It's a work truck, and in the US modern trucks are luxury vehicles, effectively mid-to-large-sized SUVs with a flatbed. I worked in Australia for a while and their 'ute's were quite stripped down in comparison, save for a few models (like the new Ranger, which IIRC was a model first developed for the Australian market).
This isn't true. The regulations set a minimum allowed MPG is based on size. Manufacturers have decided it's cheaper/easier to build bigger vehicles with worse MPG, than build the previous size with better MPG.
Is that a type of wagon I am unfamiliar with?
There's some amount of buyers prefer larger vehicles too, but buyers can't buy small vehicles if there are none on the market, and manufacturers won't make them when small vehicles are hard to fit into their fleet economy numbers.
A lot of these vehicles are killing machines with terrible visibility and hoods as high as an adult's head.
Could an Average American home solar install actually charge enough to match their consumption (average daily miles), and with such a big vehicle (very heavy, moreso as electric)?
Cold and dark doesn't sound like a good combination for long lasting batteries and fast solar charging rates
But ya, I totally expect for the canyonero EV to come out and be popular.
Mini and MX-5
I'd love to go electric but the Mini-E range is terrible (~100 miles). They are supposed to be coming out with a new version that doubles the range though, so at least that is good.
What they need to do is increase visibility requirements and make the trucks safer for pedestrians.
You can see this in all sorts of corners of the economy where goods subject to different levels of regulation compete.
Seriously though, the purpose of those regulations is to prevent upstarts from making simple, cheap, reliable vehicles and to protect the incumbents. Gotta have a big bank account and a lot of lawyers to redesign and crash test a handful of vehicles every few years.
Modern hybrids still don't match (or barely match) the gas mileage of old, small, lightweight cars despite being substantially more complex, less recyclable, less repairable, and using substantially more (and more exotic) materials in production.
Ouroboros regulations only exist to justify their own continued existence. Cars get bigger? More regulations on smaller (less safe) cars, making cars bigger. Rinse and repeat.
As long as the people who's demands and preferences do the lions share of shaping the new car market act like stuffing two car seats into anything less than a 3-row SUV or hauling bulk material on a tarp in a station wagon/crossover is some large burden SUVs/crossovers and pickups will continue to fly off the metaphorical shelves. And this is a self-reinforcing pattern. If people feel like buying a lot of vehicle is the kind of thing that successful white collar professionals do then that's what people with that kind of money will do, at least at the margins.
Just let people but what they want.
When Chevrolet discontinued the old Caprice & Impala in 1996, it was because journalists were ridiculing them for making them, not because they did not have customers. There were police departments begging to fund more years of production in addition to more than a year of back-orders from civilians. GM cancelled those orders because MBAs who could not change their own oil did not want to be made fun of for producing a car people wanted. Those cars sold used for more their new retail price for almost a decade.
This is a problem across the auto industry. One big auto maker exits a class of vehicle, and everyone wants to follow. Find me a coupe utility vehicle like the 1987 El Camino, a compact pickup like the 2004 S10 pickup, or a full-size American made car like the 1996 Caprice. There is plenty of room in the market for someone to make one model of each of these. Just make them like they used to: simple, easy to work on, and reliable. MBAs can not bring themselves to do it.
If they tried to build a coupe utility vehicle, they would have to turn it into a performance car (like the SSR) because performance cars sell for more money.
If they tried to build a compact pickup they would have to make it the size of a full size truck (like the Colorado,) because full size trucks sell for more money.
If they tried to build a full size car, they would have to turn it into a luxury car with 500+ horse power (like the Charger,) because those sell for more money.
The problem is that none of those contraptions they would produce would sell in the volume of a reliable, low-end vehicle. So they would shut down the production line after two years.
Instead of making cars we want to buy, they are chasing the newest trend, losing billions of dollars on electric cars that we can not afford.
I called out Bob Lutz one time when he said GM was committed to making fuel efficient pickups. At the time the 17 MPG Colorado had recently replaced the 25 MPG S10. I said if they wanted fuel economy, they would bring back the S10 electric, the 25 MPG S10, and clone the 1970's Volkswagen pickup that got 35 MPG on diesel.
Same thing happened here in Australia. Lots of hand wringing over the fate of our big, RWD sedans, but Mazda 3 and Hiluxes were where the money went.
But I think it’s hard to generalize as there are many safety factors and there are some cars that are safer than some SUVs (I survived a Chevy avalanche t-boning my Saab 9-3 that totaled both cars and had both avalanche driver and passenger taken away in stretchers and I took a cab home).
But, generally speaking, SUVs are safer because they have such greater mass. And SUVs also have safety features.
[0] https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/suv-passenger...
“ it’s not impossible that some of these people in SUV’s have been in horrible auto accidents in the past, and now find driving so terrifying that their therapist has all but ordered them to get a huge, heavy SUV so they can feel safe enough to drive.”
This specific speech changed my way of thinking from considering all these soccer moms in SUVs as jerks sucking up resources into more nuance that maybe they have reasons for why they want a big vehicle and don’t mind paying extra for gas because of it.
It also helped me when my adult child really wanted a big SUV as their first car even though they had no kids, no dogs, no sports with equipment. It was kind of inexplicable to me why they wanted a big SUV, but this quote made me relax and trust that they had a good reason.
If part of the reason one wants a big vehicle is for safety, they are unwittingly participating in an arms race to ever larger, more dangerous vehicles. This arms race doesn't make everyone safer: it disproportionately harms those who either choose not to participate or cannot afford to: pedestrians, bicyclists, scooters, motorcyclists, children, etc. (which are the types of transportation that we should incentivize the most to combat climate change and congestion.)
> It also helped me when my adult child really wanted a big SUV as their first car even though they had no kids, no dogs, no sports with equipment. It was kind of inexplicable to me why they wanted a big SUV, but this quote made me relax and trust that they had a good reason.
If we didn't litter our streets with absolutely massive vehicles, perhaps regular folks wouldn't need to drive a tank just to survive the daily commute. I don't fault consumers for making this choice. CAFE standards incentivized this [1], and regulation is what it will take to change incentives in a safer, climate-friendly direction.
[1] https://me.engin.umich.edu/news-events/news/cafe-standards-c...
(I considered the M1A1 Abrams, but just didn't feel safe in the thing.)
I think women and girls especially should drive main battle tanks, given their psychological fragility and propensity to trauma. If you are such a person, and it makes you feel safer, you should absolutely secure oil fields in the Caucasus.
