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Comment by doe_eyes | Hacker News Reader

Honda Civic is $24,000. Ford F-150 is $36,000. These are representative prices for popular budget choices. And that baseline F-150 isn't a behemoth. It's 209" long and 76" tall. That's just 10" longer and taller than, say, Tesla Model X.

I think the emission standards are dumb, but this narrative around customer choice is really getting distorted in weird ways. The bottom line is that people in the US want to drive pickups. Maybe for good reasons, maybe for bad reasons, but they go out of their way to do this. And the average pickup is probably shrinking right now, not growing - for example, there are fewer and fewer models with 8" beds, and 5.5" is the new standard (instead of 6").

Yes, a newspaper can always post a photo of a lifted 2024 RAM 3500 next to a 1975 Chevy C10 pickup to get some internet outrage points, but if you post an apples-to-apples comparison, the changes aren't really all that dramatic.

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> And the average pickup is probably shrinking right now, not growing - for example, there are fewer and fewer models with 8" beds, and 5.5" is the new standard (instead of 6").

For non-Americans: While literally writing truck bed lengths being 8 inches (8") and 5.5 inches (5.5"), the text means 8 feet (8', 2.44m) and 5.5 feet (5.5', 1.68m). Americans don't always remember which of the " and ' is which, so they use these interchangeably (and according to the movie This is Spinal Tap, so do the English).

Bro, it's our illogical measurement system and we'll be as illogical as we want with how we notate it. Go compare cubic centimeters to milliliters or whatever.

> That's just 10" longer and taller than, say, Tesla Model X.

Which could also reasonably be called a pretty big car.

It's big, almost 5m long. In Europe it would definitely be classified as a big car, most people have family cars under that, probably around 4.6-4.8m

... and if you have a 4-4.3 m long car your parking spot options increase by like 30% :)

there are fewer and fewer models with 8" beds

That’s more a function of crew cabs and using a pickup as a family vehicle. The bed has to shorten as the cab lengthens, else the truck gets unmanageablely long.

There are two models with full-size four-door crew cabs and 8' beds, and they can work in most US suburbs. I think it's less about whether it's manageable and more about the aesthetics. The front-rear proportions on 8' trucks just aren't great.

> And that baseline F-150 isn't a behemoth.

Yeah…

* https://www.carsized.com/en/cars/compare/honda-civic-2021-se...

The F-150 is +1216mm (48") longer, +228mm wider, +546mm taller than a Civic.

> It's 209" long and 76" tall. That's just 10" longer and taller than, say, Tesla Model X.

What is the front-end height of all of these vehicles?

> Pedestrian deaths in the US have risen in recent years. Concurrently, US vehicles have increased in size, which may pose a safety risk for pedestrians. In particular, the increased height of vehicle front-ends may present a danger for pedestrians in a crash, as the point of vehicle contact is more likely to occur at the pedestrian’s chest or head. I merge US crash data with a public data set on vehicle dimensions to test for the impact of vehicle height on the likelihood that a struck pedestrian dies. After controlling for crash characteristics, I estimate a 10 cm increase in the vehicle’s front-end height is associated with a 22% increase in fatality risk. I estimate that a cap on front-end vehicle heights of 1.25 m would reduce annual US pedestrian deaths by 509.

* https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221201222...

> Honda Civic is $24,000. Ford F-150 is $36,000. These are representative prices for popular budget choices. And that baseline F-150 isn't a behemoth. It's 209" long and 76" tall. That's just 10" longer and taller than, say, Tesla Model X.

Disingenuous as heck. I've literally never seen a modern non-commercial regular cab, standard bed F-150. Far more likely the people in question are driving massive SuperCrew cabs. And those SuperCrews start at $43,000 which means more like $50,000 for a realistic spec.

    Regular Cab/6.5-Foot Bed: Length – 209.1 inches / Wheelbase – 122.8 inches
    Regular Cab/8.0-Foot Bed: Length – 227.7 inches / Wheelbase – 141.5 inches
    SuperCab/6.5-Foot Bed: Length – 231.7 inches / Wheelbase – 145.4 inches
    SuperCab/8.0-Foot Bed: Length – 250.3 inches / Wheelbase – 164.1 inches
    SuperCrew/5.5-Foot Bed: Length – 231.7 inches / Wheelbase – 145.4 inches
    SuperCrew/6.5-Foot Bed: Length – 243.5 inches / Wheelbase – 157.2 inches

> And the average pickup is probably shrinking right now, not growing - for example, there are fewer and fewer models with 8" beds, and 5.5" is the new standard (instead of 6").

Nope, as you can see above bed may be shrinking, cab growing and growing.

> Disingenuous as heck. I've literally never seen a modern non-commercial regular cab, standard bed F-150. Far more likely the people in question are driving massive SuperCrew cabs.

These start at about $44,000. I was responding to the parent's claim that you can have a normal sedan or a pickup for "$15,000", so consumers choose the larger car sort of by default.

In reality, they pay a lot more for pickups because they want pickups, not because of some lopsided pricing incentives.

A big problem with the idea that “people don’t want small cars” is that that sort of statement comes from the car manufacturer looking at new car sales. People who want large trucks and SUVs are willing to buy new. People who want a small car have the option to buy a new 2024 Honda Civic, or they could spend significantly less to get a used Honda Civic (in normal economic conditions). Since the manufacturer only profits of of new cars, they have little incentive to sell any cheap or small cars since they compete so heavily against last year’s model at the used car lot.

I get so tired of people mindlessly citing CAFE laws.

A lot of people like bigger vehicles. For ages, big cars drove poorly, absolutely guzzled gas, and lacked features. Over the past 20 years, auto makers basically solved all of these issues.

A lot of big vehicles drive much better for what most people do - straight driving on highway. Fuel economy is “good enough”. Large trucks and SUVs have great feature sets. On top of all of that, large vehicles seat more, hold more, and generally still fit in most parking spaces and garages.

People just want big cars

Moving more mass will always use more fuel than using less mass.

That is assuming a constant efficiency ratio which has never existed.

No matter how efficient a system is, doing more is still harder than doing less.

People want big cars and people want everyone else to pay for them. Build big parking spaces for free. Widen roads for free. Not cover costs of accidents or otherwise the insurance would be too much. Not pay for all the polluting either.

It comes down to: "I want to drive big, loud, smelly, dangerous car free of any consequences for fraction of the cost". We don't tolerate such desires in other areas but cars somehow get free pass still.

Huh? We tolerate it pretty much everywhere else. You can buy a 2,000 sq ft home, even though you could live in a 500 sq ft condo. You can buy a computer more powerful than needed for work. You can buy Apple instead of Dell, even though the extra money would be spent better on helping the homeless or preventing malaria in the developing world.

It's really not that black and white. There's a line between the government deciding the optimal allocation of all resources and you retaining some degree of personal freedom. Techies in the SF Bay Area are very quick to draw that line in a way that affects other people's lifestyles, but doesn't affect their own. Guess what - pickup drivers in Texas have critical opinions about your consumer choices too.

None of your examples require other people to pay for your choices, like giant trucks needing wider roads do.

A computer or a home that uses more energy has externalities for others that certainly aren't covered by your electricity bills alone. Taxpayers pay for new power plants, everybody pays for emissions, etc. Almost everything has externalities that aren't fully accounted for in the sticker price, because it would be insanely complicated to do that kind of accounting, let alone do it in a way we can all agree on.

If you think the math for cars is uniquely bad, I think that's a reasonable position, although I suspect it's pretty myopic. The externalities of cheap consumer goods from China, or of a clothes dryer or an AC unit, are pretty terrible too.

The math aside, there is a huge risk to this sort of hyper-rational accounting. It's probably not cost-effective for the society to medically prolong the lives of people over the age of 50. There are many squishy, hard-to-parametrize overriding considerations for policy decisions, and if we accept it for our lifestyles, we should probably at least try to understand what they are for other lifestyles too.

Which giant trucks “need” wider roads? I see pickup trucks in the 1/4, 1/2, and 3/4 ton range drive on standard roads around me every day.

I don't know of any place that is creating larger roads just for these huge (personal) trucks.

Do you also have a problem with commercial trucks or just the people that chose personal trucks because they don't agree with your ideology?

>big cars drove poorly, absolutely guzzled gas

They still guzzle insane amounts of gas and generally drive poorly. That hasn't changed in decades. They may handle better than they did in the past, but they still handle poorly. Similarly they may get better gas milage, but not by much, and not in comparison to other vehicles.

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