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Comment by jstarfish | Hacker News Reader

This can't be right. Maybe it is, but it makes no sense.

The 90s Frontier is a tiny little thing, almost what a Kei truck is today. Same with the Ranger. An El Camino is bigger.

I bought a base Frontier in 2017, wanting that tiny truck but ended up with something the size of a 90s F150. Literally the smallest option on the market, whose weak-ass v4 struggles to haul its own weight (and has the turning radius of an aircraft carrier).

Tacomas? I like Toyota but the used market for those is worse than MSRP.

And Ford stopped making the Ranger; the Maverick ain't it. It's basically what I have already.

How is this the result of new efficiency standards? We still have small cars on the road. Cutting the roof off and appending a flatbed doesn't require a monster footprint.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azI3nqrHEXM

TL;DW:

In 2008 CAFE introduced a formula that calculates the required MPG based off of the track times the wheelbase (basically the rectangle formed by the tires). Trucks are less aerodynamic than sedans, so small trucks can't be made that get sufficiently low MPG to meet this standard, and thus even though a smaller truck would use less fuel than a larger truck that meets the standard.

Am I missing something or is this regulation as dumb as I think it is? It seems to have the effect of replacing a bunch of small trucks on the road with giant trucks that get much worse mileage overall.

It's dumb, but also don't forget that any law that will disproportionately hurt Ford is going to be a non-starter; over 650k F-150s sold in a year.

[edit]

Ford existing necessitates allowing pickups, it doesn't necessitate forcing them to be large. I'm just pointing out that any regulation that makes pickups unsaleable altogether is not going to work.

I think it is which results not only in huge trucks using much fuel but also killing people more than small ones would. Many things in US politics move in mysterious ways.

Ding ding ding.

These laws are written by the same people who think you shouldn’t be in charge of your own life.

It's beyond dumb and currently all stick and no carrot. By that I mean - at least in CA - a huge state bureaucracy including visual inspections that essentially precludes any real modifications to vehicles - unless you see a referee in which case it is a crapshoot on approval. We would IMO be better served by larger tax incentives on electric, and reduce the CARB bureaucracy enormously - insist on a simple tailpipe test "as it blows". Ridiculous standards have effectively forced small, high compression, often turbo charged, engines on consumers which run extremely hot (observe the heat shielding on newer subarus intended to prevent the engine mounts from burning out). Such engines, while fuel efficient, will never last the 300k miles we saw previously, without extensive messing with - by that I mean engine pulling, gasket full gasket and ring replacement type operations. If you want longevity, the older style toyota, lower compression, engines - which run cool and are marginally less fuel efficient (available in most other places in the world) will last in the 1m mile range.

> By that I mean - at least in CA

CA has nothing to do with the regulation in question, which is federal CAFE standards.

CAFE regs also killed the station wagon (estate for you Brits) in the US. Being regulated as cars, station wagons murdered the manufacturers' averages - but minivans, which barely existed in the US (other than the VW Bus) before the mid-80s, were light trucks and so had different (lower) standards. My mom's 1987 minivan got worse mileage than the 1980 station wagon it replaced, and the only advantage it had was that its interior was taller and so moving things was easier. (I ended up driving it for a few months in the mid-90s, right around move-in for my senior year of college. I was suddenly everyone's best friend for a few days.)

Are wagons killed? Many european cars have versions both sedan and wagon. Wagons just not popular anymore. Look like everyone wants a SUV these days.

> Many european cars have versions both sedan and wagon.

BMW's 3- and 5-series wagons are no longer sold in the US. Audi only has the A4 and A6 Allroad versions. Mercedes-Benz has only the E-class wagon remaining. Volvo, long the king of European wagons in the US, recently restored two models. So yeah, unfortunately for the most part they're out.

> Look like everyone wants a SUV these days.

This is true. Most of those wagons that were phased out became equivalent SUV models.

My point was that not CAFE regulations killed wagons in US but simple market force. Wagons are still alive, they are manufactured globally, just not selling well in US. Same story with compact cars like Toyota Yaris.

Luxury brands can price the tax for failure to meet CAFE standards into their sticker; an extra thousand isn’t going to make or break an E class sale, but it’s going to matter for a Malibu wagon.

What I've always wondered is: Does the larger footprint lead directly to a taller truck?

Is is it just that an F-150 that is as tall as a 1990 Ranger would look silly or something? The 1990s Buick Roadmaster Estate is not just 17" shorter in length than an F-150 Super Cab with a 6.5' bed, but also 17" shorter in height, which makes a sharing the road with these trucks bad (even before they are raised, which seems relatively common).

My dad wanted an 8' bed standard cab for his work and got an old one with almost 200k miles and I was slightly surprised to see it wasn't a step-up cab, while it seems like all modern trucks are.

[edit]

The Roadmaster Estate is also 8" shorter in height than the Ford Maverick, despite having a longer length; granted the Buick keeps its maximum height for a longer part of the length, but it has a shorter hood, and from the cab-back the Maverick doesn't go under 50" until the bumper.

It does appear that dumb. CAFE seems predicated on exceeding a particular average gas mileage for each class of vehicles.

If I understand it correctly, having a small truck counted among your sedans hurts the average MPG of your "car" line since even a fuel-efficient truck performs worse than cars.

Solution: add just enough mass to the Frontier to bump it from "cars" and put it in the "truck" class.

Among "trucks," the dummy-thicc Frontier now becomes the best-performing Truck, whose high average MPG raises the shittier average MPG of the rest of your gas-guzzling Titan/equivalents. Then you don't need to improve any of your existing trucks.

...which leaves little incentive for anybody to make a small truck. It hurts your average car MPG and only qualifies as a Truck if you add so much weight to it that it's no longer "small." This is dumb.

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