Obligatory plug for cycling and cycling infrastructure. Getting people out of cars - all cars - is a necessity for preventing catastrophic climate change.
Causing harm, as stated in the article, is not the way you get there.
Monsters of the Road: What Should the UK Do About SUVs?
171–180 of 194 posts
Re: Monsters of the Road: What Should the UK Do About SUVs?
#172Earlier quoted context omitted.
> aking effectively twice the space of a small electric car Not that many "small electric cars" out there, Teslas are big, as are the ID.3s and the like coming from Volkswagen. For reference, an ID.3 weights a maximum of almost 2 tons (1935 kg, to be more exact), that's compared to the maximum of 1500 kg for a Golf 7. To say nothing of my 2006 1.4 NA Seat Ibiza weighting just 1054 kg, but which is seen as worst than…
Fiat 500e, Nissan Leaf, Renault Zoe, Peugeot 208e, whatever ugly shit Opel/Vauxhall is pushing out...
The size difference between a Leaf and a RAV4 is negligible.
Re: Monsters of the Road: What Should the UK Do About SUVs?
#173I’m all for fewer people driving them (most are just lifted versions of normal cars now, but more uncomfortable and inefficient), but I’m very sure messing essential safety features (correctly pressurised tyres) is not how you get that point t across.
More uncomfortable? Why do you think people buy them?
Re: Monsters of the Road: What Should the UK Do About SUVs?
#174Earlier quoted context omitted.
They exist for a reason. Some people have more to haul than just groceries.
> They exist for a reason. Some people have more to haul than just groceries. What in daily life is different in the last ~20 years (when SUVs have grown popular), compared to the ~20 years before that (when minivans were a thing), compared to the ~20 years before that (when station wagons were a thing)? Further, how often is the 'extra' hauling occurring? Why do you need to drive such a thing daily when the haulage…
> when station wagons were a thing
my “big” SUV is smaller in length but larger in interior space and gets 5x further a gallon of gas than the station my parents drove in the ‘70s.
Re: Monsters of the Road: What Should the UK Do About SUVs?
#175I have hated SUVs for decades, and have denigrated their owners for all that time. I prefer light, small, nippy, manoeuvrable cars with small turning circles. (Like my Leyland Mini, or my Mazda Rotary R100 of days gone by.)
So here I am, the unproud owner of an SUV, myself. I was forced to give up a nice sedan/saloon that was only two and a bit years old, with less than 10,000 of my driving kilometres on it.
The reason for that was to store the components of my wifes mobility scooter. The nicer, smaller car just couldn't hack it. The scooter-storage necessity had turned a normal 4-door 5-passenger car with boot into basically a 2-seater car with practically no luggage space.
On the few occasions when I don't have to carry the scooter in the cargo-space of the SUV, I am still gob-smacked at the amount of empty space in that damned thing. And it's only a mid-sized SUV too.
So please don't vandalise those SUVs. You'd probably find that we're in complete agreement with you if we spent a few minutes over a beer or two.
Re: Monsters of the Road: What Should the UK Do About SUVs?
#176Earlier 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
Three times the damage of a tiny number is still tiny. Vans, garbage trucks, plows, tractor trailers, pickup trucks, all do significantly more damage. A single garbage truck is going to do more damage than 4000 EV cars in one pass.
That's what people mean when they say EV weight isn't as impactful as people make it out to be.
There's also the assumption that most road damage comes from vehicles. I don't know how it proportions out between vehicles and weather, but weather, particularly freeze and thaw, is very damaging to roads.
Re: Monsters of the Road: What Should the UK Do About SUVs?
#177Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
then maybe I am wrong! I just see those enormous SUVs all the time (probably small for americans), clogging the street and not fitting into parking spaces. With enormous, wasteful hoods. If you're family is big we have fitted in a van just fine and could also drive to our vacations.
Re: Monsters of the Road: What Should the UK Do About SUVs?
#178Bigger taller and heavier vehicles are safer in collision with smaller cars. In the society where drunk, stupid and agressive people are allowed to drive (which is clearly the case in the UK), it’s entirely logical to buy an SUV, as long as you’re concerned about the safety of your family
Re: Monsters of the Road: What Should the UK Do About SUVs?
#179Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I agree entirely, FWIW.
Re: Monsters of the Road: What Should the UK Do About SUVs?
#180Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Road wear scales with the fourth power of weight over an axle. Cars are not getting more axles, even SUVs, so this is a constant multiplicative factor. I would be happy with a tax that scales as the fourth power of the mass, no problem. That would be actually quite dissuasive very quickly. Though even a linear scaling would be an improvement over the current situation. > Most fuel consumption is about overcoming dr…
> Cars are not getting more axles, even SUVs, so this is a constant multiplicative factor. I would be happy with a tax that scales as the fourth power of the mass, no problem. That would be actually quite dissuasive very quickly. Though even a linear scaling would be an improvement over the current situation. Sounds like we should tax EVs then: https://www.energylivenews.com/2023/06/27/evs-cause-twice-th... The road…
> Sounds like we should tax EVs then
No argument on my part: huge EV SUVs are also very bad.