[alkonaut]

> the default assumption is that you'll have no way to transport stuff (e.g. Ikea furniture, large TVs, DIY supplies, etc) so everyone offers inexpensive delivery.

But cars have tow hooks, and IKEA and the hardware store lends you a trailer for free. Or you can rent one for $20 for a few hours. Where in Europe do people not want to use trailers? I (Sweden) wouldn't buy a car without a tow hook, because they are hard to resell.

This is what I don't get about pickups: all the time that I'm not hauling stuff I'm still hauling around that big space.

Granted, towing a trailer to get a sofa from IKEA isn't the best experience either, but it seems to be pretty good compromise for aerodynamics/cost/weight.

[Someone1234]

> This is what I don't get about pickups: all the time that I'm not hauling stuff I'm still hauling around that big space.

By that logic you'd buy a vehicle with no trunk, since you're hauling around that "big empty space." Or a vehicle with only a single seat for when you have none or fewer than capacity passengers.

You're just arbitrarily distinguishing an outdoor trunk space from an indoor one, and claiming one is wasteful without actual justification. If anything an outdoor trunk has less vehicle side panels, glass, mechanics, and weight therefore less drag: Making it more fuel efficient for its relative size.

The complaint reads like: "It is different to here, therefore I assume it is wrong."

As I said I've lived in both for tens of years, what is popular in the US makes sense for the US, and what is popular for Europe makes sense there too. Without considering the big pictures (e.g. size of roads, size of homes/apartments, parking, quality of public transport, etc) it is difficult to grasp.

[alkonaut]

> By that logic you'd buy a vehicle with no trunk, since you're hauling around that "big empty space." Or a vehicle with only a single seat for when you have none or fewer than capacity passengers.

It's a compromise for all vehicles obviously. Ideally you'd want one that didn't have those empty seats - but that's not practical. If you want to minimize weight/drag/cost/fuel consumption while at the same time hauling x cubic feet and 5 people, then that is an optimization problem. I don't know what the optimal solution is, but I doubt it looks anything like the traditional pickup (A cybertruck possibly comes closer). The optimization problem becomes differeent if you add more constraints, for example ability to tow X thousand pounds.

> an outdoor trunk space from an indoor one, and claiming one is wasteful without actual justification. If anything an outdoor trunk has less vehicle side panels, glass, mechanics, and weight therefore less drag:

Drag is a shape coefficient, not a weight coefficient. Most modern cars, even SUV's, have drag coefficients in the low .30's. Most pickup trucks don't come close, even in marketing values (One of the lowest claimed values is the Ram 1500 with .36, and the Cybertruck will be lower). An F-150 is north of .50 in testing [1]

[1] https://thenextweb.com/plugged/2019/12/02/heres-how-the-cybe...