SUVs emitted more carbon dioxide last year than most countries | Hacker News Reader

SUVs emitted more carbon dioxide last year than most countries

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78 pointsAmorymeltzer170 comments

Back before I moved to NYC, I lived in Colorado. When it came time for me to replace my car, I couldn't see the logic in buying a SUV that would be predominantly used for commuting. So, I countered "convention" thought and bought a sporty Acura RSX with a standard transmission. I loved the simplicity and utility of that car, and I loved the fact that, sometimes (depending on how I drove), I could get nearly 34 miles to the gallon. Meanwhile, my friends driving SUVs would complain every time they had to fill up about how much gas would cost them. After I moved to NYC, I held onto my car for a year in case I needed it. But, once I got used to living car-free, I sold the car to my brother's GF for a song.

Unfortunately, there are only a few cities in the USA where one can live car-free. However, it's maddening (to me) how many people choose to buy the biggest, least economical vehicle. On the other hand, it's quite fascinating how marketing has successfully imprinted on the American driving public the "need" for such vehicles.

It becomes obvious that those people don't actually care that much about gas prices, since they could have bought a prius or camry hybrid or similar from honda would quite simply halve the amount they pay for gas, but nooooo that doesn't fit their weird culture to have to have a giant car.

I'm not a huge fan of Dave Ramsey but I had a coworker who listened to him years and years ago - and I remember he made a good point about how everyone focused WAY too much on gas prices. "Remember when gas was $3 a gallon and you felt poor? Well it's a buck 25 now - do you feel rich?". (This was around 2008 iirc)

If we had giant signs showing the price of milk at every intersection people would focus inordinately on that too.

Toyota hybrids can do similar 30+ MPG on SUVs.

For a fair comparison, hybrid cars can easily do 50+ MPG. For instance the "toyota yaris hybrid" is supposed to run 62MPG (3.8L/100km).

At recent US gas prices, 10,000 miles at 25 mpg costs less than $1600 in gas. At 50 mpg it's gonna be less than $800.

Most of the people spending $30,000+ on a new vehicle aren't going to be concerned about that difference, they are going to buy what they want based on other factors.

How to fix this:

Step 1: Adjust CAFE[0] to add a new tier for SUVs and non-light Trucks

Step 2: There is no step 2.

It is absurd that fuel economy standards essentially wiped out the most fuel efficient vehicles from the roads (cars, light trucks). But talk about perverse incentives when you essentially give car manufacturers a get out of jail free card for making heavier, less efficient, vehicles. Cars/light trucks are held to a high standard, and everything else has nearly no standards at all.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_average_fuel_economy

or just hold every car to the same standard... You want a fuel inefficient car, you pay for it.

It's bad and yes, the world would be much better off without SUVs, but with headlines like these it's important to put things in perspective. Road transport related emissions are just 12% of total emissions [1]. Emissions from SUVs are a fraction of that.

If we want to get climate change under control the biggest impact would be from countries transitioning away from coal and gas [2] to other sources of energy. Most other things are a drop in the bucket compared to that.

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector [2] https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-fuel

> Road transport related emissions are just 12% of total emissions

If you split everything far enough they all are a single digit % of the total. It's a good way to rationalise the idea of not doing anything

Also, looking at your own graph, road transport is the largest sector in the third layer

Without judgement as to intent, mentioning ~12% of total is a subtle whataboutism.

The inherent question is, what overall % is actionable vs reasonable to dismiss?

I think the main point of the metric though is that SUV's are mostly fashion more than anything else. You can achieve effectively all of the functions of a standard SUV with a lighter, more fuel efficient hatchback. That said, even the term SUV is a misnomer. We should be referring to vehicles as by weight class.

A small hybrid SUV is going to do better than many cars. A god damned Escalade or Expedition has no real reason for being a modern commuter vehicle aside from signaling and preferences.

This kind of thinking mosses the point (its not just you, its most threads on here). It is not relevant whether an suv is a fashion item or not. What is relevant is whether gas prices capture the total cost of using gas and if they don't then is there enough tax on gas to cover the externality? If the gas price is right then it is correct for people to make their own choices about what vehicle they drive amd if the gas price is wrong then fix the gas price.

Asking a populous to raise taxes on itself is not normally a winning strategy.

This is one of the main ways we fool ourselves. We splice the emissions pie to as small slices as the argument requires and then remark on how small each of those is.

Next you might say that energy use in residential buildings is just 10% of all energy use and your kind of residential building is still a much smaller part of that. Or that you live in X part of the world and X is only respoinsible for a small percentage of global emissions, so your actions don't really matter...

That chart is both wildly misleading and from 2016. Many of those sources listed aren’t net CO2 producers the way fossil fuels are.

Also, Tailpipe emissions are only a fraction of total road transport related emissions.

Refining the oil to create gasoline directly releases CO2 as does building the infrastructure to do so. Add up everything from oil extraction, flaring, transportation, refinement etc and using oil for ground transportation is a lot more than 11.9% of total net emissions.

Actually, Hannah Ritchie of Our World In Data just tweeted today that „negligible emitters“ can matter. She gave the example of countries that are emitting less than 2% each but combined they emit more than China does. It’s many drops that fill the bucket.

https://mobile.twitter.com/_HannahRitchie/status/16338023707...

You can always cut something into smaller parts. First transitioning away from coal and gas is actually not a small feat, the best transition so far from a developed country is the UK that stopped coal almost completely but now relies a lot more on gas and imports. Second, a single country doing so will only be a single-digit percentage of total emissions, so by your logic why should they?

It looks like SUVs emit between 14% and 25% more than a passenger car. If you replace SUVs with passenger cars, you haven't moved the needle much (except for changing the headline from "SUVs emitted more CO2..." to "cars emitted more CO2...")

Transitioning away from SUVs and cars is also not a small feat.

The problem is that not only are we failing to transition away from SUVs and cars, drivers are actively transitioning from passenger cars to heavier, more emitting vehicles (SUVs and trucks). The only traditional car that Ford still sells in the US and Canada is the Mustang.

Whatever about moving the the needle in a positive direction, I think it's worth pointing out trends and personal decisions that are actively making the situation worse.

The majority of new car buyers will not settle for less than four doors and a hatchback and they don't really care what regulatory bucket it's in as long as it does what they want at a price they want.

The fact that the myriad of "crossovers" that satisfy this requirement are classified as SUVs is mostly a figment of regulatory oddities and corporate box checking over the last 40yr. They're more descendant of the compact hatches and station wagons of the 80s and 90s than they are of SUVs.

Look at the Ford Flex and tell me that's not a station wagon.

Crossovers are still more deadly than traditional, lighter cars that have visibility of what's in front.

In fact, crossovers and SUV killed more children in the past 5 years in non-traffic accidents than regular cars did since the 70s. Now, the drivers often kill their own children, so it's delayed darwinism, but still.

And that's why you now have front camera on SUVs.

>And that's why you now have front camera on SUVs.

No. It's not. Kids are in front of your car how often? Not often enough to make an effective sales pitch for the feature. Front cameras are a thing because people think they're useful in mundane parking and low speed maneuvering circumstances. The more offorady themed vehicles also sell them as being useful in that context.

The statistics for SUV’s are really bad overall and can look even worse depending on the age range you call “kids.”

“The study, published in The Journal of Safety Research, found that passenger cars were the striking vehicle in 62% of accidents involving pedestrian or cyclist children but resulted in only 19% of fatalities. In comparison, SUVs were the striking vehicle in only 16.9% of crashes involving children but were responsible for 40% of fatalities.”

SUVs were over 30% of sales in the US by 2010 and over 50% by 2020. If they’re responsible for only 40% of fatalities, it seems likely that they’re quite comparable as safe as cars for pedestrian/cyclist children. (If the base rate of vehicles on the road matches the share of fatalities, there isn’t a spread in fatality risk.)

Your intuition is wrong here because vehicles are kept around for a long time (~25years) and the study covered a longer period.

The definition used in this study places the percentage of the vehicle fleet as SUVs from 13% in 2000 to 21.5% in 2019 while causing 40% of all children’s deaths over the study period. https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Pedestrian-deaths-and-...

Thus on average a SUV was more than 4x as likely to kill kid than a car.

The world is moving to renewables swiftly due to cost and energy security issues. China and India are still building coal plants. China's coal plants emit ~70 percent of their CO2 emissions. They must be discouraged from doing so, and encouraged to rapidly decarbonize with the rest of the world, while their population is still young and productive (China specifically in this regard).

Everyone needs to get off of fossil fuels asap, regardless of your development level.

https://www.iea.org/news/renewable-power-s-growth-is-being-t...

https://www.npr.org/2023/03/02/1160441919/china-is-building-...

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/indias-booming-econo...

Then we should relocalise everything back to US and EU ;)

https://www.productivity.govt.nz/assets/BlogImages/2835c5ad2...

Absolutely, and this is in progress with rapid deglobalization occurring. Emissions should not be exported.

https://gcaptain.com/china-deglobalization-usa-factory-boom/

There's always bigger fish to fry, but by constantly shifting focus away to the bigger and bigger fish, we lose the opportunity to improve things that are exceptionally easy fixes in comparison.

This is a good example of how wealthy people (and countries) are destroying our environment, to the detriment of everyone. Those who are poor or environmentally responsible are impacted by the choices of those who have the wealth to buy and use large SUVs.

This is especially true for poor countries in areas that will be affected the most by early climate change problems. Ironically, wealthier countries tend to be in a better position to avoid the initial negative impacts of climate change. They're also better equipped to handle the consequences.

This ties into so many political issues. For example, migration. We already have climate change caused migration. Policies in the U.S., for example, are becoming increasingly punitive towards migrants, while, at the same time, doing little to address the massive damage being caused by the U.S.

There's little hope for improvement; though, fortunately for those of us in wealthy countries, we'll be mostly OK for a generation or so.

Also related, one of my favorite philosophy papers: Vehicles and Crashes: Why is this Moral Issue Overlooked? by Douglas Husak

Argues that SUVs are immoral because of the high crash incompatibility. They cause more damage to others (disproportionally), and ironically don't provide more safety for drivers due to higher rollover instances.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/23562447

> be cause of the high crash incompatibility

Not sure about USA, but Europe started requiring crash compatibility some time in the mid 2000’s. EuroNCAP now specifically tests cars crashing into each other, not just into barriers.

The result is that European small cars have tall noses and European SUVs have fronts that go pretty low. Because the internal crash structures have to overlap.

Here’s an example where they test even a “commercial van” for crash compatibility with normal cars https://cdn.euroncap.com/media/61174/euro-ncap-compatibility...

Here’s a paper from EEVC (european enhanced vehicle safety committee) developing a crash compatibility test https://www-esv.nhtsa.dot.gov/Proceedings/20/07-0331-O.pdf

Author writes about the US as far as I can tell. The US is behind Europe in numerous ways - it's a shame.

I find it amusing how tiny trucks are in Japan - they are often smaller than regular US SUVs that moms drive kids to school in.

> The US is behind Europe in numerous ways

The craziest to me is seeing how many blatantly illegal cars are driving around every day. There’s no annual technical inspection to pass.

Most of the customized cars/trucks/bikes you see would never pass homologation.

I mean even just the sleek LED blinkers on my bike would be impossible back home …

I don't really care much what others do but I am interested in the "why" of it.

I have an SUV. Last week we had to ford a 20' wide, 3' deep creek. If I had the alternative (minivan) we wouldn't have been able to pull that off, which would mean not getting home. I also haul 10,000lbs of livestock on a regular basis. I usually use my truck, but a truck can't carry my kids, so when we go horseback riding I take the Suburban.

Can't figure out why folks in Suburbia with one or two kids would choose an SUV. I much prefer my Subaru, but it's mostly relegated to date nights at this point in my life.

I think that SUV appeal to residents of suburbia has its roots in two things:

- Perceived safety (the idea that e.g. a Suburban would fare better in a wreck involving a full size truck than a sedan, hatchback, etc)

- Keeping up with the Jonses gone vehicular. A gigantic SUV sitting out front looks impressive similar to the way a truck would while being better suited for residential usage than a truck. All it takes is one residence buying one for the rest of the block to suddenly not be satisfied with the Accord in their garage.

Personally I’m a bit frustrated with how huge cars have gotten. My house was built in 2005, with a garage made to fit the cars at the time, and with ~177” of usable length (some space is taken up by HVAC + water heater), a lot of modern cars won’t fit in it and even fewer fit comfortably (e.g. being able to open its back hatch while the garage door is closed). I’m looking to lease an EV some time in the next year or so and only a tiny handful can be considered due to this.

> Keeping up with the Jonses [sic]

I think it's even more toxic than that: it's an arms race. I have known people who have told me in so many words that they bought SUVs primarily so they could see around/over all the other SUVs already out there. Though they didn't say so, I'd guess they also feel like their odds of survival in a crash with one of those other SUVs when they're in one themselves vs. being in a regular car. (Maybe that's what you were getting at with your "perceived safety" point but "full size truck" is ambiguous.) Many people buy SUVs out of fear or its cousin insecurity, not because of any practical value it has over a sedan etc. In fact, just about every SUV owner I've known complains about terrible mileage, sometimes about difficulty getting in/out or poor ride characteristics as well. They feel they have to make those tradeoffs, mostly because others already did.

>Personally I’m a bit frustrated with how huge cars have gotten. My house was built in 2005, with a garage made to fit the cars at the time, and with ~177” of usable length

Hmm, even in 2005 that was small. The 2006 model year BMW 3-series, which would've been the one on the market in the year your home was built, was ~178" long, and the 3-series has always been considered a relatively compact sports sedan. You would've had no chance of fitting the contemporary Honda Accord, and even some of the Civic models would've been an incredibly tight squeeze.

So I somewhat dispute the assertion that your garage was made to fit the cars of the time; it was small even then.

> So I somewhat dispute the assertion that your garage was made to fit the cars of the time; it was small even then.

I agree. My house was built in 1958 and its garage easily accommodates today's cars.

The 3 series had already been supersized by 2006. They were compact and then they started going back for a 2nd helping. There was a period where the 3-series gained about 1000lb of curb weight.

A 3-series today is more like the size and weight of a 5-series from the 1990s.

Even the E46 series BMW 3-Series would have barely fit (like 0.5" to spare) into that garage; and that was introduced for the 1998 model year with development work starting in 1993.

A 1989 Honda Accord would not fit in that garage. It's a small garage.

> My house was built in 2005, with a garage made to fit the cars at the time, and with ~177” of usable length (some space is taken up by HVAC + water heater),

20-24 feet length has been common garage size for about a century, as long as there have been garages, well before HVAC or water heaters were common in garages. 177 inches is less than 14.75 ft; even with that being net of HVAC and water heater, you just had a small (and/or poorly designed in terms of HVAC/water heater placement) garage, not a garage "made to fit cars of the time".

> Can't figure out why folks in Suburbia with one or two kids would choose an SUV

It’s a mixture of status and an erroneous belief that people are going to be performing the tasks that necessitate an SUV more often than they actually will. Many also have a preference for sitting high (because it makes them feel powerful maybe?) and think SUVs are safer (which they are for their occupants, but to the detriment of everyone else on the road). But mostly status.

Minivans and estate cars aren’t “cool” in the US so people won’t consider them despite the fact that they frequently serve drivers' use cases better in non-rural areas.

I think there are at least two practical factors: people think vehicles with larger mass will be safer in case of an accident; and the higher seating position helps with visibility.

Of course, in both cases, this is an arms race; but it's not irrational.

SUV are actually more deadly than regular cars even for the people inside. Unless you crash on a lighter vehicle, you're more likely to die, and especially if the SUV turns over. So advice for all SUV drivers (I know you already do that and don't need it, but just in case) : it's better to crash in the vehicle ahead of you than to swerve to avoid it.

Do you have a citation for your last claim? SUVs (and cars in general) have been getting safer over time, including electronic stability controls.

Correlation between road death increase and car sales increase only.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in...

The US is the only country to have this increase in the last ten years.

But also, this is real advice: If you have the choice between risking a rollover and crashing in another vehicle, as a SUV driver, crash in the other vehicle. You might kill someone, but at least you'll be safe (and i know this is the primary factor in buying high-clearance SUVs).

It's the same reason people who can't cook outfit their houses with semi-industrial kitchens: it's aspirational. They're hoping to buy a lifestyle while not realizing that's not how it works.

>Can't figure out why folks in Suburbia with one or two kids would choose an SUV. I much prefer my Subaru, but it's mostly relegated to date nights at this point in my life.

Station wagons and minivans are being shelved by auto-manufacturers because environmental and safety regulations have a blind spot for "light trucks" which SUVs fall under. The solution to this problem is to either tighten the regulations around SUVs or loosen the regulations around cars.

Many SUVs aren't even made to go off-road. Even the mighty Electric Hummer was just recalled because it's not water tight enough[1]

[1] https://www.thestreet.com/investing/gmc-hummer-ev-recalled-o...

SUVs have gone from being vehicles for outdoors people to vehicles for people who really need a minivan but are afraid of not looking cool.

I.e. continuously refining the product to cater to their core customers as their customer base shifts.

A rational business decision but you're still dumb to cut your steak with a cleaver because it was the biggest coolest knife in the drawer.

That's true, it's part of why I won't buy new vehicles. My Suburban is from 2003 and is definitely off-road worthy.

> Last week we had to ford a 20' wide, 3' deep creek.

Then you're in a tiny minority of SUV owners, most of whom drive SUVs that can't handle that scenario and most of those never see anything but paved roads.

> I also haul 10,000lbs of livestock on a regular basis.

An even rarer need. If you feel you need an SUV, fine. Some people need other kinds of assistive devices too. But the point here is that there are millions of SUVs out there that are actually less practical for their owners' usage patterns than other kinds of vehicles, with harmful effects on both pedestrian safety and the environment. Focusing on the exceptions is distraction at best.

I believe you got defensive when the above comment was just proclaiming that they have specific uses for the larger vehicles, whereas the average suburbian person does not. So he's already doing what you advise, not attempting to "focus on the exceptions".

How can I be "defensive" when there's no attack? And why even bring up an obvious exception except to shift focus? Please stop tossing out conversation-stoppers regardless of applicability, and try to engage constructively.

Someone asked why people want SUVs and someone gave their personal experience and rationale. hardly seems like an conspiracy to the shift focus.

While I agree there are unnecessary SUVs, the practical use of SUV is not as rare as a city dweller realizes. What annoys me:

1) jacked up trucks with not a speck of dirt

2) people with a narrow view of society and the contexts of other people's lives, assuming everyone should live how they live.

Too many people have utopian views based on their narrow experiences. Not everything is or can be within walking distance. People have various abilities, but most all need to be mobile. Owning multiple, specialized cars for various occasions isn't necessarily the most economic or practical option. There aren't enough mom and pops and doctors to serve all needs within a reasonable distance.

I own three or four trucks (depends on how you count a "truck", one is a bit larger than pickup truck size). Not one is lifted beyond factory. I drive on forestry roads and dirt county roads daily. A fair number of our roads ford rivers and creeks instead of bridging them. I have yet to find a practical use for a lifted truck.

Designer truck culture boggles my mind.

They're a lot easier to get in and out of for the elderly, I prefer the more engaged upwards sitting position vs having to basically lay down in sedans, they can carry all the couches, tables, firepits and coolers you need easily.

I don't understand why anyone would want a sedan, might as well be a bike ride or a phone call.

Your usage is definitely a minority, most people drive SUV (and I've made numerous polls in various communities since it pissed me to no end to see all those big cars, polls had always same result) because of cargo culting (footballers or other 'celebrities' are using it so I will do so too) or, to put it politely 'not very good drivers', who need higher seating position to feel to be actually aware of their surroundings enough to feel safe on roads.

There is a small other group, lets say physically impaired for whatever reason, for whose SUVs are another proper justifiable use case like yours, because they would be unable to get into ie bmw 5 series wagon as I've experienced with some obese people in my extended family, the whole car sits just too low.

Also, at least in Europe, SUV is such a vast spectrum from borderline crossovers cars that are just worst from both worlds (sport / utility ride scale) and would struggle badly in any off-road terrain, to proper Utility vehicles that allow you to go to hell and back.

That being said, I don't get the topic that much, it has trivial solution already implemented in many places - car tax. Based on weight, power, CO2 output or some combination of them. Switzerland, at least western cantons, have each their own formula so when I moved around I paid differently. State can ie plant trees from those money collected (at least thats my wishful thinking, in reality its never so straightforward)

Perhaps it's specific to my area of suburbia but a) road trips are by far the most common way to take vacations and b) many of those road-trips have portions going over snow or sand or mountain backroads.

So you want some sort of all or 4 wheel drive and you need a lot of cargo space. There's tents and bikes and hiking or skiing or climbing equipment.

It's possible to brainstorm about other solutions but none are perfect. Years ago we tried to rent a 4x4 for a desert trip and it was a nightmare. We got there, they didn't have any 4x4s, they ended up sending us to another location, and of course you have to sign a dozen waivers that promise to pay huge amounts of money for any scratch or dent.

I guarantee you that unless you are an excellent driver, you'll fare way better in the snow with a normal sized car or even a minivan than with a 4x4. Especially if you are not used to snow.

And you can sleep quite comfortably in a minivan.

My experience in snow differs from yours. If that makes me an excellent driver in your eyes then I appreciate the complement.

I've slept in a minivan many times and it's wonderful for 2. 3 or more, not so much.

Okay then take it from me who has been driving in several feet of snow forever: Your technique matters a billion times more than your car, and tires are even more important than that up to a point. My Dodge Neon had no problem in $30 tires on literal ice because it's like 1500 pounds soaking wet. All these idiots get a giant 4x4 "for the snow" and then still drive with a damn lead foot in the winter, and all wheel drive does nothing to improve your breaking performance, which will be worse in a heavier vehicle. It's pure stupidity, from people who always want an easy solution with no effort instead of the actual solution, which is to just drive gentler.

There are a variety of options between driving a Dodge Neon and driving a 4x4 with a lead foot. Suburbanites who take road trips are probably going to find a Dodge Neon inadequate for their needs.

I admit to being personally impressed - have you managed to keep one running since ~2006? That's quite an achievement!

That's the trick with dodge neons: They never die. Sure they never run well, but they never die either. It ran on 3 cylinders 90 percent of the time and ran better when it was -20 degrees out because the cold engine block had tighter tolerances.

I'm saying that driving a bigger vehicle WILL NOT improve your experience driving in snow, all else being equal.

My reasons:

1. It still snows and ices in suburbia, and suburbia isn't always flat. So while not fjording a creek AWD and higher clearances are useful.

2. Long road trips are not doable in a cramped sedan for a family of four.

3. SUVs are popular so it is easy to find one and it is easy to sell one when you need to. Only a handful of car companies still sell a minivan today.

4. Cargo area balance with passenger area

5. Occasional towing

6. Car seats have become so large that they often do not fit safely in a backseat of a sedan or hatchback.

All in all SUVs are incredibly well balanced vehicles for the average family needs.

I'm 25. Grew up in Denmark. I don't recognize many of these as legit explanations for why a station wagon/estate -- a sedan with a squared off trunk -- isn't suitable.

> It still snows and ices in suburbia, and suburbia isn't always flat. So while not fjording a creek AWD and higher clearances are useful.

SUVs are becoming status symbols here too but you're kidding yourself if you think AWD is in any way needed for snow driving. In the Alps the majority of cars are still sedans and station wagons, same as Norway and Sweden, even during the snowy winters. If anyone pushing the car enough to need AWD on public roads they likely shouldn't be driving in the conditions in the first place.

> Long road trips are not doable in a cramped sedan for a family of four.

We regularly drove just under 400 kilometers (each way) to visit my dad's family in a Peugeot 406 station wagon. I was 19 when they got rid of that car. My dad is 195 cm, my mom is 175, and us three kids were all tall for our ages. The reason to get rid of it wasn't lack of space but the electric wiring going haywire. We even did roadtrips when going on holidays. From Denmark to Sicily on a 3 week vacation with plenty of space to spare in the trunk.

> Cargo area balance with passenger area

SUVs have comparable trunk volume to station wagons.

> Occasional towing

You can tow stuff with sedans/station wagons too. The towing capacity to SUVs sold here is comparable to regular cars. The size of the car really doesn't matter much. Only engine, frame strength, and braking power. You can find those things on regular cars just as well. I've moved plenty of times. Rent a big box trailer for a day and you're golden, which I assume is the same procedure in the US? A standard Volvo V60 is allowed to tow 2000 kg, that's just around 4400 pounds. I have a feeling most people wouldn't need more than that.

Talking about the alps, I saw way more 4x4 on their roofs on the side than regular cars. And it was 4 years ago, when SUVs were less in demand.

I remember when 'big car, small...' was a popular saying in my country, I'll try to rehabilitate it.

What about crossover which is just a hatchback sedan with a higher lift?

There's an interesting point there. My wife looks at our RAV4 and says "it's an SUV"; I say "it's a crossover", Toyota markets it as a "compact crossover SUV"; it's based on the same TNGA-K platform as the Camry; is actually shorter than the Camry (but taller) and weights essentially the same.

No, it's not, it's a hatchback car with a higher lift. There's no such thing as a "hatchback sedan". A sedan (or "saloon" in the UK) is a car with 4 doors and a trunk (or "boot" in the UK) (which is an entirely separate compartment from the passenger compartment).

See #2 and #6

The current generation Toyota RAV4 has more rear legroom, and (if you trust cars.com's review on these matters) fits contemporary child-seats better, than a BMW 5-series sedan.

Packaging matters.

The Toyota RAV4 is a SUV

It's based on Toyotas Corolla platform where traditionally SUVs are based on a truck platform. Weight of a crossover is closer to a sedan than regular suv. Rav4 is 3500 pounds where a bronco is 4500.

>It's based on Toyotas Corolla platform where traditionally SUVs are based on a truck platform.

"Traditionally", but that's not the modern usage. SUVs haven't been built on truck platforms for many, many years now; that was the 90s.

"Traditionally", a "phone" is a device that plugs into the wall and has a rotary dial for placing calls using numerical codes. These days, a "phone" is a very different device.

The point is that a Toyota RAV4 (and anything else in the compact crossover segment) is, functionally speaking, much closer to a Corolla than it is to a Suburban.

You're getting 30 mpg (combined) vs. 33 mpg for a Corolla; curb weight is within a few hundred pounds; the RAV4 is actually shorter in length than the Corolla. It is basically a Corolla estate with a higher ride height and different body styling/packaging.

More relevantly to the original comparison: a RAV4 is shorter, lighter, and gets better gas mileage than a BMW 5-series, in addition to having more rear-passenger legroom and easier child-seat fitting.

Best selling suv right now is the bronco and it’s based on T6 platform which is a truck platform. There’s also Ford explorer , Chevy equinox and traverse, Toyota Highlander and 4runner, Jeep Cherokee and wrangler, Then you have all the highend suvs like rangerovers, gwagons, etc.

You say potato, I say: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35082527

Thanks all that makes sense

> Can't figure out why folks in Suburbia with one or two kids would choose an SUV.

We chose an SUV for two fairly simple reasons: we live in a snowy area and buy used vehicles; therefore, we select from among whatever the distribution of all-wheel drive, four-door vehicles sold new 5-10 years ago was and aren't beat to hell now. If those new vehicle buyers picked mostly SUVs, then we're picking mostly from among SUVs.

I get this. I only ever buy used and never buy newer than '05. You are relegated to what was popular 20 years ago.

For me the two main factors in purchasing an SUV where cargo space and safety.

The HN crowd is divided into urban tech progressives who use Climate Change as a sort of religious proxy to organize their beliefs around, and gun owning, truck driving libertarians, with the former a slight majority.

Relevant: not just bikes' latest video "These stupid trucks are literally killing us" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jN7mSXMruEo

As a side note, this video has a great variety of historical footage of cars/cities/life.

Children are also invisible to SUV drivers, so something about the incentives for building these giant vehicles needs to change.

And airplanes emitted more than SUVs.

All these comparisons do not matter: the merely teach us to climate-share eachother into climate-submission (do you buy meat/ petrol/ airplane tickets: eeeew).

We need a fair and square tax on pollution, CO2 just being one factor. This tax could (I would like that) replace many taxes on "good behaviour", like our taxes on labour, home ownership and added value.

We should only tax bad behaviour and/or problematic goods, and tax them as fair as possible based on their bad impact.

Currently petrol at the pump is heavily taxed, but for planes and sea-freight it is not. Labour and housing are also heavily taxed, making a 1h massage more expensive than a whole bin bag full of plastic toys shipped all the way from China.

This is the problem, IMHO: we do not incentivize good behaviour by govt means, but we spread by media that everyone should climate shame eachother. Do you think the super rich (also the super polluters) give a damn?

I'm not impressed with some of their claims. They have a tendency to say things that would be just as accurate if all those SUVs were replaced with pink polka dot sedans, and you replaced "SUV" in that article with "pink polka dot sedan".

Let's look at numbers. They say all the SUVs combined emit 10^9 tons of CO2. Looking at per country emissions I see that is more than every individual country except China, the US, India, Russia, and Japan. So yup...more than most other countries.

But wait...they say SUVs use on average 20% more fuel. They don't say how much more CO2 they emit, but I'd expect it to be proportional to fuel used and so am going to assume SUVs on average emit 20% more CO2.

So if all of those SUV owners had instead went with those pink polka dot sedans that emit 20% less, then the combined emissions of those particular cars would be about 8.3 x 10^8 tons of CO2 instead of 1 x 10^9 tons.

Where would 8.3 x 10^8 tons of CO2 be on the country list? More than every individual country except China, the US, India, Russia, and Japan.

The exact same list as when those cars are SUVs.

> The increased number of SUVs in 2022 were responsible for a third of the increase in global oil demand.

And if those SUVs had been pink polka dot sedans they'd still be responsible for 5/18th of the increase instead of 6/18th of the increase, which in a typical article that is not giving decimal numbers would still be called a third.

Also I've got a feeling that using 2022 global oil demand requires some care, due to the large drop in global oil demand in 2020 because of the pandemic. That demand came back in 2021 and 2022 largely due to things that stopped or slowed down in 2020 starting or getting back to speed. Transportation was one of the biggest areas where demand dropped in 2020. So it seems like it might simply be SUVs were a third of the oil demand increase in 2022 because they were a third if the oil demand decrease in 2020.

> Cities targeted by Tyre Extinguisher groups on Monday included London, Paris, Berlin and Milan. The activists claim to have deflated more than 10,000 tires in the past year in 17 countries, including the US and New Zealand, using lentils to jam open air valves.

That's disgusting and they should be caught and trialed. It's only a matter of time before someone needs to use their car for an emergency trip to the hospital or elsewhere and those "activists" have blood on their hands.

A lot of people who drive SUVs/trucks own guns in the US. Not a great idea.

In CA the roads are so bad you need an SUV just to get around in one piece.

Are there more fuel efficient cars that are also affordable and large enough to survive collisions with SUVs?

I'm taken aback at this. I don't have an SUV but I very much aspire to, specifically for one of the reasons they mention - high clearance. I do as much mountain hiking as I can and high clearance is necessary for many forest service roads. Why would you target someone for that?

If your use case were representative of SUV owners generally, there wouldn't be enough of them on the road to be a major problem. For every person like you, there are probably a dozen suburbanites who never take their SUV to anything more adventurous than a new chain restaurant.

and by your logic, do we need the SUV police?

I think we need a more useful regulatory standard for what qualifies as an "SUV" so that our roads aren't dominated by vehicles that are functionally worse for their actual applications than the categories that have been crowded out. There's nothing wrong with a Wrangler having 8+ inches of ground clearance; there is something wrong with damn near every minivan replacement on the market having that [1].

[1] https://jalopnik.com/every-car-looks-like-this-thanks-to-a-g...

Because they consume more fuel than other car types, and you are aspiring to buy one for purely selfish reasons, and that would have a negative impact on many people?

If people don't consider their personal footprint before taking purchase decisions, maybe they will take into consideration that they are being targeted by a growing group of people.

Surely a newer modestly sized hybrid SUV burns far less fuel than a 30 year old sedan. So what's the idea then? Let's vandalize vehicles in the upper 20% of fuel consumption? Why are pick up trucks not top of the list?

Stop virtue signaling

> If people don't consider their personal footprint before taking purchase decisions, maybe they will take into consideration that they are being targeted by a growing group of people.

They will never do that. NEVER. It has become a perennial joke at this point in Germany with climate activists who block streets only to afterwards rack up 20k miles of air travel in half a year. The explanation? "The problem is systemic, individual actions don't matter".

Nobody considers their contribution relevant, because in total theirs will be dwarfed by everyone else's. That's just human nature. If the most-involved activists don't, how can you expect random people to?

Your negation is way too strong, an ever-growing number of people do, in fact, take their personal footprint into account for every decision, my family and myself included.

I don't know about your anecdotal joke about some German activists flying 20k miles in half a year, but it's also a fact that flygskam is growing, that people who can afford it reportedly take a train even when it's slower, and that airlines are looking into carbon offsets. Another anecdote, my local XR group has a car pooling mailing list to make sure they attend all demonstrations in a convenient, low-carbon manner.

The math is simple, every liter of fuel kept in the ground will slow down global warming. There is no "threshold" that we will reach at which point all humanity is doomed.

His "anecdotal joke" is fact and was in the German speaking news, just like the "anecdote" about the activists who blocked the street to protest cars after arriving in, you guessed it, a car of their own!

They are hypocrites who make life hard for others by preaching water and drinking heavily wine, as it were.

I am not contradicting him. I am sure you understand that these cases make headlines more easily because of the shock-value, and that all other activists who are not doing that are not making it into the news.

I am also sure you understand that seeing some hypocrites preaching water while drinking wine should not stop you from reducing your alcohol intake, as you know it's unhealthy regardless.

It's not about uncovering hypocrites (though I do believe it's important to do so, lies are destroying society), it's about managing expectations.

There are giant gaps between what humans a) believe to be true, b) do individually and c) say they believe and do. You can get people to say that they believe some action is necessary, but it's rare to see actual meaningful action that actually impacts them (it's easy to say "I'm fine with outlawing meat" if you don't like meat for example, it's very different if you happen to enjoy meat).

My point is that it's unreasonable to expect average people to take "the big picture" into account for individual decisions (e.g. buying car, or taking a vacation away from home, or having children, or changing their diet), and all you can expect from doing so is disappointment over how uncommitted people are.

The best were the two German "climate activists" who flew to Thailand and Bali - their explanation was that they flew there as private persons and not as "activists" :D

Well then it's ok if I pollute as well, since I'm doing it only as a private person and not in my quality as an activist!

What I find most annoying about it is that they're perfectly aware that what they're doing is wrong in their moral codex, but they still do it because "it's a once in a lifetime opportunity", "I really, really wanted to" etc etc, yet they're somehow unable to assume that others might feel the same way about their own life and their opportunities.

It looks like the classic NPC-illusion where people think that yes, everybody should totally do whatever is right, but it shouldn't apply to themselves, because they are the player, not just another NPC. They tend to forget that they're NPCs to everyone else.

But I ascribe most of it to them being young. I'm sure if I had been more politically aligned with the mainstream when I was 20, I would've been insufferable as well.

For me it's because SUV drivers see less and are more dangerous to unprotected traffic participants (pedestrians, cyclists, e-scooter riders, motorbike riders). As long as you don't bring this vehicle to cities it's fine in my book though.

This tells me you've NEVER driven an SUV and therefore have ZERO insight into the many reasons why one would chose to drive a SUV.

However, I do agree there are far more limited uses cases for an SUV in a dense city.

You hurt the planet; the planet hurts you. :D

This is one of the reasons that Tyre Extinguishers target SUVs https://tyreextinguishers.com/

Don't get caught in the middle of doing this by me or any other SUV owner.

I have not been involved in any way with them, but it is curious how a certain section of society believes that violence is an appropriate response. Would you have a similar reaction to damaging of other property (e.g. broken fence, window) or is it specifically cars that prompt violence?

I would take a similarly dim view of anyone damaging my windows or my fence.

Presumably they want to discourage these activists from deflating their tires. Because they want inflated tires. And there isn't any other obvious recourse at the time.

What will happen?

I don't know if this is serious or not. Maybe it's a Bay Area thing? People getting very used to having their windows smashed and such without any recourse? But 'round these parts, people don't just stand around watching their life and livelihood get messed with.

Yes, I am serious. And I live in Ireland (though I originally hail from northern California) What will you do? Are you going to assault people? Murder them? Report them to the police?

Genuinely curious. I don't know what I'd do in that scenario. Probably yell at them and then get out the air compressor.

Your SUV harms everyone around you, yet nobody assaults you or threatens you for it.

I wouldn't murder them. I wouldn't report them to the police because they likely wouldn't even come out. The flip side to that coin is that the police also won't come out to investigate a little rough play.

If I let the air out of someone's tires, I would absolutely be watching my back. I wouldn't expect a meek response.

Incidentally, in most of the US, some amount of non-lethal force is allowed in the defense of real or personal property.

I wouldn't murder them. I wouldn't report them to the police

So what _would_ you do? Shoot them in the leg? Beat them with a baseball bat? Punch them in the face? Shove them around a bit? Shout at them and then go home and fantasize about shooting them?

getting punched in the face is an appropriate response for deflating someone's tire and causing them to miss work or something. actions have consequences. by the way, even if i were the person doing activism, i would assume risk and assume that if someone caught me messing with their car, i would probably risk some sort of bodily damage. i wouldn't go into the situation with some imaginary "im doing this for us all therefore you'll understand and let me do this peacefully" type of muck

What would be the appropriate response to putting exhaust gases in other people's lungs?

nothing illegal is currently happening with SUVs. whereas the other thing IS illegal. full stop. so the appropriate response would have to be something short of an ingenious campaign or tactics to gut the car lobbying industry in the USA.

probably unofficially "electing" someone smart with industry experience and leadership abilities to think about these issues. a union leader of sorts. you need someone to congregate people. then you get them to create voting campaigns for certain politicians who are willing to break apart the car industry's grasp on just about everything in this country. then, you build marketing campaigns, you hire your own lobbyists who are maybe crowdfunded or have private interest from more liberal private donors, i dunno. literally anything is better than having your citizens go and screw up other citizen's property. nothing will change this way, i can guarantee you that.

FWIW, its not just some minor inconvenience. The rims resting on flat tires can damage the sidewall, potentially radically reducing the life of the tire or ruining the tire completely. Its not just some harmless activism, it can cause some real property damage. Tires aren't cheap.

Not just property. Imagine the car owner has an emergency and needs to go or transport his family to the hospital. They will have blood on their hands.

what a silly thing that wrecks your fellow human's life (who knows what theyre using the SUV for) and accomplishes absolutely nothing.

The argument is that SUV and truck drivers already endanger lives of unprotected traffic participants by driving those vehicles in cities. It sounds like a cause worthy of some aggressive activism to me as the regulators are deeply in car industry's pockets (no other explanation for special SUV treatment when it comes to fuel efficiency norms).

You make the world a worse place by choosing your comfort over safety of others - you get some minor inconvenience to deal with sometimes. To me it's activism working as intended.

> minor inconvenience to deal with sometimes

if you're parked on the street in a city, you now need to deal with getting a pump or getting it towed which the latter is hundreds of dollars. which isn't a minor inconvenience. and on top of that, if you can't move your car you now start getting parking tickets. everything costs time and money, and some people can't afford that. not all of us area SWEs making 300k.

this kind of activism doesn't do anything and is honestly naive and ultimate cringe. talk about the rich getting the poors to basically destroy each other while actively being preyed on. the car industry is so large and has such deep pockets that SUVs are here to stay unless actual lawmakers get together and do something differently. a few flat tires will do nothing more than enrage your fellow people and instead cause them to vote the opposite way only to spite the people that ruined their day/afternoon/weekend. and that's not even mentioning this type of stuff can get you actually killed in the wrong area.

this website feels like a project created by a sheltered, clueless college kid who thinks theyre changing the world

I don't know why you accuse me of elitism when SUVs endanger exactly people who aren't rich and can't afford to drive a car let alone an expensive one like a SUV. Cheaper options (walking, cycling, taking public transport and then walking) are more dangerous because of others choosing to drive huge vehicles. I want it to stop. I support form of protest that impose inconvenience to try to stop dangerous behavior that causes thousands of senseless deaths per year.

i accuse you of elitism because you support the tactics which only elitists would be proud of. most normal humans who need to get to work and don't make a lot of money don't think this way.

the issue doesn't lay with people who buy SUVs but with prior campaigns that introduced them into the country, the large swaths of money that have created this market and that is continuing growing larger. its become a snowball effect because nowdays, driving a smaller car is actually more dangerous and so people that don't even want an SUV originally (someone like myself) are getting one or want one, because if i ever get into a car accident, i have a higher risk of death. A LOT of people think this way, and so it has nothing to do with the types of people that think like "i want a bigger car to compensate for something or because theyre super cool bro", those people are in the minority. it's that they're safer given the already vast amounts of SUVs out there, especially for people with kids.

so the whole premise of flattening tires, or destruction of other people's properties is idiotic at best, and dangerous at worst. you really think someone exhausted with a 3 year old who finds their car's flat tire and that absolutely stupid sticker on their windshield is going to be convinced? you've instead just enlisted an enemy who will actively vote against "ban SUVs." good luck with that campaign.

Call it what it is, it's not "aggressive activism", it's vandalism and property destruction, and potentially cost lives if the car owner needs to go to the hospital or has another emergency. Let's not water things down please.

People in big cars kill thousands of pedestrians and cyclists per year. Let's not water things down please. You seem to not understand big cars in cities are really dangerous and actually cost (not hypothetical might) lives every day.

> People in big^W cars kill thousands of pedestrians and cyclists per year

FTFY. So we should ban cars? Plus, there's a difference between something literally called an accident with destruction of property.

>To me it's activism working as intended.

To get literally everyone to hate you? People don't like their private property destroyed, esp. randomly and unprovoked. See how much support the idiots throwing soup on art are getting.

Yeah, I don't like people choosing oversized vehicles and endangering lives every day. Idk why you compare temporarily immobilizing dangerous vehicles to destroying art. If art was killing people every day they would get more support I suppose.

Compact cars don't kill people in accidents? Honda Civics weigh around 3200 lbs, and Ford Explorer around 4300 lbs. Model 3 Tesla weighs about 3800 lbs. Are those killing machines too? SUVs likely prevent death in accidents as well. You're actually more likely to die/be killed by a compact car - https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/driver-death-rates-remain-h...

You aren't going to win over the hearts and minds of anyone with this take. Do better.

"tyre" haha. his thread is gold. you EU trash nitwits can come try that in the US. we'll beat your weak little bodies to a pulp in front of your children.

violence is a perfect response to wanton destruction of personal property. sometimes you idiots need a good whoopin ;) i'll beat your ass to a bloody pulp in front of your children to teach them a real lesson about their loser daddy that doesn't respect others property.

bubble boy retards out in force.

The problem with taking "direct action" is that the people you are targeting will respond in kind and often escalate. You damage their property, they light your house on fire.

Maybe they'll get yelled at. I would bet against any of their houses having been burned.

I could imagine them getting shot.

Such mindless activism is what drives away popular opinion from climate change.

Lot of folks have SUVs because they have large families. Its a pain to keep a huge car in a city like NYC or London anyway so people generally have reasons. There were a wave of such tire puncture incidents in NYC which forced some people to drive 30-40 miles every week to park the car in suburb or NJ (parking in city is very expensive)

The end result was more emission, more pain and less sympathy for the actual problem.

Most people drive SUV now, they're safer when it snows and winter, built sturdier, and pack more. As a Canadian more global warming please! This country some of the worse weather in world

> they're safer when it snows and winter

Are they actually safer or do they just give the driver a false sense of security? Assuming it actually has 4WD/AWD (and most don't), that only helps you "go" and does nothing for "stop" as all cars have four wheel brakes.

One exception to this is being able to keep going in very rural areas where any rescue attempt would take too long. However, even this can fail with a false sense of security and poor judgement:

https://www.11alive.com/article/news/nation-world/man-strand...

> Of the dozens of missions we have had this winter involving a vehicle stuck in the snow, nearly all of them were 4x4 vehicles and almost all of the drivers told us, "I didn’t think I would get stuck."

I've found that EV's have a significant advantage in snow due to very precise torque control compared to an automatic or manual transmission. Even my Prius does surprisingly well in snow with fresh tires up to it's ~6" ground clearance.

SUVs have bigger tires, and thus better grip. Much better snow clearance too. Also, my parents both axels on their cars two times from winter pot holes. Cars can be made cheaper, and it really shows. Budget car vs Budget SUV, It's not even close.

Also, electric battery range almost halves in cold weather.

> SUVs have bigger tires, and thus better grip.

Have you ever considered the reason they have bigger tires is because... they're bigger vehicles and therefore need bigger tires to have the same amount of grip as a smaller vehicle?

>Are they actually safer or do they just give the driver a false sense of security? Assuming it actually has 4WD/AWD (and most don't), that only helps you "go" and does nothing for "stop" as all cars have four wheel brakes.

No amount of snow tire fanboy circle jerking will make up for the fact that doubling the number of driven tires lets an AWD vehicle can leisurely drive up the kinds of residential streets and driveways that are a "pick up some speed and send it" affair in a FWD vehicle equipped with snow tires.

Source: I drive a FWD station wagon with snow tires.

Is there a rule that sedans and wagons cannot drive four wheels?

You won't even need to own a car in the 15 Minute City, let alone an SUV.

I enjoy pod living and the cricket burgers are tasty. You will too!

People in walkable areas make far more money than people in rural areas. They're eating the kobe burgers while the rurals will be stuck with the crickets.

I eat cricket meal to save the climate. Meat is highly carbon intensive. It's also not healthy for you, according to the WHO. According to the scientists at the prestigious and reputable World Economic Forum meat will become a rare treat for most of us.

If we all move to tiny houses stacked in high rises, switch to a climate friendly diet that is largely free of animal products, and refrain from having children, we have a good chance of saving the planet.

I drive my family around in an SUV with no shame. I'll sell it when all the yuppies, crying about my SUV stop globe trotting around in polluting aircraft everytime they feel they need more Instagram karma or they miss their "bestie" who lives across the country.

SUVs are eight times as likely to kill children as other vehicles. [0]

It's not just about pollution, they're horrible death machines in other ways, too.

[0] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00224...

If you got a large family, SUV is the best way to go, even if it's an electric SUV.

Otherwise, any bantering on moving away from stable 24/7 power generators into sporadic power generators beyond the point of sustainability required by consumers/businesses is just a stupid economic crushing move.

These electric vehicles enmasse will require even more steady 24/7 electric generation due to schotastic nature of plug-in timeframe for recharging.

We should be focusing more on zero-carbon electric power generation such as hydroelectric and nuclear energy.

I am a conservative environmentalist and these are my true sustainability messages.

If you got a large family, SUV is the way to go.

Honestly, why? How is it easier to fit 6+ people (feels like reasonable definition of "large") in an SUV compared to a van? I know a few families with 5 or more kids and they all have minivans.

Honda Pilot SUV has better gas mileage than an Odyssey minivan and weighs less.

Ideally, the way to go is to live somewhere you can walk, bike, or take public transportation for your daily needs. A bus can hold a lot of kids!

Of course, that's not always practical. For those situations, how is an SUV better than a van?

Until you have a large family, it would be hard to describe difficulty on about transporting mini-adults toward many places ... by walking, bicycling, or skateboarding ... unless one lives in the future 15-minute smart gulag^H^H^H^H^Hcity.

Honda Pilot SUV weighs less than an Odyssey minivan and has better gas mileage.

Gulag? Are you thinking of such hellscapes as Utrecht? Odense? Helsinki? Pontevedra?

Also the Pilot seems to be marginally worse than the Odyssey https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/bymake/Honda2023.shtml

I mean, my father managed with 4 without issues, but maybe it's just parenting skill differences.

Probably more about how dense the urban area you are in.

America has more spreadout suburban area than cities.

> If you got a large family, SUV is the best way to go, even if it's an electric SUV.

What's wrong with minivans?

For many SUVs there’s no real difference. A honda pilot weighs less than an Odyssey, though probably with some small amount of added drag. Usually an SUV is more likely to have AWD

I bought a tiguan because I needed the occasional added seats (and it was impossible to find a Ford Transit Connect - which frankly is the only true mini van)

There's two massive differences. Sliding doors and captain chairs. These two things make it way easier getting in and out of a minivan to actually use that third row of seats.

I will acknowledge captain chairs can sometimes be found on SUVs, but by far the most common arrangement on SUVs are second row benches. This means accessing the third row can be challenging especially when you can't open the doors all the way.

Why not a minivan?

Honda Pilot SUV weighs less than a minivan and has better gas mileage.

It does not have better gas mileage https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/bymake/Honda2023.shtml

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