The reckless policies that helped fill our streets with large cars
vox.com
vox.com
What's interesting is that it was possible 25 years ago to build a 3 litre/100km car. The Audi A2. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audi_A2
Now a modern SUV has at least double the weight and a worse wind resistance value and uses 6l/100km of fuel.
And while there are limits what physics will allow it seems it was possible to reduce fuel consumption and emissions by at least 50% 25 years ago. With modern computer simulations and technical progress over the last 25 years something like this should be at least possible? Yet it's difficult to buy a car like this today.
Somewhere something went really wrong.
Except I can't get the diesel here. Nor can I get a station wagon here.
I think it’s trivial to buy a better car than the Audi A2 nowadays. But not with an ICE.
It's just fascinating that the technology was there and wasn't improved upon in 25 years. We could drive non-hybrid ICE cars were a big chunk of cars is using 50% less fuel now if we would have avoided that SUV trend.
Those very lightweight fancy cars didn’t sell very well (~150k A2, ~250k i3) but that’s another problem.
VW - GOLF 8 - Average weight: 1450kg, 1.0l, 110bhp, average fuel consumption: 4.6l/100km
So the car is nearly twice as heavy and uses less than half as much gas. And there were no optimizations?
No it cannot. There are more things involved than just air drag when it comes to fuel consumption in a car.
>Golf 8 is nowadays a few classes above what the Golf 1 was. It's also a rather big car compared to the Golf 1.
Exactly. It's way heavier and uses less than half of what the Golf I used back in the day. This to me demonstrates that you don't understand the basics behind all this. Maybe you should read up on stuff.
Works on a highway as well, but the difference is smaller.
So what went "wrong" is that people prefer powerful cars with plenty of space, comfort, and bells and whistles rather than "3l/100km"...
Eh, they build what makes them the most profit.
That's a much more complicated can of worms than what sells. It includes tax policy, rebates, financing rates, mileage standards, engine technology costs, etc.
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1127929/best-selling-car...
the rate of increase in mass of european cars is now greater than that of the US
Preference towards economical cars does not mean any of my previous comment isn't true. At some point cars are economical enough and other features become a better selling point in the market instead of absolute best possible fuel economy.
This is only true when carmakers are sufficiently experimenting and letting customers decide what sells, but when they all make extremely similar products in each category, it isn’t true. For examples look at the truck category - in North America at least, there is effectively no way to get a truck that is not loaded with electronics and silly features as the makers stopped competing on anything else. There is no “light weight, utilitarian build” truck that can be bought. And magically they all have super high hoods and massive interiors.
The same is true in every category I have looked at.
Some brands have an extended version for the mid/larger sizes, either to accommodate more passengers, have larger boxes or to fit a box truck enclosure on the back.
That’s the difference. I am writing from a North American perspective and I am often jealous of the seemingly endless variety of options available elsewhere in the world. Just know that we North Americans aren’t necessarily choosing to buy the giant trucks - in many cases we would love smaller options but they don’t exist.
Sorry but people are not "innocent victims" and carmakers do not increase their own costs for the sake of it.
They kept adding electronics and "silly" features because on average consumers went for it when given the choice.
It's the tariffs making americans buy SUVs, european cars are too expensive!
Then they complain that a tax increase on SUV owners in DC was opposed?
They clearly don't want Americans to have cheaper cars - just force people to use the cars they think are 'correct'. Gotta save the environment, who cares about the consumer?
Edit: if the above hypothesis is true, we would expect average car size to correlate with obesity after controlling for factors like proximity to a dense urban area. Could be true. If you gots data let's go
Edit: I’m not fat guys. I power lift 3 to 5 times per week and wear a size 36 in blue jeans. I’m no Tom Haviland (I can only dream) but I’m not some porky bastard either. Abs are still slightly visible although I don’t lift for aesthetics. I’m simply trying to hit 1750lbs combined on the big 3 before I turn 45.
That however doesn't detract from the argument in this thread that Americans are being more obese and that affects their vehicle choice.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3445161/#:~:tex....
Except in extreme cases, obesity is not playing a major factor here.
It's more a question of being tall. I'd love to be able to drive sporty cars, but I generally just don't physically fit. I fit fine in an SUV. A regular sedan I can fit, but because of the length of my legs, I have to slide the seat back if I'm in the front, or ask the person in front to slide their seat forwards if I'm in the back. Obviously it doesn't work if someone else as tall as me is in the seat behind/ahead.
Also sedans are terrible for my posture because I have to slouch so that my head isn't hitting the roof. My lower back and neck hurt so bad after a long drive because of the forced slouching.
Fortunately I use public transportation for 99% of my needs and none of this is an issue usually.
Of course it does that while also being extremely tall, making it impossible for many pedestrians to look past its hood to spot oncoming traffic on the road, or for passing drivers to spot people stepping out behind it.
https://www.carsized.com/en/cars/compare/ford-thunderbird-19...
Adding in modern car seats absolutely blows up the amount of space you need. With 2 young kids I can barely fit both of the carseats in the back of my Range Rover.
As a kid, 5 of us would pack into one 2-door sedan without shoulder restraints, just waist seat-belts. I'm not proposing we go back to less safe conditions for children, just saying it does clearly makes a difference. (And I've lived in some parts of the world where entire families fit onto one moped, so this American level of safety is not universal)
You are right that most trips don't need SUVs and pickups, but many families need large-ish, relatively powerful vehicles like the now dead station wagon. But it is uneconomical for car builders to make station wagons, so they don't. Instead everybody who can't fit into an economy car is pushed into an SUV or pickup by practical concerns.
On the other side, large and powerful luxury cars are also not economic for car makers to build, so instead car makers add luxury to large utility models. From there it's a trickle-down of cachet so owning a sedan or hatchback is insufficient for those who need or want to fit in with a higher economic class.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_power_law
Maybe couple that with a requirement for a higher license tier with more liability to drive "light trucks," based on the licensing and taxation systems other countries use.
I wouldn't be surprised if there were federal or state laws that would already account for that on noncommercial vehicles.
It is in your interest to buy and drive the biggest car you can afford, due to the presence of other large cars on the road.
See [1] 12 black swans to avoid, YouTube video from ER physician Dr. McGuff. First thirty seconds. Force equals mass x acceleration.
I may wish it weren’t that way, but I’m playing the game.
That's not how inversions work. If you're in a small car and get into a collision with a large truck, you're likely to die. But if you're in a truck and get into a collision with another large truck, you're still likely to die, because you still got hit by a truck. Meanwhile truck collisions are more likely given the same drivers because they have more surface area which provides less margin to avoid an impact.
You would think twice about gratuitously moving around a multi-ton behemoth if it actually hurt you economically.
"Everyone should ride a 100 lb motorcycle" is the sort of hypothetical alternative that the people currently driving a big SUV are just going to scoff at and vote out anyone who attempts to force it. You'd be much more likely to succeed by e.g. trying to find a different tire composition that reduces particulates.
The answer is none of your options, emphatically. I want to see extreme taxation (to the tune of the fourth-power of axle weight) and increases in liability for operating a vehicle over 3999lb.
Stop trying to regulate random indirect metrics and concentrate on the actual problems. Is it traffic and too many vehicle miles? Then build higher density housing and subways. Is it air quality? Then address particulate emissions using general rules rather than specific ones -- regulate rate at which car tires can expel particulates. If they have to reduce the weight of the car to reduce the cost, fine, but if they can find another way, that's good too.
If you don't like the status quo, identify why and address that, don't just pick some isolated aspect of it and try to ban it without contemplating what incentives the rules are going to create. That's how we got into this mess.
This barely-an-issue is only ever brought up by people trying to naysay EVs. I've never once heard it mentioned before EVs became popular, despite heavy ICE cars being extremely common.
The problem there is that they're not actually correlated. A BMW M5 has a shorter stopping distance than a Mazda Miata even though it weighs almost twice as much.
I also wonder what happens in real world non-ideal scenarios (including rain and snow) rather than on the perfect test tracks they test stopping distance on.
Perhaps the fundamental advantage of a smaller car is increased maneuverability.
Cars aren't built to meet the theoretical limits of physics, they're built with trade offs against cost and other factors, so in practice things like stopping distance are less related to weight and more related to how much you prioritize it over the competing trade offs. A heavier car with the same stopping distance might cost more, but then there are people willing to pay for that.
I don't compare my RS 5 with a Corolla, either. The Audi and BMW have brakes like that because they also are literally designed to spend some time on the track (mine has integrated laptimers and speed calculators for 0-60 times, etc., and shows me individual tire temperatures not just pressure, as well as component temperatures for drive train, transmission, differential).
I mean just think about it. If a 3000 lb car can stop in 3 seconds then two 3000 lb cars can also stop in 3 seconds even though together they weigh 6000 lbs. It would be no different for a 6000 lb vehicle with eight tires and eight brake discs, and you can also get the same result using larger tires and brakes instead of more of them.
Brakes are "sized" for the car they're in. Bigger cars have more powerful brakes.
It would be a major safety issue if heavier cars couldn't brake as quickly as safety required.
So no, smaller cars don't have any general advantage in being able to stop earlier and therefore avoid accidents.
A not perfect breaking system or imperfect road conditions in a lighter car will cause a much smaller mass to not break as quickly as safety requires.
There are far more cars on the roads now, and there are far more people who can simply afford to own a car that gets 20-30mpg instead of 50-70mpg.
I don't really know how we can "solve" this. The main route being taken at the moment is basically to try to reduce living standards, but to code it (e.g. "reduce car journeys") in such a way that everyone doesn't revolt.
Actually I found out there are use cases where an SUV is worse than a convertible or even a bicycle with a trailer. I once carried home a small tree from my kids bicycle trailer and was amused to see peopme struggling to put large plants inside their SUV without spilling dirt all over the trunk carpet. Those with a pickup truck fared a bit better yet still had a harder time than I did because their truck bed height. The only guy who was as comfortable as I was putting a large plant in his car was the guy who put the pot on the passenger seat of his convertible.
Limit the amount of parking required, sizes, etc. invest in transit and bike infrastructure.
Just make cars/drivers pay for the real costs on urban society for car storage.
Uhhh? So pay the tariff and get a $12,500 electric car? Still sounds like a pretty good deal plus the government gets some revenue. Where is the problem? Where is this “cannot” coming from?
heavier cars are deadlier in accidents, they cause more damage to road surfaces, they require wider roads and parking spaces which consumes land, they require more resources to produce, they require more energy to operate, they produce more pollution, and so-on
Also norms exist for a reason and resources on this very planet have to be shared with billions of other human beings.
Mountains and dirt fireroads/doubletracks exist in every countries. You know which car was the most popular for years until the end of its production in Spain by farmers and people living at the very end of dirt roads in spanish mountains? The citroen C15! I let you google for an image. It was so light that even with only front wheel drive it was much more capable off the road than most SUV.