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Comment by xyst | Hacker News Reader

I'll never understand the attraction of these "light duty" vehicles. Very impractical. Unnecessarily large vehicles. You are sitting so high up and a large amount of your view is obstructed by the hood (additional view obstructed by the pillars). The bed of these pickups will barely fit your lumber for a DIY project. Have to put the tailgate down and secure it properly. Let's not forget the poor efficiency due to extra weight and will drive like shit on the road.

I would say 99% of the people that own these "light duty" trucks are really just compensating for their insecurities.

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I have to wonder if part of the attraction of very large vehicles is getting enough elevation so that headlights aren't quite so annoying/dangerous. Driving around a sedan, I'm regularly blinded by oncoming traffic when driving at night.

Something needs to be done. Some of these headlights that people are driving with are not safe for others on the road.

It's an arms race. To feel safe, you need a larger car. When you get a larger car, now other people feel unsafe. And so the bloat goes, until the best selling cars in the US are glorified tanks and Ford doesn't even manufacture sedans anymore.

I'm still dismayed that I can fit an 8' long piece of lumber into a Ford Fiesta hatchback but not into a pickup truck. What is up with that?

They are dangerous to pretty much anyone and anything not inside of them. Only 15% are actually used for work.

Same old tired “if you have a big truck you have a small peepee” nonsense. Trucks are useful, I’m a full on convert now after years of shitting on them. Plus big vehicles look good and feel good, small peepee or not. Couple those things with an electric vehicle that charges for free off my solar panels and it’s a win-win-win.

Upvoting because the sentiment is accurate; most truck detractors do not have adequate understanding of why they are popular (and thus also don't understand how hypocritical an electric truck is, as EV tech stands today) and what purposes they serve their drivers.

That depends. If you’re hauling massive loads like an RV behind you it may not be feasible outside of 100-150 miles on a charge. However for most other things like hauling things in the bed of your truck, or a small camper, you can get very close to the advertised range which makes it very useful and far from hypocritical. Add on benefits like a massive moving source of electricity and it more than makes up for its transitory (batteries are improving fast) deficiencies.

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