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Comment by PaulHoule | Hacker News Reader

A lot of that is American carmakers playing to their strengths if not their fetishes.

It has been easy to get parts to make radical revisions to American cars (crate engines) for a long time, much more so than other carmakers. Also, American carmakers have long been obsessed with trucks to the point where sometimes I wonder: Will they stop making trucks? Will the people who used to think cars were a problem for the environment (with bicycles, busses, walking being answered) come to see trucks and suvs as the problem and cars the solution?

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Trucks are just too profitable to produce and sell compared to other forms. And many of their buyers can rationalize their purchase easily: I need to haul things 2x per decade, it'll be safer, I can see more being higher, gas is (was) cheap, it projects my masculinity, I can go off-road, all my neighbors have them, etc. Few will check statistics around safety, especially for pedestrians and bicyclists.

Or, you know, they actually use the truck for hauling/towing things. Go off with your condescension though.

Some people and businesses having legitimate need doesn't mean pickups aren't over produced/sold. It's approaching 3 million sold per year in the US. Does the country really need nearly one new pickup per 10 people every year?! How often are people hauling things? Is it really so bad to rent or borrow as needed?

It seems to me it would be more economical to rent a truck to haul things if you only need to do so occasionally. If you're a tradesman or a contractor yeah you will need to own a truck. If you're a white collar desk jockey? Come on now.

I'd much rather spend half as much on gas, make much smaller payments and then just pay U-Haul $100 or so for the one or two days a year I might need one (plus you can rent a much larger truck than a Silverado/F-150). So I drive a subcompact hatchback and rent a truck if/when I need one.

It's not even for the environment either. I just don't like sitting up high and I find large vehicles difficult to park and maneuver.

Unless you go to somewhere with bad roads, a van might be better option for most tradesman. Unless you need to move something really bulky.

I'm European, but the whole use case for trucks seem overstated to me always.

Even white collar desk jockeys can need a truck on a regular basis. I'm one and own a truck. For about 9 months a year I use it frequently, at least once a week on average, to pull a horse trailer to get my daughter's horses around. A 4 wheel drive vehicle is required to reach my beach house because it requires driving on a beach which doesn't have compacted sand to drive on. AWD drive vehicles can't make it. I help pull many of them out of the sand each summer.

Beach house, child with multiple horses, how common are such things? Perhaps I'm still being underpaid or am of less fortunate breeding.

We've got 7 horses all of which are used in lessons. We have a compact car.

Most of the people who run a riding barn probably do have a big-ass track to carry a horse trailer around but most of the people who start a riding barn lose money at it. (We've seen three individuals go out of business running a big horse barn down the road... It finally got somebody who is sensible.)

We started out really small (just two) so we never wound up with a large herd of unprofitable animals the way a lot of people do who feel pressured to get 10-15 horses right away.

The usual justification for that horse trailer is to go to and from horse shows which we don't do. When we get a new animal (maybe once every two years) we pay somebody with a truck to haul it for us.

Frankly if I ever get to the "I own a beach house and my daughters need their horses hauled around" level of success I'll just hire a couple of sturdy proles to carry me to and from the beach house on a sedan chair and leave the butler to worry about getting the horses from place to place.

> Will they stop making trucks?

No. They will make electric trucks:

https://www.thedrive.com/news/the-ford-f-150-lightning-is-no...

Does this mean that US automakers might start making light trucks again? I thought that the reason why they aren't made much any more was due to milage standards, but that wouldn't be an issue for electric trucks.

Based on previous discussions here EV trucks are going to be significantly heavier due to huge batteries.

> I thought that the reason why they aren't made much any more was due to milage standards, but that wouldn't be an issue for electric trucks.

I'm guessing we will see something like CAFE standards for EVs when they become a majority of the market. Maybe they'll call it CAKE (Corporate Average Kilowatt-hour Economy). The same people now complaining about carbon emissions from ICE trucks will in the future complain about the appalling electricity consumption of electric trucks.

I really don't see the climate activist people saying "our work here is done, let's pack up and go home!" when the last ICE vehicle rolls off the assembly line. The battle lines will just shift and the Cybertruck/F150 Lightning/Hummer EV/Rivian R1T will become as reviled as their internal combustion counterparts are today.

Have there been any discussions or rumors when they will have the EV version of the F450 or F550? My neighbors and I would want one with a towing capacity of about 36k lbs. horses, cattle, etc... The diesel F550 is rated for 31k lbs. It needs to work well on roads covered in ice, dirt, mud and operate in ambient temperatures as low as -25F. I asked Ford in their web form but never received a response.

To convince folks here to purchase an EV truck it will have to tow more and have the same or better total cost of ownership. People here are also quite skeptical of anything that requires subscribing to features in vehicles. Many of them have already been burnt by farm equipment in this realm.

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