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New cars are getting 1.2cm longer and 0.5cm taller each year

transportenvironment.org

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Re: New cars are getting 1.2cm longer and 0.5cm taller each year

#81

Post by jjav »

mulderc wrote: post #9

Cars have become absurd. We have an older car, and I occasionally look at what we could replace it with, and everything is huge and expensive. Literally, the only car I have been interested in is from BYD and will never be available in my country.

The philosophy that most resonates with me is Colin Chapman's "simplify, then add lightness”, so I really hate everything about what cars have become (even ignoring the spyware part, for a moment).

I want to buy a car that is like the 1988 CRX HF but with almost 40 years of engine and materials engineering advancement. That car with primitive mid-80s fuel injection could do 49 MPG and weight was about 1800lbs.

I am certain with modern engine control technology and judicious use of carbon fiber (without making it excessively expensive) Honda should be able to build a 2026 CRX HF that is 1700lb and get maybe 80 MPG. I wish they would. I wish governments would allow them to build it.

Re: New cars are getting 1.2cm longer and 0.5cm taller each year

#82

Post by wolvoleo »

fakedang wrote: post #76
wolvoleo wrote: post #46

And this is in EU, not even America where cars have always been tanks. I do think we will see fewer on the road though. In my city more and more streets are being pedestrianised. And unlimited public transport is only 24€ and amazing quality. Most of the people who still drive are rich foreigners that don't know any better. And also still view them as a status symbol. Outside cities public transport isn't great thoug…

A rising trend in the EU has been new buyers going for SUVs. People, especially those with families, have been buying them as sort of an insurance against accidents. You're far less likely to die in an SUV than in a sedan. Although that does mean that you become a much bigger risk for those who drive sedans.

Yes I know, I've seen that in some countries which are still very car-centric like Holland and others too. My ex's sister immediately went from a Yaris to this tank of an SUV when she got a baby.

However it is very much status symbol as well. The most expensive car they own must always be prominently displayed in the driveway with the front forward, and she's always fussy about the child making a mess in the livingroom because it functions more as a museum for the expensive furniture and neighbour-approved family life that she loves to display to the neighbours in her conservative-rich street. I'm pretty sure the SUV wasn't actually for protection but rather for wealth flaunting and virtue signalling (this lady is also very much 'family values'). So she instructed her sister several times to not have any pride stuff lying around which we had lots of lol.

I drove a 12 year old Volvo and she always hated that and wanted me to park far away. And all my furniture was IKEA when I lived there (and still is where I live now). I haven't owned a car for 9 years now.

I really hated her but my ex was a bit of the black sheep in the family, very hippie and happy-go-lucky like me.

But anyway, I just want to point out, the SUV is to certain Europeans as the Pick-Up is to certain Americans.

Re: New cars are getting 1.2cm longer and 0.5cm taller each year

#83

Post by wolvoleo »

TacticalCoder wrote: post #62
avidiax wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> scale with weight Road damage scales with axle weight to the fourth power (w^4). So if a 500lbs motorcycle is the unit of damage, a 4,000 lbs sedan does 4,096 units of damage (4096x as much), a 6,000 lbs SUV/pickup does 20,736x, a 14,000 lbs delivery van does 614,000x, and the 80,000 lbs US federal limit 5 axle semi-trailer does 90,800,000x the damage of the motorcycle. So probably shipping stuff in trucks doesn't…

> So probably shipping stuff in trucks doesn't cost enough, and SUVs/pickups should cost 5x for road tax what sedans do. Nope because the numbers you just posted exemplify what every knows: road cars don't even register on the radar compared to semi-trailers. The tax for "road damage" should be approximately zero for cars, any cars, and way more expensive for semis. But people who hate on cars don't want to hear the…

> But people who hate on cars don't want to hear the truth: they're all too happy to take their bicycle to go buy the milk the semis brought to their city.

The truth is it's not all about road damage. In fact I couldn't care less about that because I don't really use those roads anyway.

Tax is more about driving behaviour than anything.

Re: New cars are getting 1.2cm longer and 0.5cm taller each year

#84

Post by wolvoleo »

cpursley wrote: post #10
HughParry wrote: post #2

The new Audi Q9 is absurd - https://www.topgear.com/car-news/suvs/gargantuan-new-audi-q9...

What’s even more absurd is the Chinese vehicles in the same class have better tech and prices. German auto manufacturing is cooked unless they manage to legally block the Chinese in their primary markets.

Well of course they are cheaper because China has much lower labour costs and they prop up their own industry. The same way they did with solar panels which killed the local EU industry for those.

However we can get one back at China and help our own climate goals more by not buying cars at all

Re: New cars are getting 1.2cm longer and 0.5cm taller each year

#85

Post by wolvoleo »

cosmic_cheese wrote: post #13
dexihand wrote: post #3

Cafe standards.

That’s part of the picture, but the US also has a considerable “my vehicle is an extension of myself” or “my vehicle is a major pillar of my identity” thing going on. That’s how we ended up with so many pavement princess trucks and SUVs shoehorned in where a minivan or hatchback would’ve been a better fit.

This is sadly not exclusive to America. In Holland when a neighbour gets a new car the whole street comes out to ooh and aah about it and for a week you hear nothing but gossip about how he managed to buy another few car after only 27 months, he must be moving up in life. Yuck

Re: New cars are getting 1.2cm longer and 0.5cm taller each year

#86

Post by wolvoleo »

moffkalast wrote: post #70
MSKJ wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no malicious compliance, just compliance. Who would they be malicious to? There is enough competition, it would only hurt their bottom line

To the consumers who hate big bloated cars? It's not like people can or would say they want less safety in exchange for something smaller. There are arbitrary metrics to hit and that's all people look at. The more people say "this car looks absurd" the more it hurts their bottom line.

Also the business model will definitely shift more to services. A car will be not just the matter of buying it, but renting services on it like FSD, paying by data collection (which pays for 30%+ of the actual cost of current gen TVs etc).

And in cars they make it much harder to disable data collection. For safety of course.

Re: New cars are getting 1.2cm longer and 0.5cm taller each year

#87

Post by dingaling »

comradesmith wrote: post #51
mulderc wrote: post #9

Cars have become absurd. We have an older car, and I occasionally look at what we could replace it with, and everything is huge and expensive. Literally, the only car I have been interested in is from BYD and will never be available in my country.

Get a Honda Civic Type R

Which is now bigger than the Accord used to be, thereby proving the point.

Re: New cars are getting 1.2cm longer and 0.5cm taller each year

#88

Post by moltar »

mulderc wrote: post #9

Cars have become absurd. We have an older car, and I occasionally look at what we could replace it with, and everything is huge and expensive. Literally, the only car I have been interested in is from BYD and will never be available in my country.

How about Yaris hybrid? It’s quite small, great performance, and very reliable.

Re: New cars are getting 1.2cm longer and 0.5cm taller each year

#89

Post by KingMachiavelli »

As much as I like to hate on larger cars. In reality, I use my SUV (3 row, Subaru Ascent) all the time for camping and outdoor activities (80% of weekends or so). I just took out the middle seats to build a full-size bed platform (75x45” or so).

My wife also drives a smaller Forester that we realize could have been an EV or hybrid. Although in CA, electricity is so expensive that it’s not much improvement over gas especially if you spend more on the car itself. Really, just a same model year but more fuel efficient sedan or one of those old 100-mile range EV cars is what you have to “downgrade” too.

Of course, it’s silly seeing all the oversized, sparkling clean massive trucks and SUVs on my commute while I’m driving my heavily scratched glorified minivan (since that’s what SUVs are now days).

Re: New cars are getting 1.2cm longer and 0.5cm taller each year

#90

Post by the_mitsuhiko »

frollogaston wrote: post #47
the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #26

The wild thing for me is that we just recently bought an XC90 and an American friend asked me how we're managing with three kids in a "compact SUV". That car is about as large as cars get over here for the most part.

Weird, XC90 wouldn't normally be considered a compact SUV here in the US

I guess they might have said mid-size? But definitely not large SUV.
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