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Comment by inanutshellus | Hacker News Reader

The government addressed this a few years ago by raising taxes on larger car chassis, making vehicles like the Hummer more expensive.

This led to the instantaneous rise in popularity of so-called "crossover" vehicles. Puffy vehicles that looked kinda SUV-ish and were elevated for higher road visibility but were built on a smaller (lower tax rate) car chassis.

The article of course wants to go to the next step, banning them outright which is just not going to happen. We don't live in a dictatorship and so absolutes like "never make an SUV" bans this don't really happen. Especially because... there are plenty of real-world non-edge-case scenarios in which having one vehicle for a lot of people and stuff is much more efficient than multiple sedans.

We could keep raising taxes on those SUV chassis though, I guess.

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> We don't live in a dictatorship and so absolutes like "never make an SUV" bans this don't really happen.

I can’t tell if you’re being hyperbolic, but banning SUVs isn’t a sign of a dictatorship, and it’s frankly a bit ridiculous to even make the comparison.

The US government has and does ban products all the time for all sorts of reasons. See: alcohol, marijuana/other drugs, incandescent bulbs, etc.

I don't think it's terribly hyperbolic. OP wants to get rid of something he doesn't use and presents a black-and-white statement for why it's rational, but SUVs have so many proponents that the govt'd have to override all of them without their opinion weighing in to get it passed as law before they had a chance to kick you out of office. (See, say, the efforts in the 1970s to get the USA to use the metric system as an example.)

Is it possible? Yes, that's why I used the weasel words of "don't really happen" instead of "don't ever happen".

I also pointed out that the more likely way to get OP's way would be to continue raising taxes on those vehicles to illicit the same result without outright making SUVs illegal to produce.

That’s fair enough, I seem to have misread your original comment as “bans on things individuals like == dictatorship”, which is a common enough sentiment, unfortunately, that the connection is all to easy to make.

Another comment mentioned this, but SUVs only exist because they were a regulatory exception to energy-hogging large sedans.

If SUVs were genuinely solving a widespread problem that would otherwise involve people owning multiple cars, I suspect that we would all hear a lot from environmentalists about them.

Anecdotally, when I've met "real" people who live in remote areas, they tend to drive old, unglamourous, and often semi broken cars. Wealthy second home owners, city folk practising an outdoor activity on the odd weekend, suburbanites keeping up with the neighbours, etc. are the ones who feel the need to buy new vehicles suitable for conditions they experience once in a blue moon, if ever.

I agree. The problem with trying to regulate this is that if you can't get to the point where you get the HN classes to give up the stupid 4Runners and Model Ys they don't need for their 1.2 kids without screwing everyone else along the way. As much as it would bring me joy to halt their conspicuous consumption the collateral damage is unacceptable.

Those “real” people are likely driving those vehicles because they can’t afford anything else, not because of a conscious choice.

And the most-selling SUVs are built on car chassis, so the idea that people are buying them for some imaginary future off-roading it mostly is an outdated relic of the original SUV generation.

Most people buy them because they’re a good balance between size and cargo space, and many modern models have gas mileage comparable to a sedan.

> We don't live in a dictatorship and so absolutes [..] don't really happen.

Of course they do and their existence isn't evidence of a dictatorship. These laws come about via elected bodies.

Raising taxes is perhaps even worse in terms of the message. "You can have this thing but you'll have to be minted to afford it." It lends prestige to something which might just be unnecessary. If it is, just ban it. Certain classes of vehicle used within cities are a good first step.

Also, the Supreme Court recently curtailed the EPA overstepping its bounds to set regulation. In other words, regulatory authority is actually moving away from the government having the power to simply ban things.

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