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Comment by al_borland | Hacker News Reader

From what I’ve heard, trucks are huge now due to various fuel efficiency regulations. A big truck is easier to make with fewer regulations. It seems like all the electric trucks want to prove they are bigger and tougher than the ICE trucks, but it seems like the perfect platform for small trucks, as the the efficiency standards would become a moot point. I’m looking for trucks like the old Ford Ranger from the late 90s to come back. The Maverick was a start, but they need to take it a step further.

Maybe it’s like with the Model S. First they have to prove it’s cool and remove all the excuses (too slow, too weak, not enough range), then they can scale down to the smaller more mass market options at lower price points.

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> trucks are huge now due to various fuel efficiency regulations

Correct.

It's because of "...the fine print of Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards adopted in 1975, Gerald Ford’s reluctant response to a crippling Middle East oil embargo that sent gas prices soaring. To protect American commerce, work trucks and light trucks were subject to less-strict CAFE standards than family sedans. Trucks are also exempt from the 1978 gas guzzler tax, which adds $1,000 to $7,700 to the price of sedans that get 22.5 or fewer miles to the gallon.

Those incentives encouraged American car manufacturers to double down on trucks. But the CAFE standards also had a more subtle and far-reaching effect: They pushed carmakers to broaden the definition of truck.

“'Cars and light trucks had two different standards. It became easier to meet the standard with trucks. So automobile manufacturers thought of ways to basically build trucks that are really cars, and that’s what generated the SUV,' said Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist Christopher Knittel, who has spent much of his career tracing the unintended consequences of government fuel regulations."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/04/07/trucks-ou...

CAFE standards have been around since 1975. Yes, they helped incentivize manufacturers to aggressively market trucks and SUVs, but they don't explain the recent increase in the size of those trucks. That part's new.

As I understand it, CAFE standards require small footprint trucks to meet an unreasonably high MPG rating or else pay taxes/fines. Large footprint trucks have a more realistic MPG requirement. Therefore all trucks are large trucks.

Here’s the first article I found when I googled the issue. https://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2012/10/how-cafe-killed-co...

Despite some misleading pictures shared on social media, if you do an apples-to-apples comparison (e.g., a 1972 F-150 and a 2023 model with the same bed size), they are about the same length. The differences are vastly better driver safety and fuel economy.

Even the differences in height are often overplayed by making bad-faith comparisons: https://i0.wp.com/www.curbsideclassic.com/wp-content/uploads...

The main difference is that nowadays, there are more factory and aftermarket configuration options available, and people have more money, so you see more people driving heavy-duty trucks with 35,000 lbs towing capacity, which have big engines and thus are rather beefy. But conversely, you also see more people buying small trucks with "stub-length" (4-5 ft) beds.

It's interesting that you don't really have a market of mini-pickups that are seen in Japan, but that's probably partly a matter of weird fuel efficiency regulations, of import restrictions, and cultural factors (few people in the US want to be seen riding anything golf-cart-sized, and it's not exactly a guy-only thing.)

Wow, that picture is striking. It needs to be an automatic reply to about 10% of comments on the subject, both here and Reddit.

Driving a kei truck is basically the most fun you can have with your pants on and they get a smile from everyone. AIUI, it's primarily the safety regulations that make them unsellable new in the USA. The crumple zone is the drivers knees, just like a VW microbus.

Old ones can't be registered in all 50 states. New Hampshire will let you register one; Vermont is not as accommodating. They're also pretty pricey for a 25 year-old car.

Oh, and they top out at something like 50 mph. Which would be terrifying if you managed to keep your foot planted long enough to get up to that speed.

I've driven one that was a summer camp vehicle, and I'd love to have one, but I live on the wrong side of the Connecticut River :-(

What? The average truck on the road is absolutely substantially larger today than in the past.

https://www.axios.com/ford-pickup-trucks-history

I know what it's like to be in the presence of a typical old truck, compared to a typical modern truck. The modern truck is wider and taller, accelerates faster, and has worse visibility. I'll trust my own eyes and experience over some conveniently angled photos and irrelevant "apples-to-apples". (To extend the analogy: you're doing your comparison using a cultivar hardly anyone buys anymore).

It's bizarre that this has been allowed, and that lawmakers didn't immediately fix this hole in the regulations as soon as they noticed car manufacturers taking advantage of it.

It's bizarre that in the middle of a oil market crisis it wasn't expected that the consumer market wouldn't have moved to higher MPG vehicles on it's own anyways. To me, this is one of the hallmarks of a highly monopolized market where consumers don't have any actual choices, and where competition for consumer approval is almost entirely absent.

The correct answer would have been to increase the number of companies manufacturing vehicles, not passing laws that constrained a market and possibly lead to an overall decrease. Now we have a market that's almost entirely bound to congressional whim and mostly disconnected from consumer demand.

>Now we have a market that's almost entirely bound to congressional whim

Agree 100%

>mostly disconnected from consumer demand

Disagree. Sedans are still around (Camry, Corolla, Civic, Accord), but consumers are voting with their wallets for crossovers. Ford killed the Focus and Fusion because they simply couldn't be sold for a profit since most people didn't get the high end models, and to be honest, I'm surprised Chevy still makes the Malibu. The Company Formerly Known As Chrysler doesn't even make a car anymore.

> Ford killed the Focus and Fusion because they simply couldn't be sold for a profit since most people didn't get the high end models

They stopped providing it as a model to the American market. It's based off a Ford platform, though, and other automakers are continuing to use that platform. The Focus also continues to be a model in European markets.

During the beginning of the pandemic there were also parts shortages. Many manufacturers stopped making their lower end vehicles and only produced the higher end ones with the limited parts they could get, because, they can convert those parts into higher profits.

I think these decisions are best viewed as the awful intersection of short term wall street thinking combined with latent and intentionally imperfect measures of consumer demand.

Ford Europe also stops producing Focus sadly.

Still produced in the UK: https://www.ford.co.uk/cars/focus

> Sedans are still around (Camry, Corolla, Civic, Accord), but consumers are voting with their wallets for crossovers

This is objectively true but it’s happening against three decades of marketing pushing SUVs hard and especially the messaging that if you drive a small car you’re putting your safety at risk. I think there’s an arm’s race here which is going to be hard to stop absent something causing gas prices to spike or a shift in insurance requirements.

Weirdly the same thing has happened with smartphones. Every phone is a truck.

A small phone puts your safety at risk?

But you're right that there's far too little choice in smartphones. They're all fragile thin big touch screens. In the early days, you had smartphones made out of steel with sliding keyboards. What happened to that?

Given that the damage to roads is linked to miles, and then the square of the vehicle's weight, it'd not be difficult for a state to stop putting the road maintenance related taxes on gas itself, and instead just measure those two things. Odometer change, times the square of the weight. Suddenly the really large truck that carries a single person is far more expensive to run than a sedan.

Something kind of like this is already done with stickers for electric cars in many states: Doing that for every car is just extending the program. It won't happen though, because a lot of people would be angry to internalize the cost of their choices

It’s more than the square. I’m I remember right it’s to the 4th power of axle weight.

Yeah, I’d love that - or things like charging for parking by the square foot - but your last point is what I had in mind for the pessimistic ending: people REALLY don’t like losing subsidies, so I think a lot of governments are hoping buying preferences change or the insurance companies will do something because then they don’t take the political heat.

> The Company Formerly Known As Chrysler doesn't even make a car anymore.

Dodge Charger

Both the charger and challenger are discontinued and won’t be made after this year.

The problem is that you get unfair competition if one type of car is held to different standards than another type. Pickups and SUVs should be held to the same standards of regular cars. And maybe also require a stricter driving license, because from everything I hear, they're a lot more dangerous.

An obvious, easy solution would be to allow car makers to classify a vehicle as either a "car" or a "truck" (once classified, it cannot be reclassified without the car maker being subject to the worst of both worlds).

Cars can be driven with a car driving license.

Trucks can be driven with a truck driving license, or CDL, or have to be registered by a company, or _whatever licensing requirement makes it perfectly feasible for people who need one for work but enough of a PITA that private individuals don't bother getting it_.

Except that in all of America that isn't a city (most of it), a truck is a super useful tool and requiring a CDL would basically be a bad joke.

And yet trucks are huge without a material increase in bed space. If the auto makers can skirt around the law to make everything a truck, surely In this hypothetical, they would make smaller trucks and make them "cars"

You'd pretty much have to repeal a ton of safety laws. Today's Tacoma is the size of an f-150 of 20 years ago, but still can't tow or haul as much. Gotta deliver practicality!

The C in CDL is commercial - and that license can be required for a car, and individuals can drive bus-sized RVs without one.

But is there really no downside to "driving a truck" in US? Out here northern europe, if a car is classified as a truck, then you have lower speed limits, and possibly need to drive a separate truck-driving-license.

Sure, for very heavy trucks. But the Cybertruck is not even close to being heavy enough to qualify.

I live in an area where the Cybertruck is heavy enough that the annual registration fees will be 2-3x higher than a regular car. But then again, if you are a "farmer" then all the truck stuff becomes cheaper. You know that all the largest cities in the US are located in states (New York, California, Illinois, Texas) with huge agricultural areas. And they all have lots of laws to protect and help farmers.

To what extent does this affect the design decisions of electric trucks?

If it weighs over 6000 pounds and you have a small business, you can completely write off 100% of the purchase in one year.

Can you explain more? Not sure how that’s possible

Standard tax deduction for businesses as a work truck. Technically you need to be using it only for business reasons but we all know how fuzzy small business owners get with that kind of stuff sometimes.

Probably referring to a section 179 deduction which gives you a $25k deduction on your taxable income for vehicles that weigh more than 6000lbs.

aka the Benz AMG exception: https://www.mbotw.com/section-179-tax-exemption/

Brb, about to start “Get a Free Truck, LLC.”

Wow.

Not free. Just subtracted from income for purposes of calculating tax.

https://www.tesla.com/support/incentives

> Qualifying businesses can claim a deduction of up to $28,900 when purchasing a new Tesla vehicle with a gross vehicle weight rating (GVWR) of at least 6,000 pounds. To qualify for the tax deduction, vehicles must be operated for legitimate business use >50% the time.

Why are we incentivizing huge vehicles, sigh =/

We’re incentivizing business capital investments. Certainly, it’s not always efficient (Hummers that used this tax treatment), but that is the intent. It would be more optimal if trucks didn’t keep getting bigger, but trucks are still needed for work purposes.

Then why not just incentivize work vehicles, be they large trucks or electric sedans?

Because that is not the criteria codified in statute.

Seems like a tautology

That’s called incentivizing large vehicles

The reason was to avoid tax advantaging sports cars or luxury sedans for executives. At the time SUVs were utilitarian and unfashionable so dividing by weight seemed an easy way to distinguish between "real" work vehicles and "fake" work vehicles.

Of course it backfired so now 6500 pound SUVs (and even luxury sedans!) are easily acquired.

Bingo.

Technically you also have to use it more than 50% of the time for business.

> From what I’ve heard, trucks are huge now due to various fuel efficiency regulations. A big truck is easier to make with fewer regulations.

That's only a part the reason. The more important half is that bigger vehicles, whether trucks or SUVs, have much higher profit margins.

That higher profit margin is because of the more lax regulations

A guy at work has a Ford Ranger EV (I think it's the '97?); he's upgraded the battery & the charger. It'd be my ideal vehicle if they were produced, again.

At the time those were referred to internally as the Ranger Glider, which was a name I always kind of liked. I recall many of them going to Mexico at the time, I think as part of a government program.

Yep. And according to Wikipedia, it delivered 75 miles of range at 60mph on 26kWh NiMH battery. With 52kWh of today's batteries a vehicle in that format could easily do 150 miles (plenty for a work truck). You wouldn't be able sell it for $50k+ though.

150mi of range assumes nothing in it, no towing, etc. Not nearly enough. Also, that would assume the 52kWh of battery weighs the same. Maybe it does, but if it doesn’t then that may increase weight and decrease range.

Nobody wants 150mj range cars anymore because they suck for day to day use. 20-80% means you’re realistically getting 60% of that range usable. You better plug them in every single day otherwise you might have trouble.

Trucks are huge now because people want huge trucks. That is the only reason.

Fuel regulations have been around for decades but trucks are getting bigger and bigger.

Toyota is rumored to make a truck smaller than the Tacoma, which is pretty exciting to me, in part because the Tacoma has become ridiculously expensive. But it will undoubtedly be a hybrid at best.

Yep. And that's also why SUVs are the way they are - they fit the regulatory definition of "truck" and get different emissions and fuel efficiency rules as a result.

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