It’s time for Americans to embrace small cars
It’s time for Americans to embrace small cars
arstechnica.com
It’s time for Americans to embrace small cars
There is a discussion on Hacker News, but feel free to comment here as well.
25 comments
-
-
Maybe if they stopped fucking up the tax incentives on bigger vehicles vs smaller:
https://mileiq.com/blog-en-us/section-179-vehicles-deduction
-
Yep, lobbyists from the car industry made this happen after the GMC bankruptcy. Huge cars are a direct result of this legislation
-
-
What's missing from this discussion is that car interiors count, too, and shrinking car interior space is driven by safety systems.
We drove a Toyota echo for years. That car had a surprising amount of interior space. But it was at the end of its life about the time we had our first kid, so we leased a new Honda CRV.
The old CRV was a compact but capable family hauler. The new one is massive compared to the original version, but the interior space is still pretty minimal. We have 2 kids in car seats and strollers, and a dog.
The CRV, as big as it is, couldn't fit 3 car seats when we wanted to carpool with another family to day camp. It couldn't hold all 4 of our family plus luggage and stroller and still have room for our medium sized dog on a trip to my in laws. It can barely hold a week’s worth of groceries and a stroller at the same time. And this is largely because of safety features. Huge pillars, crumple zones, oversized carseats, airbags, etc. A secondary consideration is body shape driven by wind tunnel testing that massively improves efficiency but cuts down on interior space. I'm all for safer, more efficient cars but they are not without tradeoffs.
So now our lease is up. We're shopping for a car I consider ridiculously big, with three rows of seating. But it will have room for us to car pool with friends kids. It will allow us to take our dog on vacation with us. And that’s what’s driving our decision to get a larger car, not some “love affair “ with big cars or a misguided government policy. When the kids are grown I look forward to getting a small cat again. Until then, we’re buying based on interior space.
-
The CR-V has a small interior because it's a SUV/Crossover. Those cars are exactly what's wrong with cars at the moment: higher, heavier, worse visibility, small inner space.
What you want as a family is not a bigger SUV but a Kombi or a Minivan.
-
Sadly minivans are almost impossible to find. There are only 3-4 models remaining in production and they can have lead times as long as a year and dealers can add almost any markup they want. I’m hoping to eventually get a VW ID Buzz or Canoo electric van, but those are both seemingly infinitely delayed. And I can lease a 3 row suv for about $400/month.
We can’t have a sedan because you can’t put a dog in the back, and no one makes station wagons anymore. So our choice is simply which length of SUV we get.
-
-
-
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Heavier vehicles also wear out roads faster, though the difference between a small sedan and a large electric SUV amounts to very little when compared to the effect of a garbage truck rolling by each morning.
Just this week, Automotive News reported that the Mitsubishi Mirage is on the way out, joining the choir invisible alongside cars like the Chevrolet Sonic, Honda Fit, and Toyota Yaris, all of which were once sold in the US.
The Bolt's biggest problem, from a bean counter's point of view at least, was a battery that cost a lot more per kWh than one made with General Motors' new Ultium cells.
News of the Bolt's cancellation was met with much dismay, and GM recently decided to bring the nameplate back at some unspecified time on a new Ultium-based platform.
But GM CEO Mary Barra has also warned that even with the lower cost of Ultium cells, the company won't make any profit on sub-$40,000 EVs until late in the decade.
In addition to the ever-escalating safety arms race that entices American car buyers, a misplaced obsession with having as much range as possible also factors in here.
The original article contains 493 words, the summary contains 193 words. Saved 61%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
-
fuck it, I'm going to be skipping to an electric bike at this rate. Cars are just a whole infrastructure mess
-
Not one mention of the Fiat 500e coming to the US next year (and hopefully the 600e after that!) I’m glad Stellantis is bringing it over, but I don’t know why they don’t just captive import some of their other European electric vehicles from Peugeot, Opel, or Citroen for the US market and rebrand them as Chryslers and Dodges.
I mean…it’s crazy that Peugeot already has a full electric lineup from small cars to SUVs and not one of them has made it over to the US!
-
I'm looking at this from the point of view of a car buyer, and I don't see a good reason for me to embrace smaller cars. Right now I drive a 2008 BMW 328i (I'm not showing off - they're not expensive) and it's too small. The back seat is uncomfortable, the trunk is tiny, and the fact that the car is so low to the ground makes it hard for my older relatives to get in and out. But my car is a foot and a half longer than the Chevy Bolt which the author likes.
I like my car because it's sporty, but if I was a more normal car buyer (someone concerned about practical utility rather than about going around corners quickly) I would definitely buy a bigger car.
I'm also not convinced that EV range isn't important. Most of my trips are less than 30 miles long, but several times a year I do go on a long road trip and I wouldn't buy a car that didn't let me do that. I wouldn't even consider a car with a range less than 300 miles unless I also owned another car with a longer range. A range less than 400 miles (still shorter than my gasoline car's range) would be a major downside.
-
You don't need a car for your long trip. You need a working high speed rail network.
The idea of "embracing smaller cars" is 30 years out of date. You needed to build the infrastructure to provide transportation so that it gets unnecessary for you to own a car.
Until that exist: You probably need a bigger car.
-
I usually vacation in rural areas and it wouldn't make sense to build train routes there, but even if I were going somewhere by train, I would still want to have a car once I arrived. (A place like NYC might be an exception because there's nowhere to park unless you're staying on the periphery.) I suppose I could rent a car at my destination, but I think having to do that would be more expensive and less convenient than just owning a long-range car.
I've heard Europeans talking about how great their rail network is, but I'm not convinced. I've never used it myself so maybe it's better than I think it is, but here in the USA I prefer to drive even if there's a train straight from where I am to where I'm going.
(I know there are environmentalist arguments in favor of trains, but I'm not addressing those here - I'm only talking about what I want, not what I might be obligated to do.)
-
-
-
Build trains. Railroads, tunnels, bridges, switching stations - the good stuff, you know. Stuff that works.
-
Yes, and nationalize the US rail network so passenger trains can actually work well. I think the experiment in publicly-owned roads has shown some promise on that front.
-
-
I had a small car by American standards (Chevy Volt) and it felt unsafe to drive sometimes. Everyone had massive trucks and SUVS and could barely see me. I had to drive super defensively. I wouldn't want to get into a crash in one when the other vehicles are like 3x the size and weight.
I like smaller cars and wish we could see the average size start to drop here, but I think we're past the point of no return. I recently bought a larger vehicle so I can actually fit my kids in the back and people seem to actually see me.
-
I'm 6'7. The only people who make vehicles that fit me comfortably has been gm. I drove a small GMC Pontiac for 12 years, then a small GMC compact SUV for 11 years. Now, granted its for work and I need it, but I now drive a large ass GMC Sierra around. Only foreign manufacturers even make cars anymore, and they make the interiors small. My Pontiac was small, and it had tons of interior space. So it is possible.
-
Gtfo with this trash.
AMERICANS NEED TO BUY HOVER CARS
Until then … hops in Righteous Redeemer
-
Main problem with small cars is safety. Even with all these new safety features, a small car is going to lose in a collision with a big car. With the way Americans drive, you're going to need all the safety you can get.
-
Unfortunately that will just lead to a stupid arms race. What really needs to happen is the closing of the light truck loophole and instead imposing additional taxes based on weight (since heavier vehicles do more damage to public infrastructure anyway) until the ever increasing vehicle weight trend is reversed or at minimum stopped.
-
Yep. There’s a fuck-ton of power in implementing a proper road tax structure. It should also factor in the increased likelihood to cause harm to other people and damage to other vehicles. Hell, traffic infractions should also be more serious in a larger vehicle. All easy to implement and completely reasonable.
It’s sickening that over 42,000 people (more than 110 people PER DAY) were killed by vehicles in the US in 2022. This is a public health crisis that’s rarely discussed.
I’m not saying that’s all caused by big vehicles, but there’s undeniably more risk when larger vehicles are roaming the roads. And the ever-increasing blind spots of these big vehicles mixed with the irresponsible driving behavior is a recipe for disaster.
https://www.ghsa.org/resources/news-releases/NHTSA-2022-Traffic-Deaths23
-
There has been an arms race, and cars are slowly getting bigger on average.
-
-
-
25 comments
I want a small car, but i was looking around recently and it seems like sub-compact just isnt really a class that most manufactures produce/sell here anymore
Yep, the fiesta line got nixxed 2 years ago by Ford, the civic is the size of old accords, does Kia and Hyundai even make sedans anymore? The Corolla is getting bigger too
Rip coups also
I'm going to be getting a Prius prime in a year or two, because my area doesn't have a lot of EV infrastructure, and also because it's one of the few cars that's still pretty low to the ground and small-ish
Honda dropped the Fit too. I’m still driving my 2013 Fit and I’m trying to find a similar size hatchback and it’s becoming impossible. Civic hatchback may be what I have to move towards and like you said they’ve grown to the size of the older Accord model.
What they categorize as compact these days is hardly compact.
They stop building them because they are less profitable.