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Comment by toast0 | Hacker News Reader

Fuel efficiency standards killed the small truck. In the turn of the century EV era, Ford had an electric Ranger which was built on the much smaller (at the time) Ranger platform. But you can't make an ICE small truck that meets the 200x updated CAFE standards, so the small trucks either disapeared (S10) or got bigger (toyota small trucks), or got bigger then disappeared and later reappeared still big (Ranger).

An EV truck presumably can be any size, but there's no current small truck platform to build on.

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I have a few friends that are engineers in the auto companies. Its kind of amazing how many negative impacts the CAFE standards had--not on purpose (hopefully), but through unintended consequences. Apparently the Nissan Leaf for example was strictly manufactured to generate credits/offset the environmental impact of the Nissan truck and van line that could not be adjusted to meet the CAFE standards.

My dad had a Ranger in 97 that was just about the perfect truck for day-to-day use. It fit 2 adults comfortably, had a tiny 4 cylinder engine, got great gas milage, and could be used to pull a small trailer. He was crushed when Ford got rid of the Ranger. And what they've released now is basically the size of the old F-150 from the 90s

The "negative" impacts of CAFE standards were entirely by design. They were written that way to benefit the domestic auto industry, which is very uncompetitive in the small and midsized vehicle segments. By making smaller vehicles uncompetitive (or simply unavailable), it eliminated some serious competition.

I think a lot of people don't realize how many regulations are designed by incumbent domestic companies explicitly for the purposes of making foreign companies and upstarts noncompetitive.

You're right that CAFE is literally designed to favor trucks. And the definition is so vague that even vehicles like the PT Cruiser are considered Light Trucks for the purposes of CAFE. It is also designed to hurt small cars, because vehicles with footprints (wheelbase * wheel wide) smaller than a Mustang (literally, to the square inch) have to face ever-more-strict CAFE standards.

As a result, cars like the Fit are might face a CAFE penalty while a base F150 does a-okay despite getting like half the fuel economy. And that's not even getting into BS like flex fuel credits (basically, being flex fuel capable is like adding ~5mpg to the vehicle CAFE score).

This is exactly why every small vehicle is a crossover anymore (they are light trucks for CAFE purposes), and why cars like the Civic get are today, the size an Accord was in 2005 (CAFE is less strict the larger the vehicle is).

>Apparently the Nissan Leaf for example was strictly manufactured to generate credits/offset the environmental impact of the Nissan truck and van line that could not be adjusted to meet the CAFE standards.

Which seems pretty crazy if the net effect is that any car manufacturer has to produce a full line if they want to build any inefficient cars.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_tax worth a read.

"The tariff affected any country (such as Japan) seeking to bring light trucks into the U.S. and effectively "squeezed smaller Asian truck companies out of the American pickup market."[16] Over the intervening years, Detroit lobbied to protect the light-truck tariff, thereby reducing pressure on Detroit to introduce vehicles that polluted less and that offered increased fuel economy.[15]"

How effective was this at anything other than making loopholes big enough to drive a truck through, and eventually getting assembly moved to NAFTA countries?

Having a 40 mpg target for a small truck and a 25 mpg target for a big truck makes it pretty hard to build and sell a small truck.

Hmm, that's interesting. If manufacturers have been basically locked out of making small pickup trucks due to unattainable fuel efficiency requirements [1, 2], an implication of that is that as EVs become easier to make at reasonable cost, there's a potentially huge untapped market that could be filled by whoever is the first company to make a small, simple, and cheap electric pickup truck.

A modern version of, say, a Datsun 620 [3] or an 80's Ford Ranger [4] could be pretty popular. One might even be able to circumvent the chicken tax by importing the body/frame of a foreign-made truck and building an electric drive train in the U.S. or NAFTA country.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_average_fuel_economy...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_average_fuel_economy...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datsun_Truck#/media/File:Datsu...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Ranger#/media/File:1st-Fo...

> there's a potentially huge untapped market that could be filled by whoever is the first company to make a small, simple, and cheap electric pickup truck.

Well, the third really; Ford made 1500 1998-2001 Ford Ranger EVs, and Chevrolet made a few hundred 1997-1998 S10 EVs. But yeah, one with modern batteries and drive trains and (therefore) decent capacity and range could sell a bunch.

I've owned and driven a handful of trucks. Ranger sized trucks feel the least useful. Can't tow much. Can't haul much. Can't get into muck. Can't hold many people. Aerodynamics of a brick. An electric F150 is compelling. We just upgraded to a new one because we need the tow capacity and the F150 beat out the F250s we were looking at. It's a great size and checks all the boxes.

Small trucks may be the least useful, but they often provide(d) the right amount of utility. Lots of truck owners never go off the pavement and never tow, but make good use of the bed. With a 4-cylinder engine, fuel efficiency was not terrible, but it's a lot easier to put a pinball machine in the back of a truck than the back of a Honda Accord.

>Can't get into muck.

Huh? The shorter/narrower wheel base is better in any off-roading situation.

That's a strong statement. Heavier vehicles do better in snow because they fit in better. Trucks with more ground clearance can get up and over things that smaller trucks can't. If we're just talking about rock crawling, sure. If we're talking about practical use cases and messy conditions, I'll keep torque and weight on my side.

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