Yeah but the drivers get to cosplay as Rugged Men™.
The only thing that'll reverse the trend and stop this from getting worse will be government regulation. Then come the cries of "Now they're taking our trucks!"
The only thing that'll reverse the trend and stop this from getting worse will be government regulation. Then come the cries of "Now they're taking our trucks!"
[1] https://www.motortrend.com/features/car-types-models-body-st....
[2]https://www.thedrive.com/news/small-cars-are-getting-huge-ar...
What you can't seem to get is something like a first generation Tacoma or 90s S-10 without 4WD that's low to the ground. All of the newer trucks have very high bed sides that make loading them from the side a huge pain even if you're tall.
Lots of Americans want smaller trucks. I just saw a Netflix show where a main character prized his old Toyota pickup. This is also evidenced in the importation of Japanese "K-car" trucks.
I agree! I believe I said similar in my above comment. I'm looking into getting one myself, though I'm apprehensive about purchasing a car built in 99 without being able to test drive or inspect it.
I do think it's common for people to call large SUVs like the Ford Excursion "trucks".
Given the popularity of F-250s / 2500s, which hardly meet any CAFE standard, the truckers don't yearn for the Ranger. They like 12mpg turbo diesel. We could repeal CAFE, get Ford to make them, but they still wouldn't sell. Tacoma loyalists keep the mid-size truck alive, but they're just a small fraction of 1500/2500 buyers.
People like big trucks, and that's fine: but why blame it on the gov't ?
Blaming the government for getting captured by industry also obfuscates the problem and makes discussing solutions more difficult. The current (grotesque) CAFE standards went in during the last months of the Bush administration, as a gift to the automakers.
I agree wholeheartedly, but the change in the CAFE standards had another effect that was just as important: it allowed Ford and GM to get out of the market for actual cars (sedans, coupes, and station wagons) almost entirely. Changing back to the CAFE standards from 2007 would probably decimate their current business model, and the political backlash would be severe.
This is presented incredibly dishonestly in this context. It's well understood that automakers had their grubby little hands all over emissions regulations in the late Bush admin. They spent oodles of cash, tons of lobbyist time, and BEGGED for the exclusions for trucks that made complete sense at the time for TRUCKS, as in, pickup trucks used by laborers that needed the power and relaxed emissions standards that they asked for. And then, once that was done, set about changing 2/3 of their sales into trucks, so they could continue selling ever larger vehicles at ever higher prices with ever worse fuel economy.
> most people simply buy what is available in the form factor they like. Trucks are the most popular form factor in the United States (with pickups a close second)[1]
Which is directly traceable to substantial and aggressive marketing pushes by the American auto industry to shove trucks and SUV's down American's throats, because they could sell them for higher prices than the vans and station wagons that were already popular at the time.
And even now, the solution proposed for all the issues these oversized stupid machines cause, is more sensors, more cameras, more safety features that, OH WOW, they get to charge more money for! No way!
> and the manufacturers keep making the cars bigger because of the poorly written CAFE laws[2].
Again, the way this is framed posits that the CAFE standards were flawed output by the legislators themselves, and not the result of back and forth negotiations with the auto industry for decades prior.
> I, and I suspect most Americans with pickups, would prefer to purchase one the size of a '90s F-150 as compared to the monsters of today but manufacturers can't or won't sell me one.
Except now after decades of this shit, even if you can find a smaller vehicle, many consumers have (correctly) identified that their neighbors are driving suburban panzers, and not having one yourself puts you and yours at an elevated risk in a collision. Tons of people have reasonably sized vehicles in this country, and if you get t-boned by some jack-off in a lifted F-350 driving one, there is a not-insubstantial chance you're going to die, because those vehicles are not designed with safety in mind: they are designed to appeal to a marketing demographic that has been created: the modern man seeking to reclaim his masculinity because his accounting job doesn't let him imagine himself a hunter seeking the mammoth well enough, or whatever the fuck.
> Making up some macho strawman to attack actually obfuscates the problem and makes discussing solutions more difficult.
It isn't making up strawmen, it's pointing to a strawman manufactured by the auto industry that needs to be burned. The ONLY reason all these stupid machines are out driving today is because we as a society permit it. That can be changed. We are allowed to simply say that if you cannot demonstrate competence to handle a vehicle of this size, you do not get to drive one, end of discussion. It's not like we haven't had multiple classes of drivers licenses since basically the inception of drivers' licenses for this exact reason: because handling a 55 foot LTL truck is harder than handling a Honda Civic.
This is a cultural issue as much as it is a political one. You can't just not take into account the long-term and well documented history of the auto industry and it's involvement here, any more than you can not take into account the documented history of the NRA/gun manufacturers with regard to our gun problem.
The ridicuolus things about this are
1) That amount of interior space needs such a huge exterior only because manufacturers can get away with hugely inefficient packaging -- "Hey, if you want more space than a 1984 Honda Civic, just buy our Humongo-Ultra-Barge in stead of the mere Humongo-Barge!"
2) That safety comes only for the actual occupants of the Humongo-(Ultra-)Barge, at the expense of everyone else -- like, the pedestrians you run over with your Humongo-(Ultra-)Barge because you can't see them from inside your Humongo-(Ultra-)Barge -- and is only necessary because everyone else (except those pedestrians) is also driving around in an Humongo-(Ultra-)Barge.
:: Impose those significant costs larger cars and you'll actually be safer in a smaller car, because then everyone else will also be driving around in smaller cars in stead of Humongo-(Ultra-)Barges.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_and_Mighty_(book)
well worth reading if you're trying to understand how we got in this mess
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/04/07/trucks-ou...
I don't think that's exactly true. It's just that fuel standards for light trucks are now defined in terms of the footprint of the vehicle -- the smaller the truck, the higher the fuel standard. Which is, of course, exactly what the automakers wanted: They make more money selling bigger trucks.
I found the light truck CAFE standards online. Notice how simple they were from 2001-2010, and how ridiculous they are since the 2008 change: https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-49/subtitle-B/chapter-V/p...
> Tax gas if you want people to burn less of it.
Change CAFE first, then tax. There's only so much people can do to day-to-day to change their fuel consumption. It really comes down to 1) Where they live 2) Where they work and 3) What they drive. If we're going to raise taxes, we have to start by turning the ship around as far as the available vehicles. Right now the streets are filled with brodozers.
CAFE doesn't help day to day either. When you buy the car is when you are thinking most about gas prices and fuel efficiency. When gas prices are high people buy fuel efficient cars. The Prius, Teslas, etc. already exists so people can already show preference for fuel efficiency and manufactures can follow.
Edit: I was just thinking, if you force high fuel efficiency on the fleet and people want cars/trucks on average that get worse fuel efficiency than the stated goal, the market is going to always make the gas guzzlers more profitable and the fuel efficient cars loss leaders. We should either tax the gas or have a sliding scale tax on cars depending on the fuel efficiency. And taxing gas is better. I'm sure fuel efficiency standard can be gamed like diesel gate more easliy than the volume of a gallon of gas.
Well, the volume of a "gallon" of gas is of course technically far easier to game... Which is why there have been regulations, including technical countermeasures and I imagine rather substantial penalties, on that sort of thing for... The best part of a century, or actually over a century now?
If you've got back, hip, knee, or ankle problems, then trying to bend down into a low car is an undignified exercise at best, a struggle at worst. A CUV doesn't have that problem, you just sit into it like a chair.
For a family with young children, securing child seats into a CUV involves a lot less bending over then in lower car. Bear in mind that many child seats are 40 lbs.
If you live in a snowy area, the greater ground clearance makes it less likely to get stuck in residential roads that are lower priority for snow removal. You also have better approach angles as well, which can become a concern if you live in an area that's very hilly with steep driveways.
You probably don't see advantages, and that's fine. But that doesn't mean they don't exist.
The ground clearance on most crossovers is a joke. I have to point out how my Lotus Elise has 6 inches of ground clearance, and most CUVs have maybe an inch more than that. They have low-hanging diffs that hang up, and no recovery points for when you do get stuck. They're still the same car, barely jacked up. They look higher, but they aren't that much higher. Your one inch of extra clearance isn't saving you. The black plastic fenders don't make it rugged or capable. Most are just FWD, and the ones that are AWD just overheat and burn out the transfer case.
I live in a rural area, in the mountains, with lots of steep hills. My long ass driveway doesn't get plowed, my street is extremely low priority for plowing, never had problems getting around with 2wd cars. You sound like my neighbors who keep saying that I need a big 4wd truck to live out here. People just keep making these excuses to buy bigger cars that sit higher, without actually evaluating if these vehicles actually have the things they're marketed to be able to do.
(And you definitely don't step down into anything to get into it-quite the opposite. The driver's chair even auto pulls back to let you in which is definitely geezer friendly : )
I'm sure that's not the case for everyone, or even most people, but who am I to gatekeep.
Isn't that the advantage? In a world where SUV's and trucks are more popular than sedans, sitting higher gives a sight advantage (and probably safety advantage in a side collision with one of those high cars). I drive a midsized sedan most of the time, but when I drive the RV (which has a higher seating position than many SUV's), I love the extra forward visibility, instead being at tailgate level, I can see through the back window of the truck/SUV in front of me.
No, it just restores parity. Sitting in your "SUV" (=CUV) you can't see over all the other "SUVs" (CUVs) any more than you could see over all the other sedans when you were in one. Get everyone back into a real sensible car and you'll see just as well from your own real sensible car as you can from your faux-macho-designed station wagon on (short) stilts now.
[Editorial "you" throughout.]
I can't control what cars other people buy and drive. I can control what I buy and drive.
What it sounds like is that crossovers don't offer advantages that appeal to you.
What it sounds like, is that you didn't actually shop very hard for the right vehicle that actually has those advantages.
You're very dismissive in your comments here. I wonder if some self reflection is in order here.
I guess he will. Mean while, how about the same from you?
Betcha toddlers have an easier time getting into a 1990s sedan or station wagon than scrambling up into the silly-high big trucks people have been brainwashed to think of as "family vehicle" nowadays.
They love the "might" that a huge vehicle gives them.
She couldn’t care any less about “ruggedness” or that “tough guy” image. Her only argument ever is “safety.”
I am not in it to change her mind. But whenever she brings this topic up and I show her the actual safety ratings for different vehicles, it’s almost as if her brain shuts down. She would say something along the lines “uh oh idk, maybe, who knows, it doesn’t feel as safe,” and the whole thing gets forgotten. Right until she decides to bring it up again from scratch at some point later, as if our previous conversations about it never happened.
Lowkey, I think it would be an interesting idea to mandate displaying brightly colored safety ratings for every car on display at a dealership. No need to overcomplicate it by showing the entire stat sheet with a bajillion different numbers. Just one giant number for the overall rating, and about 4-5 subcategory numbers (e.g., driver safety score, passenger safety score, etc.). I think 1-2 of those metrics should be “the safety sub-category on which our car scored the worst.”
My only worry about this is that the metrics themselves become the target goal, leading to either car manufacturers influencing safety rating boards or them maliciously complying by gaming the metrics just for those measured categories at the expense of everything else. Though the latter isn’t as much of a concern, given that it is pretty difficult to accomplish, and it would still have a large negative effect on the overall score.
So yeah, "safety".
I like sports cars, so I tried test driving a Camaro about 5 years ago. You would think that visibility on a rather small and fast 2-seater would be at least better than on an average SUV.
It was singularly the worst car I’ve ever driven in terms of visibility, compared to even most SUVs. Not even joking, it feels like driving a military tank, but just faster and smaller, with the field of view being extremely reminiscent of seeing the road through a thin horizontal slit. It’s not like it got worse over time either, because I remember the 2013 version was at least just as awful. Way to ruin a fine car with that tank-slit visibility.
This specific case didn’t even have anything inherently to do with the type or size of the car (unlike with some giant trucks), so it made me extremely mad. It was quite literally for nothing.
Apparently not, considering the topic of TFA
For a specific example, I am pretty sure that backup cameras have been mandatory on all new cars since at least 2018.
It only stopped being sold in 2019 in EU+UK, only the SS version, and not due to the front visibility. Sadly, seems like Chevy announced last year the end of production of Camaros in 2024 in general.
It is small, in the context of a conversation about SUVs and pickup trucks. Yes, I am aware that it is not “small” in the context of 2 seaters, where you can go for miatas/brzs/911s/etc.
> Many sports car have bad visibility due to the mid engine blocking the rearview.
Sure, and that I can forgive. What I can’t forgive is the frontview having that same awful tank-slit visibility, which I’ve only encountered on a Camaro so far.
The NHTSA safety ratings come with the following notation:
"Note: A vehicle’s rating, or Overall Vehicle Score, can be compared with other vehicles of similar size and weight"
She may be, whether knowingly or not, interpreting the data offered more in-line with the guidance provided with the data.
I wouldn’t want it to be replacing the per-category one, as that one is way more precise and accurate. But there should be a way to roughly compare the safety of two different cars of different classes.
Given the NHTSA rating notation you posted mentioning normalization by size and weight, I wonder if there is a rough function of weight and size that would allow for “denormalizing” scores into raw approximates.
_everybody_ drives huge SUVs. A few rugged men(TM) driving a large truck isn't the problem, they're couleur locale. It'd be adorable, like people wearing cowboy hats in Texas.
The web of interwoven incentive structures - reptile brains, cafe standards, cheap gas, safety arms race, ... - pushing _everybody_ towards larger vehicles is the problem. System and id are completely misaligned, killing thousands in the process.
Roughly 18% of the light vehicles sold in the US in 2023 were pickup trucks. The top 3 selling models in the US were pickup trucks. Yes there were about 3x as many SUVs sold[1] as pickups, but pickups aren't nothing.
1: I partitioned the "light truck" class into just pickups and SUVs; 78% of cars sold in 2023 were classified as "light trucks" per [2]; I got the 18% figure for pickups by totaling the sales of the 8 most popular pickup models by hand and dividing by 14.9M
With tiny dogs. Maybe they're the preferred vehicle of tiny dogs.
9lIe a large vehicle more suited to offload conditions being driven short distances round highly affluent areas by people who wouldn't know the countryside if it bit them on the arsenal.
This sounds like hyperbole but is actually not hyperbole - https://youtu.be/NDH3FDfVQl0?t=180
I'm a short woman and drive a sedan.
Such as being able to see over parked traffic when making a turn.
And I've found driving taller vehicles more comfortable for my back coincidentally.
Just stating things that make these larger vehicles more easier to drive, especially for women whom on average are generally shorter so, even with pumping the seat up it's still considerably harder to see around traffic.
I find it important to continually bring up the fact that it can be different. More public transit and bike paths. If I we could take bikes around the city without worrying about being killed or having them stolen it would be a dream.
Large SUVs meet CAFE regulations by being large enough to be regulated as a different class of vehicle. Want smaller trucks? Complain to your Congresscritter to reign in the EPA and force them to write better regulation that does not have these unintended effects.
And I'm not sure what you mean by "wagons don't meet emissions requirements" - wagons would meet the same regulations as sedans.
Note that I used the Mercedes because it's the only non-compact wagon I'm aware of for sale in the US.
What I don't know is where the line is between car-based cross-over and actual truck (as it related to emissions and safety standards).
* Wunibald Kamm has entered the chat.
Most aren’t even using the 3rd row for seating.
Now a wagon or SUV is good for carpooling, but a minivan obv would be best.
I don't know if that's just EPA policy or part of the legislation that allows them to regulate auto emissions.
But, it's also Congress's fault for leaving the chicken tax in place (25% tariff on imported trucks/vans). This essentially allowed domestic brands to price gouge on trucks/suvs (as VW at the time, and then the Japanese brands as well) couldn't compete.
The old mini-truck and T100 were made in Japan (except maybe a year or two at the end of T100 production).
The tax was implemented in the 60s or 70s, as VW was trying to get into the van and truck market in the US.
In 2024, I find it's often now people who really, really want to make that mental move, who invoke Godwin's, so they can end the current conversation and find another conversation where they can.
Painting a diverse group of millions of people with a broad brush, and making a claim that they're "all basically the same." History has something to say about that mental move.
For the soyboys drinking their vegan milk and driving their lime bike to pride parade, it might come as a surprise, but it in indeed is. (<= This is an attempt to show that how any group can be dangerously maligned)
Trucks, especially the variety seen in the US, are practically unheard of anywhere else in the world. When a specific style of vehicle is that popular in a single country it probably has more to do with legislation than driver preference. There is almost certainly a decent portion of people driving trucks who would prefer an alternative form factor - if only it were available. It'd make sense to distinguish "truck drivers" from "people driving trucks".
Large vehicles are important part of American economy and mostly driven by blue collar workers doing their work. For example things like plumbing, construction site work etc. Now a days environment scientists and engineers too drive these large vehicles as they are very important for their day to day work. Not everyone can drive Tesla Model 3 everywhere.
In fact majority of those large vehicles are you see are mostly driven by such needs ( pun intended).
But the research on this topic itself is pretty shoddy. For example one has to look at other variables. Who was driving when the accident happened ? Chances are someone who was rushing to his work.
A lot of other data points out that the drivers are at fault are often poor people going to their work in their work vehicle. Another data is he victims too are poor people going to their work and disregarding basic pedestrian safety.
These are not men pretending to be rugged.
The problem is that this argument is demonstrably not true. Trucks vastly outnumber blue collar workers, and most blue collar workers would be better served by a Volkswagen Transporter or a Mercedes-Benz Sprinter. You're not seeing those in the US because they have an insane import tax.
The traditional target for pickup trucks, farmers, almost universally hate modern trucks because they are simply way too tall to be practical - they'd rather have a 1990 model than a 2024 one.
The vast majority of pickup trucks see zero offroad use, and practically never carry anything in their bed. They are essentially pavement princesses used to commute to an office job.
The UK Zero Emission Vehicle Mandate (ZEVM) is setting annual targets for the sale of new EVs in the UK, including vans. The govt stick is large penalties against motor manufacturers for non compliance. Fleet operators are beginning to come under pressure because they can't buy new ICE vans as they are not being made, forcing a transition to EVs.
This is an issue, because the traditional work van (Ford Transit or similar) has about a 150KwHr battery. So you can't do a full recharge on a 1 Phase 7Kw charger in less than 20hrs. And most of these vans have sat outside the drivers house at night so they can go straight yo the first job in the morning.
At the moment the answer looks like data science (but hey I'm a data scientist). With better data on root caused of problems, and on what equipment is actually where, we are able to get much better at knowing what the right tools and parts are for each job. And that enables the vans to carry less stock, which in turn enables us to reduce the van size down to something more like a Berlingo, which has a smaller battery and can be charged overnight on a household EV charger.
Aaaaaaaabsolutely not! Trucks outnumber cars in every U.S. state. "Blue Collar" workers represent something like 16% of the U.S. workforce. The vast majority of truck drivers are not blue collar workers.
Other countries have blue collar workers too. And trucks! Have you seen what they look like? Check this bad-boy out. This is peak performance when it comes to manly-man workin' trucks. [1]
[1] https://c8.alamy.com/comp/2FA3BTR/a-small-blue-pickup-utilit...
So explain the difference between the twentieth century (and the first few years of the twentyfirst), when trucks were an exception and cars were the norm, and now. Are you saying there were almost no plumbers and construction workers around then, or that almost everyone is a plumber or construction worker now?
Edit: Yeah, it was the manufacturers.