The new Hummer EV is over 4 tons and does 0-100km/h in around 3 seconds.
Between the obvious danger per the article, there’s also lots of extra wear on roads, particularly small residential ones.
Lots of external costs.
Between the obvious danger per the article, there’s also lots of extra wear on roads, particularly small residential ones.
Lots of external costs.
S-Max vs. Forester Curb weight: 3626 lbs vs. 3620 Mileage: 44 mpg vs. 30 mpg Cargo: 77.69 cubic feet vs. 74.2 cubic feet
So about 6 pounds heavier and 4 cubic feet more space than the Forester. It would be interesting if we had a hybrid Forester to compare with, but that doesn't seem to exist (yet).
Also looked into U.S. vans being gas guzzlers. A comparable vehicle in the U.S. is the Toyota Sienna, since it's a hybrid minivan. It's 4700 pounds, gets 36 mpg (vs. 44 for S-Max), but has 101 cubic feet of cargo space, which is 1/3 more than the S-Max. Seems to correlate well with weight, which makes sense.
Based on this, my (current) take is that mid-size SUVs in the U.S. are equivalent to these smaller minivans elsewhere, and U.S. minivans are a bit larger and heavier than that.
Fellow European here, we don't have kids but we were thinking at maybe getting a second dog, which made me look for a possible car replacement (we now have a 15+ year-old small hatchback). After some searching and calculating I found out that the "usefulness" of cars for my purported task (to transport two dogs in the back) can be summarized like this (in decreasing order): vans -> station wagons/estates -> SUVs/CUVs.
Unfortunately vans are on their out, I can't really understand the reason why (the VW Sharan will cease production this year, Ford C-Max ceased production back in 2019 etc), station wagons are also not feeling good, almost every car company is betting the house on SUVs/CUVs, which is a trend I don't like at all, because you get to pay more money for less utility.
A quick review https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51fyxgcVrKM
Hell, my whole family went around the South Island on holiday in it for a whole month and it was just fine.
Cultural differences I guess. If you're an American you _need_ an SUV, I get it.
I'm sure they could have maybe picked a smaller vehicle as well but economics also come into it - it was a secondhand Japanese import (NZ gets a lot of those, in fact when I was a kid we found yen coins still hidden underneath the seats) so it was gotten on the cheap as well.
I expect you're talking about curb weight. 6500 pounds for a gasser F250 is pretty typical, a bit north of 7000 for a diesel (which is 3.5T). But it's impractical to go by curb weight, the real number is GVWR. Can't tell what someone might be carrying and it all goes to the road.
For someone from Europe this sentence is insane. Calling a truck heavier than 3 tones a regular vehicle is just mindboggling. In most (all?) of Europe you need a special license to drive a vehicle that is over 3.5 tonnes.