Small cars are getting larger – are fuel economy regulations to blame?
thedrive.com
thedrive.com
Where it goes wrong is at the bottom of the line. There are now so many safety regulations (I am looking at you, EU), that these cars get heavier and more costly to make. Many manufacturers decide to step out or up their game. 10 years ago, the cheapest model of a manufacturer would maybe be 10 thousand Euro. Now it easily starts at 15 thousand Euro, and it will mostly be a model of some years ago. New models at the low and small end are priced heavier, because of all these safety regulations.
True, but with the State incentives to scrap old models, you can buy a FIAT Panda for 8 thousand euros
But the Panda of 2022 is a much better car than the 80s Panda, that costed more than that adjusting for inflation.
Same inflation-adjusted price is terrible performance. You're talking about the price of mass-produced machinery. That should be going down, like every other industrial product.
Other parts could similarly be crappy, have upgrades and the manufacturer could set up a second hand part market. They might even invite even cheaper knock offs.
Note that expensive entry level cars compete with the used cars. Plenty of them. Somehow those are still able to drive on the road despite not having all those safety features (and polluting more).
small car is Skoda citigo with 3.5m or Fiat Panda with 3.7m
Dacia Sandero, Fiat Panda, Mitsubishi Space Star, Renault Clio, the Hyundai i10...
3.5m Skoda Citigo (aka VW Up) is very popular here in Czechia as company/delivery car
You can see some VW Up! around under the Seat Mii brand, but right know they're a bit expensive, being over 10 or 12K.
They're sensible things, but each adds weight. Most of them scale sub-linearly with vehicle size, so the burden literally weighs heavier on small cars.
We also cannot flatly ignore consumer preference. Two door car options used to be incredibly popular. But ask a new car buyer today if they are willing to part with rear passenger doors to save $1500 on their car and they will look at you like you are crazy.
The iPad mini is in the same boat now too. It used to be the most popular iPad for a while because it was also the cheapest. But then they started updating it and moving it up the pricing ladder. It’s basically a smaller version of the Air except that just got updated to a M1.
you can have either nice mini for 50% extra over SE or archaic design for reasonable price
and then people are surprised why these are not selling, maybe just maybe how about providing nice design for reasonable price? but of course that world cannibalize sales of other models they wanna push, so let's blame the small phones
for the record Samsung S10e was best selling Samsung model in Czechia the year it was released
people argue that S22 has similar dimensions (4mm longer), but with no SD card, no jack, but most importantly starting price was roughly 10% higher than S10e and with S10e the price dropped after 3.5 months 30%, while with S22 we see less than 10% drop after 2.5 months and I doubt they will catch up the drop in the one month
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in...
The only blip came from the introduction of smartphones (distracted driving). But I think people just need to know one of the tradeoffs has been fuel economy.
Oh man, I would totally do this. I have so many other things I want to spend $1500 on.
(Not saying the average car buyer would do this or trying to dispute your point. Just sayin' I would.)
I'm not sure if those are sold in the United States, I think you also aren't big fans of station wagons which are very common in Europe.
Size is occasionally a good reason. Someone who needs to carry 15 passengers needs a van, and someone with a heavy load to haul needs a truck. The trend in the US, however has been for people who only need cars to drive trucks and large SUVs.
Outright telling people what to drive seems like government overreach to me, but there may be another way: adjust the standards so that large vehicles don't get special treatment. Selling too many large vehicles would then hurt a car manufacturer's average and they would be incentivized to stop making such vehicles as appealing for everyday use, e.g. by removing luxury options.
Why?
Of course, it's absurdly huge (2300Kg, 5 metes long...) and its price is almost 100K€. It's not precisely popular.
https://www.dgt.es/nuestros-servicios/tu-vehiculo/tus-vehicu...
BEVs will get cheaper faster as battery manufacturing ramps. No need to waste any more effort on combustion technology and infra.
If you live in a city and mostly use the car for commuting/shopping, this can make a lot of sense, and that's not a small market.
One problem with this usage mode is that it can leave the petrol engine unused for very long periods, which will ultimately lead to problems (I think some hybrids will now deliberately periodically run it for a bit to deal with this).
And then you still have gas for a longer trip somewhere with no charging infra. But those trips will hopefully be rarer. And when you’re going 60+ mph on these longer trips, you’re only ever burning fuel at the engine’s better efficiency.
I think there’s a good place for this tech in some lifestyles.
EVs are obviously the future, but intermediate vehicles to help people get into EVs aren’t bad. If someone chooses a plugin-hybrid over gas, but would have chosen gas over EV for range and charging reasons, it’s a good improvement
That's true in theory. Unfortunately in practice - at least where I live - Hybrids don't get charged at home. People buy hybrids for the tax/other benefits but just park them on public roads. Which means that you get the worst possible state where you have pseudo-green ICE vehicles that run with a lot of extra weight in the form of a basically useless electric motor. (Except for recuperating but that's not worth it)
EVs don’t make sense for people who don't have reserved parking spaces with charging. Until that problem is solved, hybrids are a pretty good idea.
They can go for weeks without turning the ICE on.
I do also think it's not a bad stepping stone to bring people towards full electric cars: they get used to a car that you charge at home. Meanwhile the charging network gets better and better and cities/countries get the time to adapt too (there's no way everybody can charge a full electric car at home without changes to the current grids).
I don't see what's wrong with ICE -> plug-in hybrid -> full electric.
Combustion maintenance intervals are doubled on the PHEV vs a conventional gas only vehicle. And the transaxle shouldn't require any service (although Ford had some manufacturing defects and a recently got a new one under warranty).
Battery manufacturing improvements would improve a PHEV too. Smaller batteries would take up less storage space (C-Max design is suboptimal) or allow for a bigger EV range with the same volume.
Hybrid gas engines should be sized to only operate the vehicle on flat ground at highway speeds, so around 10-15KW tops.
Battery plus a 10KW ICE can get you over a mountain pass. Going slower is always an option.
You should back up these strong opinions with some facts. Hybrid batteries which minuscule compared to EVs, put out 25kw+ instantaneous power. More than enough to beat ICE cars across the intersection.
Which is exactly the problem with hybrid batteries - the peak power demanded from them is about the same as a pure EV, but each cell is put under much greater load because there are fewer of them. Those tiny, over-stressed hybrid batteries will not last very long. Not that many people will notice, as they just want a car that can take them where they want to go.
Even a non-plug hybrid isn't really the worst of both worlds. The battery replacement is relatively cheap when it eventually needs it, it's gentler on the gas engine that and ICE car, and won't waste gas running the engine while you're not moving.
As for anemic/not exciting to drive, yeah, true. It's not that important for me to have an exciting car, and I think most people don't see that as a top priority.
As someone who has neither a garage, nor a driveway, I have to park on the street. So I have no convenient place to charge a vehicle at home.
And probably neither does anyone else in a community built pre-WW2:
You're also assuming the electric grids around the world can handle this increase in load.
With regards to charging infra, yes, I assume at the current global production rate of ~2 million EVs/year built and sold, the electric grid can absorb these new distributed loads (which are roughly the same draw as a large central heat pump, 20-40amps). There are already systems to orchestrate vehicle charging when there is excess clean energy on a local grid (“DER”). Tesla supports this today with a Scandinavian utility, no different then your Nest thermostat shedding AC load during peak power demand but the inverse.
Below is a list of jurisdictions banning new fossil fuel vehicle sales and when the bans go into effect. Everyone has plenty of notice to prepare.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase-out_of_fossil_fuel_vehic...
Your heat pump comment makes my point for me. This is additional draw on top of what homes already draw today. Yes, it's just a 20-50amp draw, but this is a new draw and will be there year around, along when a heat pump may also be running.
And while you point out that there is regulation around the sale of electric vehicles, is there regulation around the production of clean energy? What to expect to happen with Russia cutting off natural gas, and the US slowing down or stopping the permitting of new drilling locations of natural gas. Where do you expect all of the energy to charge these electric vehicles to come from as the world seems to push back against fossil fuels for powering our grid. World leaders are still hesitant about nuclear. But they're also fighting fossil fuels at the same time. Solar, wind, and hydro will not be enough to cover this increase demand plus normal growth.
That is a patently ridiculous claim.
The most efficient coal power stations approach 50% thermal efficiency. Near 15% of that is lost in power line transmission, and another 15% or so in EV charging cycle losses.
Modern diesels approach 40% thermal efficiency.
Also, this completely ignores one of the main benefits of EVs - that is, externalising emissions and pollution away from the point of use.
> Electric Cars Are Cleaner Even When Powered by Coal
> Emissions from EVs 40% lower than gasoline cars, BNEF says Researcher expects difference to grow as clean energy expands
> That’s the conclusion of research by BloombergNEF, which found carbon dioxide emissions from battery-powered vehicles were about 40 percent lower than for internal combustion engines last year.
https://thedriven.io/2019/12/09/are-evs-cleaner-than-ice-coa...
https://cgscholar.com/bookstore/works/the-climate-change-mit...
"an average ICE vehicle will emit around 69 metric tonnes in its lifetime.
But an EV, in a state like Wyoming which is almost completely powered by coal, will only produce 66 metric tonnes if the vehicle is made by a manufacturer using a grid that is 13% renewables (the US national average)."
My back-of-the-envelope maths shows that fuelling an EV from a coal power source results in about the same thermal efficiency, and thus about the same CO2 emissions, as a modern diesel. Those published numbers show the same thing. I thought saving the planet required truly drastic reductions in CO2 output?
"Generally, the larger the vehicle footprint, the lower the corresponding vehicle fuel economy target. Footprint-based standards help to distribute the burden of compliance across all vehicles and all manufacturers. Manufacturers are not compelled to build vehicles of any particular size or type (nor does the proposed rule create an incentive to do so), and each manufacturer will have its own fleet-wide production-weighted standard that reflects the vehicles it chooses to produce." [0]
"CAFE standards signaled the end of the traditional long station wagon, but Chrysler CEO Lee Iacocca developed the idea of marketing the minivan as a station wagon alternative, while certifying it in the separate truck category to allow compliance with less-strict CAFE standards."
0. https://www.nhtsa.gov/staticfiles/rulemaking/pdf/cafe/2017-2...
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_average_fuel_economy...
That seems remarkably optimistic, given the recent history of US tax policy (recent == last 200 years or so).
In my country taxes on gas are incredibly high, they account for more than 70% of the cost at the pump, still we have one of the highest number of cars per capita in Europe.
for comparison in USA gas costs around 70 Euro cents per liter, while here is close to 2 euros per liter (depending on the brand between 1.79 and 1.89).
I think it would be hard to make people pay more than that, look at what happened in France with the gilets jaunes when they tried.
The only possible way I see to reduce car traffic is to stop making new roads, gradually close existing ones and enhance public transport and proximity to allow people to walk.
Massive claim, particular if you're trying to map over both North America and Europe. Far from clear that this is true in the European case. Happy to see citations that prove otherwise.
It does depend on the price elasticity of the demand for driving. I found this article [1] which finds that if fuel prices go up by 10%, people drive 1% less in the short term, and over the long term, about 3% less. This of course varies greatly from place to place, among different income levels, etc.
By the way, one car that the article doesn't mention, which bucks all these trends, is the Mazda MX-5 Miata. The 2022 model is very similar in every dimension to the 1990 model, and uses 25% less fuel despite having 50% more power. The later model weighs only 10% more even though it meets 30 more years worth of crash standards.
I also don’t understand how the crosstrek gets to be a light truck since it doesn’t meet the first requirements of open bed/3 rows/10 pass. Maybe in this sentence the author meant “may instead” instead of “must also”?
> Perhaps most crucially, however, light trucks must also meet a set of measured requirements that deem them capable of "off-highway operation."
Finally, I’d really like a full-size sedan but there’s a lack of options in the market right now. This used to be something that dominated sales. The Civic is “growing” but it is still 20 inches shorter than an 80s Olds 88? Even the extra long Audi a8 is five inches shorter. Stretching a car in the middle should do little to harm the fuel economy, all the heavy parts are already dealt with, but it appears that available car lengths are being squeezed at both ends. The subcompacts are vanishing but so are the full size models.
https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-49/subtitle-B/chapter-V/p...
Yes, e.g. Golf has grown over last few decades. I assume this is so each and every year they can say in marketing materials that it's a bit bigger and better, or that it's biggest and best in its category, however that category is conveniently defined.
But now there are two more cars underneath it in vw range - Lupo and Polo!
Same for any other car mentioned - sure Honda Civic is bigger. But Honda fit now occupies it's previous spot. And so on for all manufacturers - any given name plate gets bigger and better but something slots underneath. Tuscon is what Santa fe was 20 years ago. Etc etc.
I find the premise deeply flawed and whole content of article a sloppy p0st hoc rationalization based on flawed premise.
It had full stability control and the full set of airbags, so it was an early upspec for what would later become the norm of safety features.
Looks like it's still being sold now but it is no longer the same car.
Toyota corolla grew and was replaced by Yaris which became echo or other way around which was discontinued but then corolla got the iq and other small hatch versions.
Nissan sentra grew but then we got micra etc. My whole point is forget specific names - models and Renaming aside, tiny cars keep existing.
Article's premise of cause and effect (these models grew because of usa fuel regulations) is I believe thusly easily disproven.
Don't get me wrong, I personally love small economic hatchbacks. But my values and politics and environmental thoughts are irrelevant - golf grew across the world for reasons many and various outside of usa laws... And other small models replaced it. This appears to be a multi decade strategy across the board.
The industry responded to regulations and they can respond again.