People buying SUVs are cancelling out climate gains from electric cars
newscientist.com
newscientist.com
Tragedy of the commons: everyone takes a bit more land to feed their extra goat, the field is overgrazed, all the goats starve. Ie, in wanting more we end up all losers
I can't count the amount of times I've had to delay turning at a stop sign to wait for a larger vehicle that has pulled up next to me to leave so I can regain visibility and make the turn. That or it becomes a game of edging out past the big vehicle.
Spending tens of thousands extra to make yourself safer on the road is surely better accomplished with better safety features in the car rather than tons of steel.
Rollover, Blindspot, and high speed loss of control are huge safety factors that SUVs underperform Sedans in, but "bigger is safer" has somehow persisted.
Quote: Among the increasingly popular heavy-duty models, the height of the truck’s front end may reach a grown man’s shoulders or neck. When you involve children in this exercise it starts to become really disturbing. My four-year-old son, for example, barely cleared the bumper on a lifted F-250 we came across in a parking lot last summer.
Since 1990, U.S. pickup trucks have added almost 1,300 pounds on average. Some of the biggest vehicles on the market now weigh almost 7,000 pounds — or about three Honda Civics. These vehicles have a voracious appetite for space, one that’s increasingly irreconcilable with the way cities (and garages, and parking lots) are built.
Rear-facing child seats are safer; what about a rear-facing third row?
We have a giant problem with climate change yet car manufacturers keep making larger and larger cars. And people buy them. This does not make any sense to me. It only accelerates climate change, parking spaces become even harder to find in cities, and most people don't need an SUV at all.
I think SUVs and all large trucks that are not real utility vehicles should be outlawed.
The massive push for EVs while simultaneously allowing car manufacturers to build larger and larger ICE SUVs seems stupid and counterproductive.
And yeah, my behaviors that have harmful externalities should also be taxed.
We NEED the SUV- even if I only put all 4 kids in it 25% of the time, se still need it
Don’t claim you “NEED the SUV” when you really don’t.
Sure, you may WANT the SUV, but that’s not the same thing as NEEDING the SUV.
If we really examine the differences at a fact level, the main child(ren) factor is really the height (not having to bend over @ a car seat). A small convenience, and a convenience that points to Americans continuing to have less physical mobility.
Anecdotally, I do think more people are complaining about the difficulty of squatting down to my sedan seats.
There really isn’t an affordable electric option for people with kids.
I preemptively answered this by saying extended friends and family are a top source of transit.
But yes, walking, bus systems, getting rides, for some demographics, ride shares. Cities like Atlanta and Dallas have low economic mobility because you can't get anywhere except by car.
Or even two Model Ys, for the same money, because while 2x purchase price is over $100k, the TCO is so much lower than for an ICE car, and it’s really the TCO (total cost of ownership including everything after purchase) that matters if your worry is affordability.
So assuming two parents, it works for people with up to five kids, or if they have two drivers in the family, up to 12 kids. Most families have fewer than 12 children.
Even if you didn’t have two car seats it’s unlikely that any of the kids stuff will fit as well. Kids come with a lot of stuff in general.
I bought my Tahoe for $30k, I looked at Tesla but we couldn’t afford the 100k price tag of the model X.
For people who are in lower or lower middle class total cost of ownership is something that you can’t really take into consideration because it’s easy to flex the amount spent on gas by reducing the driving around and being more efficient with your errands, but you can’t flex your payments.
Lastly while 57k isn’t bad for an electric vehicle, it’s still far from affordable for a large portion of Americans.
Interesting point, sounds like an unserved need that maybe could be a business opportunity for somebody.
Another thing you can’t flex is repairs, which tend to be more frequent for ICE cars.
> I would argue that if you had two car seats the third row would be completely in accessible.
I think you meant to say “I would imagine.”
And as is frequently the case with people underestimating Tesla, you would imagine wrong.
You can put not just two, but THREE car seats in the second row and still access the third row. The second row seats move forward easily and temporarily to enable this.
Hank Williams’ daughter died in a Tahoe and my thought at the time was: someone like that, why weren’t they in a Model Y?
Later found out they were towing a boat. Choices.
https://css.umich.edu/factsheets/personal-transportation-fac...
In my case, I have a pickup truck I need for work, but I don't drive enough outside of work to justify the cost of keeping my smaller car on the road also.
I would load my 3 kids up, take them to day care, got to work. My wife would pick them up from day care and I would drive home without kids.
The SUV was the smallest vehicle I could get to transport 3 kids in car seats. And I needed to drive my kids to day care.