A comparably lifted Jeep gets the same mileage as a lifted truck. If they’re paying for it, what concern is it of yours?
That’s a strange way of saying large vehicles are intended to do more work. I haven’t seen a Toyota Prius yet that can practically trailer a load of crops to market or carry construction equipment.
It’s also strange to me someone would mention tire particulate pollution in a grand comparison. The EV poster children wear through tires quicker than their comparable gasoline counterparts—softer tire compounds (road noise reduction) and weight.
> more likely and more lethal when they happen
Those also pay more for insurance.
I've got no problem with the landscapers and plumbers and electricians and farmers and so on getting a truck to support their work. They're paying the price, and they're relying on what the trucks can do for them.
I've got a problem with the 90% use case in my area, which is unsafe drivers driving unsafe vehicles unsafely, apparently for the image.
So what are pickup truck used that cannot be done by a sprinter?
Between the two designs, I'd rather have a pickup. With a flatbed, I'd worry about things rolling/blowing off.
The fuel consumption is a separate issue; there are pickups that get good mileage. But that was (until recently) less of a concern in America because we had lower gas prices (and for the most part, the people who buy pickups don't worry about climate change).
1: https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=sprinter+with+flatbed&iax=i...
It is very useful when you destroy a wall, you can haul the brick to the junkyard, or if you bring sand in bulk for building a wall.
That can be justified if you actually need to do something which a smaller vehicle cannot do - nobody expects a cattle rancher to pull a trailer behind a Prius! - but the vast majority of the larger vehicles Americans are buying will never be used for something which requires that extra capacity. The extra bling added to justify those price tags makes them worse for the ostensible reasons people buy them, too - who’s going off-roading with premium rims and delicate flair?
This is the classic externality problem: people are buying massive trucks and SUVs for emotional support reasons which would be an amusing personality trait except that they’ve reversed a half century of road safety improvements and the pollution they generate affects billions of people other than the buyers.
> It’s also strange to me someone would mention tire particulate pollution in a grand comparison. The EV poster children wear through tires quicker than their comparable gasoline counterparts—softer tire compounds (road noise reduction) and weight.
This similarly is arguing against a different point: my statement was simple fact - bigger vehicles pollute more, no matter whether that’s a large EV full of batteries or an oversized truck.
This is a famous drawback to EVs, along with the CO2 used to create them and the mining for battery components, and one reason why both environmentalists and urbanists are careful to say that the future should be more transit, bikes/scooters/etc., and walking because the model of everyone driving themselves everywhere in a private vehicle is inherently unsustainable. EVs solve the downsides of cars the same way that methadone solves opiate addiction.
> > more likely and more lethal when they happen > Those also pay more for insurance.
Again, this isn’t the point. Insurance can’t resurrect a dead person and it pays nowhere near the cost of lifetime impacts for people who are seriously injured. If they’re lucky, victims will get enough to pay for their immediate medical bills - the rest, often majority, of the cost is fobbed off to society just like all of the other negative externalities of driving.
> That’s a strange way of saying large vehicles are intended to do more work. I haven’t seen a Toyota Prius yet that can practically trailer a load of crops to market or carry construction equipment.
More work you say? Great! It's odd that all the big lifted trucks I see are never hauling anything. It's almost like most of the people who drive them just like having a big truck and don't have any actual need for it.
Blame your state DOT. Those trucks pay much more in taxes based upon their gross weight rating when they tow/haul. Costs of doing business.
> all the big lifted trucks I see
Nobody lifts a truck conspicuously to do more work, this somewhat compromises the suspension’s ability to handle load. A lot more people would know this if they knew anything, other than some anecdotes, about the topic they want to regulate.
This seems very confused: nobody in this thread is talking about people who are actually hauling heavy loads. It’s about the people who buy a huge truck and use it as their daily driver but never use the full bed capacity except going to Costco/Walmart.
America badly needs a return to the much lighter S-10 and Ranger of the past, with a 4-banger and a small back seat. These behemoths with V8s are not necessary for most people, and neither is the level of temporary luxury they convey. Let's face it: after a couple years your shiny new truck is just as noteworthy as every other truck on the road, which is to say, most people don't care about it / aren't impressed by it anyway.
The noise OP mentioned is a real problem in some communities.