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Comment by pionar | Hacker News Reader

I've never been one of those things, but they're still useful. I had an F150 for a while that I only used to transport things like mulch or helping friends move or moving myself.

I still have an old Ranger that I use for those purposes today.

It seems insane to assume you can be the judge of what's "useful" or "utility".

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A truck is great to have for all kinds of reasons. I think the issue is that a combination of automaker marketing and various regulatory and tax incentves/loopholes drive people to purchase more trucks than they otherwise would.

Specifically, the Section 179 deductions available on vehicles that weight in excess of 6000lbs. A business doesn't need to prove need to make use of the tax advantage. This encourages real estate agents, sales people, etc to buy new large SUVs instead of leasing or buying second hand sedans that would otherwise be suitable (Mercedes E-Class, etc). And contractors that could use smaller vehicles (Transit Connect, Ranger) to buy F-150s or large vans.

It's basically a massive kick-back to Ford and Chevy.

I think you're being a bit unfair. We all agree that they're useful, but surely in a world win which we need to

a) reduce road and parking space in order to encourage better forms of transportation ,

b) reduce our consumption of natural resources

,maybe we need to discourage individual ownership of 3000kg utility vehicles?

In the US, discouraging individual ownership of vehicles is probably not going to succeed. I don't want to give up my car and I suspect that electric vehicles and self driving vehicles (when they get here) are going to drive the cost of trips way, way down which will increase the number of trips by a similar amount. The number of vehicles on the road is going to increase.

Because of the increased demand on raods, reducing road space probably won't happen. When cars can get to and from parking spaces by themselves, parking space can move into central towers or edge lots, but the number of spaces is probably going to increase, not decrease.

We all want better forms of transportation, but there's a lot of disagreement about what's better.

> I think you're being a bit unfair. We all agree that they're useful, but surely in a world win which we need to

>a) reduce road and parking space in order to encourage better forms of transportation ,

I don't see that happening. SUV's and pickups are so popular in the US because most cities are more similar to Houston and LA than NYC or Chicago.

We probably just need fewer people.

Nice anecdote. Here, I'll add mine:

My wife at the time bought an SUV, a Toyota Highlander. She never went off road, we didn't have any children, she never hauled anything. 90% of her driving was to and from work on paved roads, a job that could have been accomplished with a Honda Civic.

Now let's play another fun game: how many truck and SUV owners do you think are like you, and how many do you think are like my ex-wife?

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