How Cars Turned Into Giant Killers

They are just getting started of importing these cars to Germany. Every day I see more Ford pickup trucks in my City, thanks, I hate it. In the streets, there are more cars than people. They do not even fit on the property, so everybody just parks on the street, and this makes it real dangerous for scooter and cyclists.

Game theory predicts the “race to biggest” vehicles. The only way to stop it is through regulation and disincentives.

However, it’s important to consider future trends in automotive technology. Eventually, every new car sold will be an EV - so the pollution issue becomes much less of a concern, with a few pedantic caveats. Cars will also become self-driving.

Solve for the equilibrium. People will want rooms on the road - a self-driving, self-charging boat of a car that you can sleep in while it takes you from LA to Lake Tahoe overnight. It’ll even reach into the drive-thru window at McDonald’s and put your breakfast on a table for you to eat while facing your family members on a comfy sofa. Cars will become like miniature, smart, electric RVs minus the bathroom and ugly clunkiness. And since people won’t be driving them, and theoretically they can achieve super-human reaction time and sensing, maybe pedestrian safety will become less of an issue.

So regulation is tricky. I do think there should be an extra tax to price in the negative externality of large vehicles, but the government shouldn’t go too far with that and it shouldn’t preempt innovation in vehicle format.

It's the regulations and abusive media tactics that led to the near extinction of traditional (V8, rear wheel drive, American made) cars, which forced consumers to flee to the closest substitute: light trucks.

That seems disingenuous. No doubt there are some car owners who do care about these things, but the vast majority of drivers would likely be hard-pressed to know what type of engine their car has, or what the differences between rear and front drive are. Most people select cars based on some mix of cost, perceived safety, utility, and by what other people they know are getting.

(edit) Went to add sourcing and was surprised to find that while most of the things I listed were accurate, fuel efficiency turns out to be one I significantly underestimated: https://www.statista.com/chart/13075/most-important-factors-...

I am glad the article mentions CAFE standards. Government CAFE regulations are the primary reason vehicles like Trucks and SUVs have gotten so much larger in recent years, and almost no one talks about it when these conversations come up.

Simply put, CAFE standards were modified to include a vehicle "footprint" measured in square feet in addition to vehicle weight. The larger the footprint, the lower the fuel efficiency standards for the vehicle. The intent was to give a break to heavy work trucks that needed more powerful engines, while still forcing passenger cars to be more efficient. The unintended consequence was that automakers now had a loophole to sidestep stricter emissions standards: just make the vehicle larger and heavier.

This is a good article on the subject, with graphs on the CAFE fuel efficiency target curves in it (scroll down a bit to see them):

https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1111946_for-pickup-truc...