford Fiesta. It has big wheels and an SUV silhouette, but the base model has a 1 litre engine with a mild hybrid system and 4 wheel drive isn't eve…

The "slightly tall hatchback" form factor is also the best form factor for electrification. A Fiesta doesn't have a lot of underfloor real estate.

Although the industry isn't so dishonest as to pretend that "consumers are more resistant to £30,000 hatchbacks than they are £30,000 'SUVs'" isn't a factor.

Yes, it's a real bugbear describing these as if they're the same as an F-150. Although I've seen more of those as well.

Post reply on HN