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Americans' love affair with big cars is killing them

economist.com

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Re: Americans' love affair with big cars is killing them

#121

Post by smolder »

Tanoc wrote: post #59
PaulHoule wrote: post #3

I hate sounding like a broken record but my belief is that car makers are more excited about XXXXL cars in American than car buyers are. The media is consistently complicit in covering this up, sounding like the brainwashed soldiers in The Manchurian Candidate It's not to say that we don't like big cars because we do, but walk into a car dealership looking for a small car and they will tell you they are out of stock…

This is true to a ridiculous extent. Ford has no compact hatchback or sedan in the U.S., only the Brazilian built EcoSport. They killed all their cars in favour of CUVs and SUVs. Chevrolet no longer has the Sonic, having nixed those in 2022. Honda no longer has the Fit as of two years ago. Mitsubishi no longer sells the Mirage as of last month. Dodge hasn't had anything since the Dart died in 2016. The Jeep Renegade'…

I have heard people lamenting the loss of small trucks for 20 years. There has never been another one as small or as light as a Ford Ranger or Toyota RN Pickup from the 90s. Rangers stopped being made and the Tacoma that replaced the Pickup got larger every model year until it was bigger and heavier than the original Tundra. It really is ridiculous because people love the utility of those smaller, more efficient old trucks. (More efficient relative to their contemporaries, at the very least. Other efficiency improvements would have come to them as well, if they still existed as a category.) Not everyone wants a land barge.

Re: Americans' love affair with big cars is killing them

#122

Post by baq »

animal_spirits wrote: post #67
cranekam wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It clearly is. As the article makes out, the tax code and regulation favours large vehicles. Gas is cheap. Acting alone, there are few reasons to buy a smaller car if you can afford a bigger one. This is exactly the market “working” and why regulation is necessary to change it.

More rules aren't going to fix the problem that more rules created. We need to reduce the amount of regulation on vehicles, specifically the CAFE regulations which are the driver behind large vehicles, and let the real market forces play out. Whenever governmental regulations get involved, the market forces are distorted to what the regulations incentivize, rather than what the people incentivize.

That’s literally the point of regulations and why civilization invented them.

You want to get rid of bad regulations, obviously. You really don’t want to get rid of all regulations.

Re: Americans' love affair with big cars is killing them

#123

Post by uncanneyvalley »

chillingeffect wrote: post #85
uncanneyvalley wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even worse, many times SUVs are built on the same chassis as cars. Honda builds both the HR-V and CR-V on the Civic chassis, the Toyota RAV-4 is a Corolla underneath, and the Ford Escape is built on the Focus. This means many mid-sized SUVs are just tall cars.

I switch bt my Camry and my partner's Sportage. The Kia is a lumbering fatsuit of a vehicle only carrying marginally more cargo and feels like a cartoon beach buggy. But as a nation organized for war, we're conditioned to worship infrastructure, uniforms, equipment, clipboards, and the like.

It feels that way because it is. Depending on the age of your partner’s Sportage, it’s a Hyundai Elantra or Sonata in a fatsuit.

Re: Americans' love affair with big cars is killing them

#124

Post by penguin_booze »

Sadly, there's no more a thing called Americans' problem. Like an STD, what are later realized as problems, usually start in the US and then spread across the globe. Not that the rest of the world doesn't have their own crap, but because US media and culture is (one of) the the loudest, what's seen in America is often interpreted as cool and then copied rather readily and quickly. Guns seem to be buckling the trend so far, however.

Re: Americans' love affair with big cars is killing them

#125

Post by lamp_book »

idontwantthis wrote: post #42
morkalork wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Subaru Impreza and Crosstrek are a good example of that. Same engine, same electronics, same everything except a slightly differently shaped shell on the outside. Even the interior volume is practically the same!

That one is especially confusing to me because they even have the imprezza hatchback which likes identical to a crosstrek if you squint your eyes. Maybe they don’t sell that one anymore?

They actually dropped the Impreza sedan in the latest gen, it’s only the hatchback now.

I always disliked the crosstrek since it’s a heavier Impreza on an already dogged engine but they are/were the only manual version so some people were buying them for that.

Re: Americans' love affair with big cars is killing them

#126

Post by rzz3 »

taway1874 wrote: post #60
dionian wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like a heavier car is actually safer to put me and my loved ones inside, at least for now.

And this kind of thinking is how we end up with a society shown in the move Idiocracy. While you and your loved ones might survive at the cost of other more considerate people BUT the human race will become slightly dumber.

I can’t really understand where you’re coming from. Self preservation is at the absolute core of us all. You can’t honestly expect the average human to put the lives of unknown strangers before the lives of their own, as you say, loved ones.

Re: Americans' love affair with big cars is killing them

#127

Post by Groxx »

erikaww wrote: post #83
dataflow wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like this means taxes should be imposed on cars proportionally to the fourth power of axle load too.

Car makers would adjust but road freight would fight this tooth and nail

If only we had other technologies for moving heavy things without using concrete roads

Re: Americans' love affair with big cars is killing them

#128

Post by jl6 »

dataflow wrote: post #58
thot_experiment wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cars damage infrastructure in proportion to the fourth power of axle load. Not only are people in big cars killing people in little cars, they're also HEAVILY subsidized by the people they kill. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_power_law

I feel like this means taxes should be imposed on cars proportionally to the fourth power of axle load too.

The unintended consequences of this would be:

Massive increase in the cost of public transport as buses pass their tax costs onto users.

Massive increase in the cost of freight shipping, which would be passed on to consumers, i.e. everybody, since virtually every part of the economy depends indirectly on freight transport.

It would amount to everybody paying, and thus being more or less equivalent to public funding of roads.

Re: Americans' love affair with big cars is killing them

#129

Post by nothercastle »

sheepdestroyer wrote: post #27
ur-whale wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would you do differently if you owned a dealership ?

What's the added value of dealerships? They feel like parasites. The mere idea of having to negotiate prices like in an flea market is disturbing and disgusting to me. I want to be treated fairly and as well as the next guy. Fixed & open construtor prices and warranties, online customisation and ordering should be the only norm.

During normal times they add no value and create negative value for everyone. But during a downturn or when a manufacturer makes a dud model dealers can be forced to buy up excess and slowly feed it into the market as well as absorb the losses

Re: Americans' love affair with big cars is killing them

#130

Post by [deleted] »

Spooky23 wrote: post #102
roughly wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Key Ideas: Heavier vehicles are safer for their occupants but more dangerous for others: The weight of a vehicle is a critical factor in car crashes, with heavier vehicles causing more fatalities in other cars, pedestrians, and cyclists. I'm actually curious how much of this danger is primarily to pedestrians and cyclists. On the margins, I'd expect in a crash a 6000lb vehicle with modern safety equipment to be saf…

I think a lot of this is details lost in the stats. Every car is heavier due to safety standards. A 2024 Civic is bigger than a 1994 Accord. The pickups are less safe for all stakeholders and are a dominant category. They have poor safety features, handle poorly and have comically bad visibility. That plus the abandonment of speed enforcement drives death. 2000lb or 8000lb car, if you get hit at 45mph, you’re dead. V…

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