Here's an article from 2011 predicting our current automotive market: https://me.engin.umich.edu/news-events/news/cafe-standards-c...
And here's the relevant section that called it from the get-go - emphasis mine:
At issue was this: Some companies offer full model lines, from cars to large SUVs and pickups, but some don’t. How could there be a overreaching fuel-economy standard that penalized companies like Ford and GM, while carmakers that sold only smaller cars effortlessly abided by the rules? So the concept of vehicle footprint was added. Models that ran large, crossing specific length-by-width thresholds‚ would have less ambitious fuel-economy targets. While the Obama administration has pushed for more aggressive CAFE numbers, the amended regulations retain the footprint-based leniency towards bigger cars and light trucks.
The result is a loophole, allowing the entire auto industry to sidestep some of the more painful efficiency requirements by inflating vehicle footprints. And historically, drivers almost always lean toward larger vehicles. “In general, if everything else about the vehicle is the same, consumers prefer the bigger one, with the roomier interior,” says Kate Whitefoot, a senior program officer at the National Academy of Engineering and the lead author of the paper (she was a doctoral student at the time of the study). Combine a regulatory loophole with a built-in, well-known customer choice, and the industry lurches towards the inevitable: larger models and more light trucks.
It basically allows you to depreciate it over 2-5 years. That's it. Pay back the value difference in taxes when sold.
There was a brief Bush era credit on top of this, long expired, but that still haunts the interwebs with rumors of still being prescient. It's not.
Iirc, the weight cutoff is currently something like 7000 lbs, and many suvs have nominal weights of 7001 lbs, with submodels that are 6999 lbs, for locals where getting taxed as a business vehicle is a bad thing.
(Unless by taxed you meant CAFE accounting, which is different.)
(I'll address a small area of CAFE besides what a commenter said about CAFE below, which appears to be entirely correct and on-the-nose to me re footprint.)
People for the most part didn't want larger trucks. They want the old smaller full size trucks. They are no longer an option.
CAFE targets (among other reasons) have forced the market to switch to Aluminum from Steel, because you can achieve near equal performance, with lower mass and higher mpg.
The cost is that aluminum is not as strong as steel, so you need more volume for equivalent strength. Plus the literal cost $.
But the cheat code is that moment-arm is proportional to force, but also length-squared. M=P*L^2 and similar.
So you can make some design elements lighter by switching steel to aluminum and making it bigger. Boxier.
Bonus is the then new-ish popular idea of crush zone is practically baked in with the larger, lighter, less dense designs.
Add in some addl (Steel to Al) complexity due to serviceability, flexure, and fatigue, (which require addl bumps in mass and/or length/ volume to meet design requirements), and extrapolate over the whole vehicle, and you get the size changes from roughly 2008 (cough, cough) to now.
Batteries tend to take up the bottom couple inches of the car, as the "skateboard" design wins. 2170 cells are 70mm tall, 2.75 inches. That's not a huge factor. Also, it doesn't affect the incredibly crucial hood height, which could be greatly lowered since there's no engine/engine bay needed! Also the underside of gas cars need at least exhaust, sometimes drive axles, and usually other crap that can be deleted from ev's that helps lower EVs too. I don't think EVs are practically any taller.
They also, recently, have all the weight at the bottom, which is extremely from a handling/stability perspective. Even if you slam on the breaks, sideways at speed, you ain't gonna flip (some SUV's excepted). This is useful for emergency braking.
As for weight, the main potential problem is braking. Thankfully anti-lock brakes & big calipers are quite amazing. Ioniq vehicles have a 60-0 stopping distance of 118ft, which is on the low end of most vehicles in general, such as the also well performing Honda Accord Sport 2.0T. In car on car situations the additional weight has extra inertia but cars are generally quite resillient. As for pedestrians bicyclists & others light targets, cars already weighed so vastly much more that it's hard to imagine the extra weight changing 99.999% of accident outcomes significantly.
An electric truck will still use more electrical energy to accelerate than an electric car. The cost to drive a mile in an electric vehicle is lower than a gas vehicle (maybe like one third?), but it's still a cost. Also, there's the larger initial capital cost of a larger vehicle.
> We will all have to learn to live with more massive vehicles.
Or we can start legislating against them and stop de kindermoord.
But not a significant one from a consumer perspective. When trading from an ICE to an EV you'd see about a 50% reduction in fuel costs. So to a consumer it wouldn't matter if you use a little more for a bigger vehicle because you're already saving more than with your ICE.
"Or we can start legislating against them and stop the kindermoord."
Yeah, I guess the disagreement could have been with his opinion and not the rest of the comment. Although, did the kindermoord movement actually ban larger consumer vehicles? I thought it was more about street/city design.
Big SUVs weren't around in those days so they didn't have to. This is what the Dutch were up against in the 70s: https://www.amsterdamclassictours.com/uploads/3/0/2/2/302228...
Who is this "we"? It seems most people in the US are at least fine with larger vehicles, or even actively want them. Good luck legislating something when most of the country is against it, and corporate interests would be up in arms as well.
The curb weight of the EQS SUV for example is only about 600lbs higher than the saloon EQS.
And the model 3 is only about 400lbs lighter than the Volvo XC90 which is far larger and is about the same weight as the XC60 (ICE).
People take trips longer than 200km and charging isn’t possible at all times also sometimes you do need to be able to make an emergency trip when infrastructure might be under stress or non functional such as in the case of bad weather or natural disaster.
People in general have mobility issues, small children and large families too. Having a 2 seat feather weight short distance car is likely more wasteful than having a proper one since if you can make that work for you you probably don’t need a car in the first place.
It already mostly disappeared, or entered the realm of “completely reasonable trade-off”, with the rise of unibody low-displacement SUVs. The original SUVs were body-on-frame V8s that got 13 mpg. Gas price and uncomfortable ride were a huge factor. Now you can get a RAV4 hybrid that drives like a car and gets 40 mpg. And you get a tailgate. Why would anyone bother with a sedan and the limitations the trunk gives you? For 5-7 more mpg it’s not worth it.
I had a 2018 rav4 hybrid that never got close to 40MPG. Maybe 30-32 in the city, but once you hit the interstate where the speed limit is 65-70 the MPG significantly drops to 25-7 due to the underpowered 4 cylinder engine and the massive 3,900 lbs curb weight. The rav4 only had 5k miles on it when we got rid of it.
I guess it’s good if you live in a big city or never drive the actual speed limit on the interstates.
That hardly seems worth changing cars over once you’ve bought it.
The former doesn’t distort the proportion.
Going from 10mpg to 20 is massive, literally double the efficiency.
20 to 30 is still a pretty big deal.
30 to 40 is noticeable, but not really a huge deal.
40 to 50 is barely above the noise floor
It wasn’t good for our use case and we incurred zero loss if anything we made money selling it back. They were in very high demand.
Suddenly ahead of me
Across the mountainside
A gleaming alloy air-car
Shoots towards me two lanes wide
Oh, I spin around with shrieking tires
To run the deadly race
Go screaming through the valley
As another joins the chase
Ride like the wind
Straining the limits
Of machine and man
Laughing out loud with fear and hope
I've got a desperate plan
At the one-lane bridge
I leave the giants stranded
At the riverside
Race back to the farm
To dream with my uncle
At the fireside
Based on "A nice morning drive" by Richard S. Foster (https://www.scribd.com/doc/33762958/A-Nice-Morning-Drive#)
A midsize crossover where they can basically just slide right into the seat is way easier to get in and out of vs a low tide height car where they have to raise/lower a good portion of their body weight. Lotta bad hips and knees in the 50+ demographic.
depending where you live the main reason was and still is fitting in the streets and finding parking spots.
I mean sure large parts of the US are designed not only car centric but also with not only focus on large cars but even wants to make driving them extra easy. But that's not at all the case in the EU. Like there are many places with streets where driving a large US cars is troublesome or outright impossible and parking spots are all the time at least slightly too small for many US cars. Similar there are many place with no or very limited dedicated parking ares, mainly at the side of the street and the larger your car the more spots you will not fit in or fit in but it's hard to enter them without touching surrounding cars or similar.
> largely disappears for electric vehicles
which many people still don't want, because if you don't have your own parking spot (very common in the EU) then charging gets much more complicated
> In fact, electric vehicles are larger/heavier than ic equivalents.
Heavier yes, but there are small and compact EVs, through often with quite limited reach and mainly advertised to/sold in countries with a lot of small streets.
The whole world will change to EVs. It might take a bit longer in some places but it will happen.