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

theguardian.com

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

#121

Post by benj111 »

nottheengineer wrote: post #38
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…

Seeing those things and knowing the person bought an objectively worse version of a decent car causes me pain every single time. But the only thing we can do about that is educate people.

Well they've stopped making the fiesta now, so there isn't a car version to actually buy.

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

#122

Post by petre »

vkazanov wrote: post #48
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…

As a london, uk resident, I recently got a hatchback-sized lexus hybrid "SUV", the ux 250h. Perfect for the place, possible to go to a motorway, high mpg, reliability. My kid is just fine in the back sit, I can see a second one fitting just fine. my American friend laughed at me, saying something like "a family needs at least a range rover, you can afford one". So it's not about reason, not about making a balanced ch…

How do you deal with the small boot space? Have you taken off the boot's floor and the polystyrene foam underneath it?

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

#123

Post by _Microft »

OJFord wrote: post #89
_Microft wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.)

Thanks, I updated my comment with a link to Wikipedia.

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

#124

Post by benj111 »

jdietrich wrote: post #54
raverbashing wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But things like Land Rover models are popular, and are SUV sized no?

Larger SUVs do exist on the UK market, but they really aren't very popular because they're very inconvenient on our narrow roads and prohibitively expensive for most people. To my knowledge, the biggest passenger cars on the UK market are the Range Rover and the Hyundai Santa Fe, which I believe would be classed as mid-size SUVs on the US market. If you were to import something like an Escalade or a Navigator, you'd…

F150s and the like are getting increasingly popular.

When I see one actually carrying something in the back I'll let you know.

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

#125

Post by JTyQZSnP3cQGa8B »

dmazin wrote: post #24

I was nodding along until I read that they deflate XC90s. To me, that is a completely reasonable car if you have 3 children. I know people who buy Range Rovers just to drive to work, but not XC90s.

The Renault 5 was enough in the 80s for a family of 4. The XC90 is one of the biggest car I’ve ever seen. Why are small cars no longer acceptable?

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

#126

Post by kergonath »

yodelshady wrote: post #103
stuaxo wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because damage to the road increases by something like the weight increase ^ 4.

Which means, as pointed out by e.g. zemvpferreira, proportionate-to-damage then either makes HGVs completely unviable or the wear component of tax for any passenger car negligible. And HGVs really are the limiting factor on road design. We could ban SUVs maybe, we could ban cars and scooters and bicycles if various factions get their way, but if we ban HGVs - cities starve, in weeks if not days.

> if we ban HGVs - cities starve, in weeks if not days

Which is why nobody wants this. Though we ought to be chasing efficiency there as well because as you wrote lorries are a significant contributing factor.

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

#127

Post by kergonath »

ndsipa_pomu wrote: post #82
TerrifiedMouse wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> If that weight difference results in a noticeable tax difference, then lorries will be virtually priced off the road due to the tax.

That’s a red herring. Lorries don’t have to be taxed the same way as cars, and actually most of the time are not.

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

#128

Post by kergonath »

petre wrote: post #112
jimnotgym wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

If they tax rural registered vehicles less, people will register their SUVs in rural areas. If you live in the country you probably need a 4x4 or a pickup truck, depending also on the type of work that you do.

> If you live in the country you probably need a 4x4 or a pickup truck, depending also on the type of work that you do.

There already are exemptions and tax credits for professional equipment, right? It’s nothing that has not been solved already.

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

#129

Post by fragmede »

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…

As long as we're inventing new taxes, we should tax friction-based braking systems and components, to the point that regenerative braking becomes the norm on all new cars. We're wasting so much energy using friction to stop, rather than electromagnetic fields to induce stopping and regenerating batteries.

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

#130

Post by azherebtsov »

LeanderK wrote: post #78
azherebtsov wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What car would you recommend to a family of five? I have 2 kids and when we go for a trip the my Citroen c4 is full. Would I have one more kid it’s no way we can fit into this car, despite it has 5 seats. Should we stop thinking about road trips and consider only plane/train/bus? Or should we consider only van/caravan? I support the argument that unnecessary consumption should be penalised somehow, but I do not suppo…

I don't think you can drive a SUV in a city and fit 3 children in there. It's just too enormous, think about how massive it would be. We drove a van when I was small (VW sharan), which is the reasonable choice I think. I think SUV-type cars are generally too big for a city, except the smallest and a family should by a van as a van does generally not have such a large hood and it's height is not so high. Big cars in a…

Xc90 length is 4953mm and width is 1923mm

VW sharan length is 4854mm and width is 1904mm

Therefore the difference in sizes is probably less than your palm. These cars are equally reasonable, it’s just a matter of personal preferences I think.

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