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Comment by taf2 | Hacker News Reader

or you have 3 kids and baby and need the space to drive them music lessons and pick up their friends

If it were only about hauling people then isn't a minivan as good or better? But U.S. manufacturers are abandoning minivans even more quickly than sedans-- only Chrysler still makes one, Ford and GM don't.

The chicken tax and the "cool" factor / branding must play a role over and above the raw utility of hauling lots of people, surely?

Three-row crossovers are just minivans with different styling. The 2018 chevy traverse only has 23mm more ground clearance than the toyota sienna. If you put sliding doors on it instead of standard rear doors, it would be a minivan.

The current state of minivans is probably as much a fashion thing as anyone else. People not wanting to see themselves as soccer moms.

A lot of whitewater paddling friends actually favor minivans because they find them more convenient for lots of gear and shuttling people than SUV configurations.

We have a crossover and a wagon. I want to get a minivan or a suburban.

The minivan-shaped hole in the market is being filled by crossovers.

But really it's a longer story than that. Minivans had previously replaced station wagons, and the crossovers of today tend to look like a cross between a minivan and a wagon.

Crossovers seem to me to be the worst of all worlds. They have poor gas mileage and terrible highway aerodynamics like large SUVs and have limited trunk space while lacking "utility" features such as trailer hitch mounts or 4WD as standard.

Yes, but many, many people have no use for factory hitches, 4x4, or 6500lb towing capacities. What they want is interior room for passengers, high roofline, visibility, and elevated vantage point. As minivans became unhip (& expensive), consumers found these things in SUV's, but didn't like the price, gas mileage, handling, or safety. So SUV's evolved towards hatches & wagons with better aero, car-like handling, and monocoque frames, and the crossover was born.

They make different tradeoffs than trucks and truck-like SUVs. You don't prefer those tradeoffs, but plenty of people do.

They get better gas milage than any truck or truck based SUV.

Their aero isn't as good as a car but it's better than a truck based SUV.

Fold the seats and you've got a trunk only slightly smaller than a minivan without the 3rd row.

AWD SUVs are readily available and generally the standard. FWD is generally reserved for people who want to go out of their way to be economical about it.

Trailer hitch is solved with $300 and a trip to Uhaul (or for the mechanically inclined: $120, Amazon and a 30% chance of needing a drill). With modern horsepower and brakes you can comfortably tow some stupidly large stuff with crossovers so long as you've got a weight distribution hitch to take some of the weight off the rear axle.

Crossovers do nothing great but they do everything passably well, just like the station wagons of the 1950s-80s they replaced.

There's a broad range that meet lots of different needs. I have a '17 Kia Soul Exclaim. 1.6L turbo 5-door crossover. I can haul 4 adults comfortably and the trunk has more space than I usually use for groceries/gear. It does lack the trailer hitch and 4WD of the Wrangler I traded for it, but $100 fixes the hitch and I don't haul enough or go off-roading to need 4WD. I get 30mpg highway and that little turbo engine can really zip around. It's very fun to drive.

4WD w/o a central differential is useless for most people who use their cars on paved roads. AWD on the other hand, especially viscous coupling auto AWD is quite useful. The trailer mount is only useful for a bike carrier or a light semi trailer.

My family got a Toyota minivan in 2003, and I love it. Today, we use it mostly for hauling musicians and their instruments, or for going on longer trips. A couple years ago we rented a giant Ford Expedition SUV, and it seemed like it had remarkably little interior space compared to our van.

I like being elevated from the ground, especially in bumper-to-bumper traffic. It's comfortable to sit up. But it's big and consumes gas, and we also have a subcompact. So the van mainly lives in the garage and we use our bicycles for getting around when we can.

People have told me that they got a "crossover" or SUV because the minivan carries the soccer-mom stigma. But damn, talk about utility.

Soccer moms drive SUVs nowadays.

Indeed, my friend told me she got a Pacifica because she didn't want to look like a soccer mom. She was in fact a soccer mom. And I said to her: "I've got news for you..."

Everyone I've ever known with a minivan has had any number of issues with the vehicle in terms of reliability. From the side door track/motors to the undersized/cramped engine with any number of design compromises.

I would NEVER recommend a minivan to anyone, ever.

What else do you pick if you have >=3 kids? Or if you're a travel guide with up to four passengers?

I have two kids, and we're thinking about a third, so we're looking around at options to replace our sedan. Here's what I've decided:

- SUVs with a third row suck for anyone in the third row, and they get horrible gas mileage - few sedans and SUVs are big enough for two car seats and a booster - minivans are expensive and frequently have annoying mechanical issues

I think I've settled on the Mazda 5 because:

- three kids + cargo (fold down one back seat) is doable - reasonable gas mileage - comfortable for six adults (going out with friends with a babysitter at home)

Unfortunately, they aren't making them anymore. I really have driving SUVs and trucks, but sedans are too small for my family now. Minivans, while completely "uncool", are the best option for people who need to haul people and stuff at the same time.

Just in case your family grows like mine, get this: https://www.chevrolet.com/commercial/express-passenger-van

Store extra rows of seats in your garage until you need them.

I don't have a problem with SUVs... frankly, my only opposition to mini vans is the fact that I've never seen one without significant issues in 5 years of ownership or less.

Isn't that just the craziest thing? How can something so useful be so unpopular?

Sure, but that's so far outside the norm as to be almost irrelevant.

The average family size in the US is a hair over 3 (two parents, one child, roughly). In 2017, light truck sales were roughly double the sales of cars.

"Average" is a particularity bad way to measure this data point. Especially if you have a split distribution with a lot of childless families and lot with a number of children.

You measure average and no one is average.

Sure, but the numbers still fall in my favor. Of families with children in the household (where the mother is near the end of child-bearing age), about ~60% have 1 or 2, ~25% have 3, and the remaining ~15% have 4 or more.[1] Add in households with no children, and the "large family, need a 7-passenger vehicle" demographic gets quite small.

1 - http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2015/05/07/family-size-among-...

By your own numbers, 40% of families consist of 5 or more people. That's a pretty hefty chunk.

And sure, technically you can fit five people in a sedan, but it ain't comfortable in the slightest, especially when you have carseats. An SUV or minivan is much more practical for this 40% chunk of US families.

And as mentioned elsewhere, it's not always just the mom/dad and kids. You might have the family dog, band instruments, friends, non-core-family relatives, a month's worth of groceries, etc.

Plus, even as one person, I've gotten a lot of good use out of my Highlander because I can fold down the seats and haul relatively-large things (like furniture) and keep the seats up and drive people around without having to own two separate vehicles to do it. As a bonus, AWD and all-terrain tires means that I can do these things during snowstorms and/or on unpaved mountain roads with relative safety and ease compared to your run-of-the-mill FWD (or - worse - RWD) sedan (the latter activity is niche, for sure, but the former is typically routine for vast majority of car-owning Americans living north of the Mason-Dixon Line).

40% of families with children. There are plenty of households with no children, single people, etc.

But even those people - as I just described - can still find immense benefit in owning something bigger than a sedan.

So what you are saying is about 40% of families need 5 seats minimum?

And if you want to be able to transport anyone else (kids have a friend coming over, give someone a ride, etc, etc) you need a 7 passenger vehicle?

How is that "quite small"?

In my demographic, it is considered important to have a vehicle that will also accommodate a child's friend or two. Thus, 2 child households with 3rd row vehicles are quite common.

Not disagreeing but in Japan a lot of families handle this with Kei format cars like Daihatsu Tanto. The biggest family car I see in Japan is Toyota Alphard/Vellfire.

Do you know how Japanese norms/laws around child car seats differ?

I feel this is part of what's changed in the US: the 70s station wagon worked for 3-4 kids in a row, but to fit 4 enormous small-person seats you need a minivan.

In Japan it is common to see children walking around inside a car while it is being driven. Seat belts and child seats are seen as optional by some.

Kei cars only seat 4 people, but people do squeeze 5 in on occasion, especially when it comes to kids.

The Japanese equivalent is four grandparents in wheelchairs. (Kidding!) I don’t have kids, so I’m not sure about child seats. I was doing the mental math on how one couple could produce four kids who need child seats until I remembered twins, triplets, etc.

Kids are required to be in car seats until age 8 in most states.

Yup. If you have a child ever other year (pretty reasonable) and have four kids, the oldest will still be in a booster when the fourth is born.

We have two kids (oldest is four and still in a booster) and we're considering a third, which is also making us seriously consider a larger car. We'll either need a larger car or a smaller car seat because we cannot currently fit three seats in our sedan (or at least, I don't think we can).

I looked it up. It’s the same in Japan. As someone who grew up crawling around in the footwell of a VW Bug at highway speeds, that sounds both exceedingly prudent and a bit unrealistic. You can definitely fit four car seats in an Alphard because it’s a full sized minivan. The kei cars are legally limited to driver plus three passengers anyway, I think.

Or buy a 4 child seat.

https://multimac.co.uk/p/multimac_1320_4_seater

Kei cars are also surprisingly roomy inside. I'm 194cm tall, and I fit better in a Suzuki Alto then in the old Volvo 740 (there was a dark spot in the cloth ceiling of our family Volvo where my dad and my heads would rub against it).

Of course the sacrifice is the complete removal of crumple zones...

But if everyone drives lightweight cars, the need for crumple zones is probably greatly diminished, right?

You wouldn‘t have to drive your kids around if your country weren‘t designed primarily for cars.

And this helps the discussion how, exactly?

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