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Comment by rypskar | Hacker News Reader

You are looking at it the wrong way. Driving something so large that it would require a commercial license to transport your family around is ridiculous

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They don't require commercial licenses though, because they're not large enough to and don't serve a commercial purpose when transporting families / their things. Plenty of families have the need for third-row seating and the ability to haul things around.

My minivan seats seven. It has the footprint as a toyota camry. It’s only marginally heavier than a camry.

Can you please explain to me again why you need a lincoln navigator or the like?

Toyota Camry curb weight is ~3300 pounds. The minivan based on the Camry is the Sienna, curb weight ~4600 lbs. Lincoln Navigator curb weight ~5600 lbs. If the difference between the first two is marginal (~30%), the difference between the second two is less (~20%).

By comparison, actual CDL-requiring commercial trucks weigh up to 80,000 pounds.

Now look at the front end of a toyota sienna vs a lincoln navigator. One slopes down so that you might actually see what is in front of you and allows for pedestrians to impact and roll up and off. The other is effectively a brick notorious for making it difficult to see obstructions in front of you as well as creating an impact that would sooner see the pedestrian explode into a bloody mess over just rolling up and off.

Which has nothing to do with the weight of the vehicle. The Audi SQ8 E-Tron has a sloped hood and weighs more than the Navigator. There are vehicles with a square grille that weigh less than the Sienna.

Time for all of the crossover drivers to admit that they are also part of the problem. They aren't safe just because they are somewhat better than some jacked up bro truck.

The real issue is that the hood on the Sienna is basically the same height as the one on most crossovers, because that's the nature of a vehicle with tall roof (necessary for cargo capacity). The hood/windshield has to ascend quickly to reach that height unless you want the hood to be longer, but a longer hood would negatively impact the ability of the driver to see children directly in front of the vehicle.

A lot of this is also dictated by the safety requirements for vehicle collisions, because a vehicle where the front of the hood is lower than the bumper on the other vehicle (which could be a pickup truck) causes the hood to act as a ramp instead of a crumple zone, and then the occupants get hit in the head by a truck.

Mazda 5?

> they're not large enough to

Based on whose opinion?

> Plenty of families have the need for third-row seating

A 1993 Buick Roadmaster Station wagon has a comfortable third row while being shorter than the top of the steering wheel on a 2025 GMC Yukon Denali.

That's not the issue. The issue is how tall these grills are and to a lesser extent curb weight. You don't need either to have third row seating or the ability to haul things.

The claim is not that they do, it is that they should. The high hood trend post-2009 has provides no functional utility.

I'd go a step further and say the high hoods reduce utility by making the vehicles harder to work on. I'm 6' and needed a step-stool to change the battery on my uncle's Silverado. The truck manufacturers leave that inconvenient detail out of their macho ads on TV.

I remember when changing spark plugs meant flipping down the front-plate bumper step, taking one step to hop up on the fender, and putting your legs inside of the engine bay while you wrench.

No-one works on junky new cars; people who work on their cars have a 90's model etc.

SOP now is to pull the whole cab off to work on the engine.

I guess I'm old fashioned but I just can't imagine removing the cab to change my uncle's battery.

That's the point. You are a person who can work on a car/truck. Your uncle is a consumer.

Well, in his case he has full technical competency but he's missing a leg, but I agree with the point you're making.

Good luck future used truck buyers of 2036.

> no functional utility

Air cooling while towing (allegedly), but it must be a tiny percentage of owners that tow at all.

There were adequate engineering solutions for towing even as far back as 2008. The high-hood trend on US passenger trucks is unique to US market vehicles and is factually cosmetic.

You mean cooling a 700lb-ft engine. Which is totally unnecessary. You don't need to do 80mph up the steepest hill in the world while towing 20,000lbs.

Not only do they not need to, they need to actively stop doing that. These are the folks who light brakes & tires on fire, which then spreads to the mountains. There are dozens of spot, brush, and outright wildfires every year from these people.

Oh look, since I posted, another one.

https://www.azfamily.com/2026/06/24/watch-vehicle-fire-spark...

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