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Comment by thegrim33 | Hacker News Reader

That some people buy them and don't really need them has zero relevance on whether any people have need for them.

How people use the vehicles that they buy is pretty well understood from the market research done by the car industry. In the US, the widespread use of pickup trucks a passenger vehicles is a known fact.

An odd thing is that my family visited a rural part of England last year, and we saw very few pickup trucks on the roads and in the towns. On a walking tour, you see a lot of farms up close because the paths go through farms and along fence lines. The farms had utility vehicles including light trucks, but they also had regular passenger cars.

There was a phase where these ghastly large pickups with four doors were common. Never had a drop of mud on them, but they were available tax free as a “work vehicle”, so no income tax on it.

They are ridiculous in the lanes round here, and invariably are in the disabled parking spaces at the shop as they are too large to fit in normal spaces

There isn’t much need in the UK. Farmers use tractors or vehicles like the classic 4x4 Land Rover, Subarus, etc. None of the roads or the infrastructure are designed for American size pickups, especially not the countryside. If people need to move something big, they hire a van.

People are also extremely sensitive to fuel costs and an enormous car that guzzles gas and can’t be parked on a tiny village road is a downside. Bear in mind gas in Europe is like $8/gal and salaries are much lower.

The statement car of choice for people who don’t need the functionality is the modern luxury Land/Range rover (ie the Chelsea tractor).

And a lot of people have occasional need for a truck but don't want to or can't afford to own more than one car, so they use the truck for all their driving.

some guy left a few hundred pounds of steel in the loading area of my workshop for stupid reasons. maybe about $80 worth in scrap. he kept coming by and claiming someone was going to pick up it up, and getting really threatening about us stealing the value from him. the scrap yard is 200 ft away. he drives a big jacked up truck. after a couple weeks of this I'm like 'look, I'll cut it down, and we can throw it in that truck of yours and you can roll 200ft down the road and we'll be done with it'. he was incensed, his bed liner would get all scratched up.

after that I dragged it out onto the curb for the meth addicts to sell.

Lol pavement princess level of nonsense

Exactly. People are optimizing for the most capability on one car payment. And for a lot of them that looks like a pickup but it also drives what people buy in the SUV market as well. This has bee known for decades. Like it's literally defining principal behind the 4-dr jeep and the proliferation of 3rd rows in midsize SUVs. The fact that you're still getting downvoted for saying it speaks volumes.

>the proliferation of 3rd rows in midsize SUVs.

Ehh, 3 row minivans are typically more practical. Alas, market forces are a fickle beast.

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