I'm also very curious on other impacts the vehicle sizes have on things. Easy to think it contributes to so many cyclist with basically no helmets. Curious if data backs that.
One factor here in the UK is that many of our cities and towns predate cars (sometimes by centuries) and consequently the roads and streets are much smaller. Such that giant cars are a real nuisance for both the driver and everyone else. But there is a definite trend toward larger vehicles, as can be seen by how difficult it is to get them into older parking infrastructure.
Compare to Europe and Japan, US has - MUCH lower energy costs, larger family sizes, much further travel distances, and smaller % of population in pre-modern urban areas with pre-automobile sized roads.
Add to that a less top-down centralized government in the US and the resulting lack of mass transit, particularly inter-city, and you end up with more people, driving bigger cars, further.
Unfortunately due to duration / cost of ownership, families over-purchase in terms of vehicle capacity.
Yes, dad maybe does most of his driving to work alone in the car. But on weekends he needs to be able to lug the kids around in their giant baby seats, strollers, etc.
So most parents I know end up owning 2 vehicles of sufficient size for their overall needs.
I know some families that have an extra car for commuting on top of the 2 family sized cars but this itself is something of a luxury.
Sure, but Dad doesn't need 3,000lbs of payload capacity and a 6ft+ bed and wheel spacers and an extra lift kit to carry a stroller.
I've got two kids and a two-child stroller. There's more than enough space in something the size of a Mach E or a Model 3/Y to have multiple kids in car seats and all their stuff.
In the end pretty much all of that could have fit in my old Accord as well.
But a TON of people have vehicles in the MachE/ModelY crossover footprint. Look at how every brand has 3 cars that size and they all look the same.
All of these, including your old accord are bigger than a Prius.
Going off lists like this - https://www.caranddriver.com/news/g43553191/bestselling-cars...
While theres some very high volume truck models, which in fact take up the 2 highest sales by model slots, overall if you add up the far larger number of sedan/crossover/suvs you get to ~2x the overall sales.
I suppose one can argue about how you categorize big SUVs like say the Explorer and Grand Cherokee.. overall I think the numbers still hold.
Completely agree there's still more big trucks on the road than there should be, but '3,000lbs of payload capacity and a 6ft+ bed and wheel spacers and an extra lift kit' is a very specific demographic, and they were never going to be talked into a Prius.
People tell me to just rent a truck when you need one. However that is hard and expensive. Most places won't rent you a truck, they will rent you a truck shaped vehicle with restrictions meaning you can't use it like a truck. When you find an exception the costs it very high and they charge per mile rates - it doesn't take many uses to be worth the extra costs of having a truck that does everything instead even before you account for the hassle of going to get the rental truck.
Of course small cars can do more than most people give them credit for but they are still compromise and there are a lot of things that they can't do.
Dad probably doesn't really need it, ever.
One friend argued he really needed a truck because he bought a lawn mower off Facebook Marketplace and wouldn't have possibly gotten it home without his truck. It's the only truck-like thing he's done in a year or two. Strange, I managed to put a lawnmower in my small crossover/hatchback without any issues.
Another argued he needed a truck because he goes mountain biking. No possible way to take a bicycle without an extended cab 6ft bed.
This evening, I have to take the kids and their stuff to visit the grandparents for an overnight. Their home is 30mi away from me. Even though I've got public transit immediately outside my door, there's no public transit servicing their home. I could take the two-hour bus ride for the bus at the edge of my neighborhood to the edge of the public transit network, it's still >10mi to their home. This trip for this afternoon on Uber is ~$40 each way. For one trip I'll make a few times in a month. Or I can take my car and make it a 25-minute trip that costs me several dollars each way.
We also go visit some family >70mi each way from us on a pretty regular basis. There's definitely no transit available to get to where they live, and an Uber going all the way over there is >$100 each way.
I mostly work from home, the "office" is ~2mi from my home, I love to ride my bike and I take public transit a decent bit, and yet I still manage to put >13,000mi on my car every year. That is how extremely car centric DFW is.
Most people I know who "need" a truck would absolutely be able to do everything they use their truck for with a small hatchback to a medium sized crossover.
What level of sacrifice you make to get what you really need apparently isn't necessarily comparable with anyone else, right? Commuting is a choice. No one is making you work where you do, or live where you do, at least not since 1863.
No judgement here, I'm just pointing it out. Is it possible we're all on the same team? Even the pickup owners?
Once again, let me restate that, and maybe it'll sink in.
> Most people I know who "need" a truck would absolutely be able to do everything they use their truck for with a small hatchback to a medium sized crossover.
These people aren't really doing anything that would seriously impact their lives if they didn't own a truck, but they convinced themselves they needed a truck.
I'm not saying this about all truck owners; I know lots who actually do tow campers and boats, who actually do pickup yards of gravel and what not on a regular basis, who literally do live on a ranch, etc. And I know tons of people who own a truck because how else would they get their mountain bike to the trail across town, or who have such a culture deeply ingrained in their mind they couldn't be seen driving a smaller vehicle for more than a day. That they need it because "it's comfortable", as if a luxury sedan isn't comfortable. For many it is a lifestyle choice they choose to make to drive a vehicle massively oversized for their needs, and is not at all similar to the fact I need a car to to most stores and generally function in society because that's how this city was designed.
If you haven't been to the Southern United States, you probably just don't understand the truck culture I'm talking about.
You may think I'm making some straw man, but I personally know more than a dozen of these people.
What exactly is your point?
Of course everyone has a different life. Who are you to judge the life of others?
I'll be judgy when their excessive life choices make my family less safe, excessively poison our water and air, and ruin our city designs catering to their excess.
There is drastically different cargo space in a midsize (not even 3 row) SUV than a sedan. Even a hatchback is drastically different cargo capacity.
Some of it is you don't know what you need until you need it.
With my non-hatch sedan I had all sorts of problems bringing home even moderately sized normal purchases. I'd have to unpack products to fit them into the car and/or wedge into the backseat with sales rep assistance. Lamps, mini fridges, large home air filters, plants from the garden center, wood/drywall from the hardware store that I'd need pre-cut down just to fit in care.
Some of these purchases were emergency backup mini fridges when my home fridge died & replacement would take a week. Or $10 of wood/drywall to DIY repairs instead of $100s of a contractor. Or paying 5x the price of the materials for home delivery. Likewise for plants vs paying a landscaper.
Just pretty frequent stupid stuff that a tall SUV trunk with a large hatch opening solved. Even a midsize hatchback would do the trick.
Not defending status symbol trucks but he rear seats of compact cars aren't known for getting a lot of ass.
I guess it's rational for me to buy a 25' box truck to daily drive since I used to rent them every couple of years for moving apartments.
Passenger vehicles with enough back-seat room for adults, a third passenger row, more cargo room, or 4WD capability are expensive and inconvenient enough to rent + cheap and practical enough to daily-drive that the use case would really have to be pretty rare.
The problem is that for all we like to claim to be rational, most people make those decisions emotionally and rationalize as needed to explain it. That’s how you get 90% of SUVs never leaving a paved road because the owner thought it was a lifestyle accessory which made them look richer, but talks like they’re suddenly going to start taking 6 friends backcountry camping year-round.
Yuppies driving Range Rovers in Manhattan is a whole different discussion though.
I saw Russia being slightly higher but figured it was marginal and “we emit slightly less than a petrostate in the middle of bombing the fuck out of their neighbour” was hardly a “win” for the USA…
Tesla Model S is wider than Mercedes G-Class, a literal military transport. That's something.