[LarryDarrell]

We've been regulating the wrong things when it comes to vehicles. Instead of being obsessed with MPG, we should have been obsessed with weight and size.

There's no reason for a sedan to be heavier than 3000 lbs. There's no reason 1/2 ton pickups should be bigger than a 1994 Ford F150.

Once a car is light and small(ish) the good MPG will follow. My 1988 Volvo 240 got 30mpg on a recent road trip and that's with it needing a tune up.

I only ride my bike on protected bike lanes now. It's inconvenient and limiting, but there's no way I can expect to share the road with these behemoths.

[CaptainMarvel]

Don’t forget there have been massive loopholes in vehicle emission regulations which favour larger SUVs and pick-up trucks.

If regulations actually focused on MPG, these vehicles would not be the size and weight that they are.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/cafe-lo...

Right target. Bad implementation.

Going forwards, with widespread electric vehicles, focusing directly on size and weight makes a lot of sense, in addition to MPG (or more generally, energy efficiency).

[raverbashing]

Blaming regulation removes agency from people.

Or maybe yeah, most consumers just mimic other people and cost be darned. Then when gas eventually becomes pricier they complain because they had the foresight of a goldfish.

(And theoretically no efficiency laws need to be passed. Increase taxes on fuel and there you have it)

[ascagnel_]

I disagree -- I'd love if my last car was a station wagon, but there were eight station wagons on the market in the US at the time, made by five manufacturers. And of those eight, four have an MSRP under USD$50,000, and only two have an MSRP under USD$30,000. And the market hasn't substantively changed (Jaguar and Buick have dropped out of the market, but Mini entered the market and Porsche added a second model) since 2020, when I got my car.

I'm calling this out specifically because, in another era, the station wagon would have been the preferred option for a "family vehicle" that needed more space than a sedan. But since it's "easier" for an automaker to get an SUV on the road, the regulatory environment dictated how the market went.

[raverbashing]

I agree, I certainly think manufacturers are to blame as well

[stouset]

Individuals have agency. Populations behave statistically in line with the structural incentives of the systems they operate within.

[_cenw]

If people exercised this level of agency, no economic incentive would ever work.

[Tanoc]

No, not necessarily. Starting in 1996 there was an update to CAFE regulations (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) that set tighter restrictions to start 2005 which only got tighter year over year from there. Conveniently thanks to the Jeep Cherokee XJ, the Chevrolet/GMC S-10 Blazer/S-15 Jimmy, and the Ford Explorer moving into a more luxury oriented direction, SUVs became the fastest growing segment starting in 1994. So how did the companies targeting the U.S. market react? They started pumping out SUVs, and later, crossovers, also called CUVs.

The CUVs started as cheaper ways to make SUVs using sedan platforms and showed up with the Toyota RAV4 and the Honda CR-V first. The third major crossover, and the first made to exercise a loophole in CAFE was the Chrysler PT Cruiser, which was a mid-size hatchback built on the second generation Dodge Neon's platform that was classified as a compact due to them purposely engineering the interior to be smaller, since vehicle sizes are partially determined based on interior dimensions in the U.S. for some odd reason. Chrysler then got it shadily certified as a "light truck" with the EPA for emissions thanks to how the unibody was designed and the rear hatch. At the same time other companies also started exploiting this loophole, such as Ford with the Escape, which was based on the then brand new Focus.

As the 2000s wore on the loophole was closed slightly, but still left open with the so-called "footprint" rule. The footprint rule dictated that light trucks with longer and wider wheelbases were subject to lessened emissions and CAFE regulations, meaning they could pollute more and get worse fuel economy with fewer or even no penalties. As a result smaller more efficient sedans and hatchbacks became less and less profitable and thus manufactured less because they were subject to stricter and thus more expensive regulations, the exact inverse of what was intended to happen with CAFE. This caused a growth in vehicle wheelbases and thus overall sizes to try and lower costs, and the eventual death of several models and even market segments outright. Three door hatchbacks ceased to be in the U.S. market sometime around 2007, as did nearly all hatchbacks. Minivans also suffered because they couldn't always be reclassified as light trucks due to some shenanigans Chrysler had pulled in the 1980s to try and lock out Ford's Aerostar and Chevrolet's Astro, and so prices went up, creating another reason minivans pushed further upmarket in the late 2000s.

The Cobalt was replaced with the larger Cruze in 2008, the Neon replaced with the larger "light truck" classified Caliber in 2007, and the long-in-the-tooth first generation Focus was given a half-hearted exterior styling change and neglected for the updated Escape and Taurus X/Freestyle come 2007. Suzuki replaced the Aerio with the SX4 in 2007, Nissan tried supplanting both the Versa and Altima with the Rogue in 2006 but failed, Mitsubishi shifted all their focus to the Outlander and Endeavor in 2008, and Honda doubled down on the CR-V with it's third generation in 2006. The 2008 financial crisis shuffled things up a bit and thus Ford finally brought over the Fiesta and the fourth generation Focus from Europe in 2011 while Nissan gave us the new Versa and the brand new Leaf that same year, but GM doubled down on CUVs and Chrysler just gave up and put all their money into Jeep in order to make the new Compass and Patriot they'd introduced in 2007 because it was the only thing they could afford. European brands meanwhile jumped on the same bandwagon of bigger CUVs because they realized they could jack up the prices just by jacking up the ride height, and thus developed the MINI Countryman in 2010, FIAT 500X in 2014, and the Opel Mokka which was brought over as the Buick Encore in 2012.

At this point in 2023 nearly all new vehicles sold in the U.S. are either SUVs, CUVs, or full size pickup trucks. Ford infamously axed everything not in those categories except the Mustang, Chevrolet only has one sedan left in the Malibu, Buick has nothing but CUVs after killing off the Opel-filched Insignia sedan and it's Crosstour X branded station wagon version, and Dodge and Nissan are the only ones left in their respective market segments as non-luxury full size sedans with with Charger and Maxima. Even the mighty Honda Accord and Toyota Camry in the venerable mid-size category are falling, with the Camry selling 408,000 units in 2013 and only 120,000 sold so far this year with a projected sales number of only 250,000 by the end of the year. And that's in a ravenous market desperate for new cars.

In short, yes. Fuel economy regulations in the U.S. are to blame because they backfired when it comes to vehicles. And since the U.S. and China essentially dictate world trends for vehicles, the U.S. has set in motion the death of the small car.

[raverbashing]

> the U.S. has set in motion the death of the small car.

Small cars sell fine everywhere else in the world

[Tanoc]

Not for very much longer outside of insulated markets like Japan and central Italy where big cars physically will not fit the streets. In the UK for example nearly half of all cars on the road now are SUVs or CUVs which are inherently larger than their hatchback counterparts regardless of what size and tax class they're weaseled into. Two of the best selling cars there in 2022 were the Kia Sportage and Nissan Qashqai, both compact CUVs with Nissan having completely dropped hatchback offering in that size class. In the EU and U.S. crash regulations have dictated cars be wider to accommodate side-impact airbags and side-sill reinforcement bars on doors, while hoods grow taller to adhere to pedestrian impact regulations. In China it's starting to be seen as unsightly or lower class to still be clinging to an A or B-class city or subcompact car, and so the market has trended towards mid-sizers. Combine this with the small car profit problem, and cars like the Ford Fiesta and Kia Picanto won't be around for very much longer. Ford's already discontinuing the Fiesta this year with no announced replacement.

[SV_BubbleTime]

Hang on!

I was there in 2008 during carpocalypse.

I’ve typed this before in detail, but this is NOT A LOOPHOLE!

In 2008 Obama came in and made changes to CAFE and CARB with Californias very willing help.

The news headline you might have seen, and just saw again this year with Biden Admin pushing it was “All vehicles to be XX MPG by 20YY”. To which people who know absolutely nothing about vehicles clap for. People who understand vehicles or politics know it’s something else.

What happened was Obama Admin came in and wanted to push towards an economic future that wasn’t technically possible for stoichiometric reasons.

The end result was in meetings with MFGs, the admin knowingly compromised and said “We’ll just judge a vehicle based on its size”. A single vehicle’s emissions could be 1.3 or so if it was 1.3 the footprint of a vehicle at the time.

The MFGs replied and said ”If you are going to grade us on size, we are going to give you size”. And they/we have.

Look at vehicle bodies from 2008 on. Larger every single revision.

You can’t actually legislate technological advances. What you can do is knowingly change the game so “your people” have an advantage.

There is a WHOLE lot of bullshit with CAFE and CARB (which is not just California when you understand the market), and even NHTSA anymore.

But… Do not call an intentional “gift” a loophole. Everyone involved knew exactly what was going to happen.

[dragonwriter]

CAFE has had an exception or lower standard for light trucks and an exception for heavy trucks since 1978, and vehicles used as passenger vehicles but meeting either of the truck categories have been incentivized since then; its not something that started 30 years later.

The rise of SUVs and Minivans was a product of this — in the 1980s, not the late 00s.

[gfdsgfsdgfs]

Not true. CAFE was amended in the late 2000s to provide more fuel restrictions for smaller cars while keeping the same fuel restrictions for bigger cars. The result is bigger cars being made.

[dragonwriter]

> Not true.

What isn't true? Nothing you said, even if it was true (it's not) contradicts anything in the grandparent post.

> CAFE was amended in the late 2000s to provide more fuel restrictions for smaller cars while keeping the same fuel restrictions for bigger cars.

No, it wasn’t. The footprint model within the passenger car class did differentiate by size, but it didn’t provide more restrictions for smaller cars while keeping larger cars the same.

[QuarterReptile]

Do minivans meet the definitions? Mine has a pretty low ground clearance, and I don't think it meets the attack angle requirement, either (which is typically the cheapest.)

Edit: I guess I'm a trucker! The 2013 Odyssey is 19lb. over the minimum GVWR!

[gfdsgfsdgfs]

You're right. A University of Michigan study predicted 12 years ago that cars would be bigger to "comply" with CAFE fuel standards.

https://me.engin.umich.edu/news-events/news/cafe-standards-c...

[raydev]

Hang on, the F-150 and Silverado started ballooning in the late 90s. The Hummer came, Nissan introduced their Titan truck in 2004, the Toyota Tundra got massive. All years before 2008.

Regulations may have well prevented reversal, but the buying public was clearly already making its preferences loud and clear.

[SV_BubbleTime]

Airbags, crash testing, NHTSA, fuel injection / data bussing, small changes to CAFE, comfort options, and emissions equipment all made vehicles get slightly larger, that’s true. But not “ballooning”.

The 2004 Nissan Titan you mentioned was smaller in every single dimension and aspect over its comparative 2004 Dodge Ram. That was Nissan trying to play big boy, but was nothing unusual.

I’m talking about everything. Take an entire line from a MFG and look at its model over model changes.

Find a vehicle that decreased in wheelbase. I wish you luck in your search.

[raydev]

> I’m talking about everything. Take an entire line from a MFG and look at its model over model changes.

Yes, I agree that every car was getting bigger well before 2008.

[gfdsgfsdgfs]

There were more fuel restrictions for smaller cars after the CAFE amendment of the late aughts. Automakers were incentivized to build bigger cars to get around the restrictions.

[inferiorhuman]

  I’ve typed this before in detail, but this is NOT A LOOPHOLE!

Sure it is. Going back to whenever, heavier vehicles classed as light trucks (or worse) have been subject to less stringent emissions and safety requirements. That's generally what folks are referring to when they mention regulations favoring trucks.

  Look at vehicle bodies from 2008 on. Larger every single revision.

That's been generally true since the fuel crisis subsided in the 70s.

[gnramires]

Interesting. So you're saying small trucks aren't technically viable under current US legislation? That seems like a glaring emission indeed. Why not just create a light truck category with more lax emission standards? (I suppose it's not too difficult to disallow normal cars from qualifying as light trucks to get higher emissions?)

[SV_BubbleTime]

So, fun stuff!

There are light trucks. The ranger, Tacoma, Colorado, gladiator, etc. They make money, but not like the bigger trucks.

They’re also larger than 1/4 ton trucks of decades ago.

There is a side game with CAFE. Things like the 2DR Wrangler exist - so Jeep could sell more 4DR wranglers and Gladiators. You balance what you have to make with what makes money.

A LOT of Tesla’s financial history is wrapped up in them selling California “carbon credits” (not sure the actual process) to GM, Stellanis, Ford so they then are allowed to sell more trucks in California.

All the mfgs take a small to medium loss on their small cars so they can average their line out. Dodge small cars haven’t made money so long as I have been working in automotive.

If you want an example of nonsense, find a new Tacoma and look between the grill and the front of the radiator. There is more than a FOOT of empty internal space in there.

Being in this industry taught me a lot out government regulation and how it’s almost never what it seems. Regulations exist entirely to be worked-around and not built to. If we built cars to regulations they would all look identical and be pretty poor at everything.

In other countries, vehicles are organzied and taxed by class. Where light trucks can emit more than SUVs the idea being they are needed for work instead of for comfort. This system is gamed too. For example, let’s say Indonesia, it’s far cheaper to get a 4DR Jeep Gladiator than a smaller 2DR Jeep Wrangler. The tax on the latter is high. Both are premium vehicles there.

Regulations exist to be worked around or to be expensive for anyone but your friends to manage. Once you accept that, it makes a lot of decisions make more sense.

[PeterCorless]

Glaring *omission. But apropos typo ftw!

[jackmott42]

Sounds like a loophoole to me. You just wanted to get in a swipe at Obama, which is fine, he screwed up here.

[SV_BubbleTime]

No, I voted for Obama.

I was working a Chrysler when this went down. I was in the room for some of these meetings.

But, you believe whatever you want. Everyone involved knew exactly what was happening. There was no “oops, we didn’t know that would happen loophole”.

[silisili]

I think it's just people defining loophole differently. In our minds, it sure sounds like some unintended trickery to get around a rule. I think OP is saying that it was known and intentional. Is it still a loophole? By definition, I think it is, but not how it's usually used.

[malfist]

That's right, thanks obama for big trucks.

Seriously though, this law wasn't passed in 2008. It was passed in 2012, after democrats lost control of the house. This "gift" as you call it, was an appeasement to republicans to get them to vote increase MPG in general.

[SV_BubbleTime]

You do realize things don’t happen overnight right?

The new Obama admin came in and said “you are going to do this” in 2008. Everyone knew it was happening. Things take a little bit of time from the backend to the front end.

Remember what was happening at the time. TARP, carapocalypse (bailout of GM and Chrysler, massive re-org at Ford).

Today, I’m working products on 2032 vehicles. Spoiler alert, they’re still gas and won’t get 55mpg.

[jacurtis]

> There's no reason a 1/2 ton pickup should be bigger than a 1994 Ford F150

It is funny that we still call trucks like the F150, Ram 1500, Silverado 1500, etc as 1/2 ton pickups. Even though they are still officially categorized like that by all the manufacturers, Edmunds, Motortrend, KBB, and so on, they are actually essentially 1 ton pickups. Our "light-duty pickups" (which is their official classification) are actually 1 ton pickups.

The whole tonnage designation refers to the payload capacity of the truck (people and gear in the bed for example). Traditionally a 1/2 ton pickup could carry 1,000 lbs (half a ton roughly). This was the light-duty, "everyman's pickup".

But take the 2023, F-150. It has a payload capacity of ~2,200lbs on all trims above Lariat. And just shy (~1,800-1,900 lbs) on lower trims. These are literally 1 ton pickups being sold as 'light duty' 1/2 ton pickups. They are way more power than the average person needs, yet they are the best selling vehicles in america. When I look at my neighbords, of the 18 houses on my street, there are 14 pickups (3 of which are 3/4 ton pickups, the rest are 1/2 ton). There is one guy that carries a small trailer a few times each summer with a dirt bike in the back. The rest I have never seen carrying anything other than groceries or the occasional new TV in the bed. They are entirely unnecessary.

Not only are they more dangerous to pedestrians, and are worse for the environment, but they also clutter up the streets because they often don't fit in garages,so more and more people park on the street.

For fun, I looked up the current payload of the Ford Ranger, which is Ford's 1/4 ton pickup. And it clocks in at 3/4 of a ton. So again, we have moved up two notches in truck size.

[ChainOfFools]

> The rest I have never seen carrying anything other than groceries or the occasional new TV in the bed. They are entirely unnecessary.

Imagine the quizzical looks and stares and sarcastic remarks that would follow someone who decided to hitch an empty trailer to their family sedan and haul it around every single place they go. To work, to the dentist, to the bank, to the grocery store, to drop the kids off at daycare. An empty box the size of a grand piano bobbing around behind them everywhere, complicating everything involved with driving, parking, and fuel economy. For no purpose except the same once in a blue moon haul of a television or a couple 2 by 4s.

And yet this is literally what suburban pickup trucks do all the time- burn gas hauling a giant empty box every single place they go, for no reason at all.

But because it's a "pickup truck" it's normalized and no one thinks anything of it despite it being exactly is ridiculous as the car scenario.

[gknoy]

> The rest I have never seen carrying anything other than groceries or the occasional new TV in the bed. They are entirely unnecessary.

I have an older pickup that my in-laws sold us years ago. It's not in the best shape, and most of the time we use it for typical second-car usage: picking up kids, getting groceries, etc. However, it's been useful _so many times_ in the past five years that the convenience of having it outweighs having some other smaller car and then renting a pickup when necessary.

- holiday travel, packages and luggage fill the back. (I'd prefer a minivan, but we don't have one.) - Some local farmer donates a bunch of stumps for the school garden, we can use the pickup - trash / e-waste delivery to the dump - get / deliver furniture - bring school projects to/from school - buy a bunk bed at IKEA, it's in half a dozen six foot boxes of wood

Most of these are occasions where there's significant disruption if we were to go try to rent a vehicle from Uhaul or Home Depot, which makes it less likely that we actually do these things, or suffer through trying to shoehorn things into a tiny car. Being able to throw things in the back of the truck makes life occasionally a lot more convenient.

With the pickup being mostly useless, but occasionally Extremely Useful, it is not surprising to me that many keep them, and even consider buying higher trim levels to have a nicer+bigger cab, especially as their kids get older and larger. :)

[swexbe]

Just rent a god damn trailer when you need one. It costs nothing and is available at every gas station (at least where I live).

[strix_varius]

Having recently rented a trailer, this doesn't mirror my experience at all.

Picking it up took an hour and was a pain in the ass. You still need a vehicle that can haul a trailer, and a compatible hitch. You have to drop it off by a certain time, so now you're rushing. If 3 other people in the area decided to move on that same weekend, you're now screwed because you have no access to equipment.

[masklinn]

> You still need a vehicle that can haul a trailer, and a compatible hitch.

Pretty much everything above compact can haul a small trailer, and surely they all use a basic ball hitch?

[strix_varius]

> Pretty much everything above compact can haul a small trailer

Not according to trailer rental companies. And since it's their trailer, not yours, they get to make the rules - yet another way it's more convenient to own a truck.

> and surely they all use a basic ball hitch?

I had to go buy one, and there were three different main sizes of ball hitch, so there doesn't appear to be a single "basic ball hitch."

PS, I don't own a truck, but this experience - and many similar days where I ended up renting a van or similar - have led me to eye the Maverick.

[rationalist]

FWIW, I doubt my neighbors see all the stuff I haul in the bed, or the trailers I pull, when my truck is not parked in my driveway.

I still think people who delete their diesels or lift their trucks, etc are compensating though. I just won't judge a person who has a standard pickup truck.

[BluePen7]

I owned an F150 because there's a weird premium on anything smaller, it was cheaper than a Ranger or Tacoma.

Eventually just switched to an economy car with a trailer hitch, and it was somehow mind blowing to everyone that a Toyota Camry could haul 2000 lbs.

I was hauling a motocross dirtbike, 200lbs (trailer was maybe another 400), if it was a 200lb person any small car could seat 4 of them.

When I switched to a sports sedan and wanted a hitch all the forums were like "Just get a cheap truck", for some odd reason they only sold the hitch in Europe.

Seems like the solution to anything slightly heavy or large is "Buy a truck that can haul 2000lbs". Meanwhile my old Scottish dad would remark to me "We used to haul caravans with cars smaller than this!"

[rationalist]

Yes, a car with a hitch and trailer would be more economical to purchase and drive.

Unfortunately it's not as convenient for the average person.

[rightbyte]

A station wagon is about as convinient as a pickup as long as you don't need to transport gravel.

[olyjohn]

They are called 1500s. So they should be 3/4 ton trucks, no? 1500lbs is literally 3/4 of a ton.

[masklinn]

IIRC it’s basically a different generation of naming. 1/2 ton trucks got bigger and increased to 3/4, manufacturers labelled them 1500 (but the 1/2 ton informal naming remained), then they kept growing but the class remained.

So now you have light duty trucks with >2000 lbs payload, badged 1500, and called half ton.

[sidewndr46]

From what I understand if you outlaw anything heavier than 3000 lbs you've basically banned most EVs other than the tiny ones resembling a city car.

[pc86]

I don't think the pedestrian getting hit cares whether it's an EV or not.

[SllX]

“My life is flashing before my eyes but at least it was an environmentally conscious Rivian that took me out and not a gas-guzzling RAM. My life may be over but the Earth is in good hands. Nice color too, really like the yellow.”

[ghostpepper]

I don't upvote jokes out of principle but this was pretty funny

[camdat]

I dont think the pedestrian getting hit cares whether the car is 2,999lbs or 3,0001lbs.

[sidewndr46]

I always think the same thing about federal gun restrictions in the US. I can't imagine someone getting shot and thinking "I'm so glad he didn't shoot me with a barrel shorter than 16 inches!!!"

[aidenn0]

Clearly the barrel-length restrictions were intended to be about how easy they are to conceal. There was an attempt to draw a distinction between long-guns and hand-guns.

The NFA ended up exempting pistols, which results in the strange situation where manufacturing a pistol to fire a .223 Remmington is legal, but shortening an AR-15 is not.

Perhaps if they only exempted revolvers it would make more sense.

[sidewndr46]

That is false. The objective was to prevent the handgun ban from being circumvented. The handgun ban never became law but we're left with an oddball restriction around short barrels on rifles.

[tm-guimaraes]

the differencing between breaking a leg and dying are kinda big... Weight and frontal height are deciding factors on that.

[pc86]

I mean this is obviously false. The heavier a vehicle is, the slower it needs to be going to cause a certain amount of damage, up to and including death. How many pedestrians are hit every year? If you can lower the average weight of vehicles on the road you're directly saving lives.

[tm-guimaraes]

not only that, but the height of the vehicle front also matters A LOT.

A SUV is perfect for killing pedestrians, it has the perfect triple combo:

* Weight * raised front to perfectly shatter a chest * low visibility for the perfect "i didn't saw him" excuse.

[sidewndr46]

The couple drivers I'd have to avoid as a pedestrian explained to me that they were not looking in the direction of travel. So I can't see what height or visibility would matter.

[camdat]

This assumes two vehicles of similar dimensions.

An aerodynamic 3,001lb vehicle would be much preferable to me than a 2,999lb flat-front. The physics imply only a portion of the heavier vehicles energy is imparted to me.

I don't make the comment to argue that weight isn't meaningful, but to say that "lethality" of a vehicle has many factors.

[pc86]

Yes it does, because we're talking about regulations that would cap the size of vehicle classes. You're not going to turn a 6,000lb F-150 into a 2,999lb truck, but you can shave 50 or 60 pounds off a vehicle.

All else being equal, lighter = less deadly. That's all I'm saying.

[tm-guimaraes]

which should be fine, because heavy EVs aren't exactly more environmentally friendly, they just make very different trade offs. Yet, they are more deadly, destroy roads faster, and devalue quicker (half its value come from the battery).

Small City EVs are great though, better for environment, better for not killing more pedestrians, better for urban planning, and cheaper!

[inferiorhuman]

Citation needed.

[aidenn0]

The other day, I saw a 1990s Chevy S-10 that had been raised to the height of a modern step-up pickup. It looked ridiculous. Similarly I was on my bike at a red-light looking to turn right with a (stock height) late-model F-150 next to me going straight. I couldn't see over its hood.

[apexalpha]

>Once a car is light and small(ish) the good MPG will follow. My 1988 Volvo 240 got 30mpg on a recent road trip and that's with it needing a tune up.

Doesn't this work both ways? If you focus on MPG then lighter, smaller variants of the same model will win out over bigger, heavier ones.

[LarryDarrell]

To a certain extent, yes. I'm mostly daydreaming about if you magically remade my little Volvo with modern materials and one of those low-displacement turbo engines they put in cars today. It would be 500 pounds lighter with 3 times as much horsepower.

But... that car would be a dud today. It's too simple and lacks features (like power seats).

[mrguyorama]

Also crashing into anything would kill you. Modern safety standards are very heavy.

[sidewndr46]

What does weight matter on a road trip? Unless you are exclusively driving at 30 mph uphill I don't see it mattering much. Wind resistance is the dominant force. This is the same reason why most railroads put limitations on the maximum grade they have to climb. They are mainly working against wind resistance, not gravity.

[aidenn0]

There are two numbers on the sticker for fuel efficiency. In-town and highway.

For in-town weight matters greatly (both because you essentially throw away energy every time you break, and because rolling-resistance matters more at low speed).

For highway, up until 2008 the maximum speed tested was 55, which disadvantages heavy-vehicles, as rolling resistance is a higher component of energy used at lower speeds (as a simple approximation, rolling-resistance is linear, and air-resistance is quadratic).

[sidewndr46]

The thread was specifically about a road trip. I can't imagine anyone taking a road trip entirely in town.

[bialpio]

Driving around Yosemite or Yellowstone is gonna be closer to in-town riding than to highway riding. I wouldn't be too surprised if time spent on driving at the destination was ~50% of my driving time at some road trips I took.

[aidenn0]

I've done road-trips entirely off of limited-access highways.

[_Microft]

Road damage scales with fourth power of axle load.

A car that is 50% heavier does 5 times the damage.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_power_law

[sidewndr46]

The thread was about fuel economy on a road trip.

[apexalpha]

>Wind resistance is the dominant force.

Hence, smaller cars have better MPG. Smaller cars also tend to be lighter.

[Symbiote]

Railways have very low gradients due to the limits of friction of steel wheels on steel rails.

[jusssi]

Heavier vehicle puts more work into deforming the road. It must follow it also puts more energy into that.

[bobbylarrybobby]

Yes, but no, because the MPG standards in the US are on a per-size basis. I forget exactly what, but it's per weight, or per footprint (m^2) or something else that lets you shrink the ratio by just building a physically larger car.

[ramesh31]

>There's no reason 1 1/2 ton pickups should be bigger than a 1994 Ford F150.

Sure there is. Those 90's pickup trucks were absolute death traps. Bench seating, no airbags, drum brakes, no ABS, no crunch zones. There are very good reasons that cars have become much heavier in the last 30 years.

[inferiorhuman]

  Once a car is light and small(ish) the good MPG will follow. My 1988 Volvo
  240 got 30mpg on a recent road trip and that's with it needing a tune up.

The 240 was a good car for its time, but its time was the late 70s. A 2023 Camry hybrid is rated at 53 MPG highway and is much safer for everyone involved. When the 240 was sold you could still buy a new car where you were unlikely to survive a 35 mph head on crash into a wall (e.g. crashing into something roughly the same weight).

Meanwhile Euro NCAP rates cars based on the risk to pedestrians (and NHTSA has proposed following suit). A 240 is going to be far less forgiving.

[tootie]

There was a brief and futile anti-SUV movement in the 90s. Manufacturers generally got much better about size and safety compared to what they were, but they still sell based primarily on looks. For anyone who actually needs all that interior space, you're always better off with a minivan. And really most people, even families, can make do with a regular sedan. I've got a wife and two kids we can fit ourselves and enough junk for a 4-day vacation in a compact pretty easily (which I rent as needed because I live in a walkable city).

[masklinn]

> And really most people, even families, can make do with a regular sedan.

That’s still the norm in Europe. Every summer you see the Dutch migrating through France in station wagons.

A roof carrier or a small trailer does wonder (when you don’t just go with a camper).

[Scoundreller]

Even the same sedans are built with different engine options between North America and Europe.

Europe models will start with smaller engines that are just unavailable in US models.

No idea why given Europe has mountains too and 120 and 130km/h speed limits are the highway norm but often with shorter on-ramps.

[masklinn]

American cultural sensibilities making small engines a hard sell?

Historically the torque converter gearboxes were a big problem for small euro engines, but nowadays I’d assumed the gearboxes either are DCT or have lock-up clutch so it should be a non-issue.

[mrguyorama]

Americans are just terrible and inattentive drivers in general, because the culture is that driving is a necessary thing, and therefore a right. They also like to merge onto highways in the stupidest possible ways, so you "need" 200 horsepower even in a damn corolla so you can accelerate to 80mph from 30 because you don't understand the concept of an on-ramp or smooth merging.

[CalRobert]

The 240 is a beast. And yet, having just Googled it, it's 400 pounds _lighter_ than a 2022 VW Golf.

[jackmott42]

MPG regulation would have had the same effect if there wasn't a loophole to avoid it by making the truck bigger :(

[josephcsible]

> There's no reason for a sedan to be heavier than 3000 lbs.

Because batteries are heavy. Or do you mean you want sedans to stay fossil-fuel powered forever?

> There's no reason 1 1/2 ton pickups should be bigger than a 1994 Ford F150.

Did that have a back seat big enough for adults to sit in? If not, then there's your reason.

[tm-guimaraes]

> Or do you mean you want sedans to stay fossil-fuel powered forever?

why not? At least until bateries are good enough. Heavy EVs are not exactly more environmentally friendly than ICEs, they just make different trade-offs.

Instead of thinking of the dangers of an ICE sedan, and showing an abomination called an EV sedan, just have a simple EV city car, or invest in actually humane mass transit, propper city planning, etc. If you use just your ICE sedan for longer trips, that's decent enough.

EV replacement for our current type of car types are just an hacky way that doesn't really help, just changes the problems.

[vel0city]

Maybe F-150's should be considered impractical family vehicles instead of trying to shoehorn them into a do-everything-everywhere-all-the-time kind of vehicle?

[klyrs]

Only the new ones fail at being pickups because their beds are short they can't fit much and so high off the ground you'll blow your shoulder out trying to load it with anything but groceries.

[klyrs]

Yes, my dad drove exactly that truck and we did several roadtrips with 5 adults, 5 bikes, and our luggage in back.

[kaonashi]

mpg wouldn't be as bad as it is if they didn't allow the giant light truck loophole -- regulating on weight would have the same problems if they excepted a class of vehicles that everyone would then flock to

[ZeroGravitas]

mpg is directly correlated to size and weight.

I don't know the details but apparently some concession was made to big auto on mpg that meant there was a loophole and bigger heavier trucks didn't count against your mpg targets as much. That, not a focus on mpg, is the cause.

[rhaway84773]

Europeans also focus on MPG. Their cars haven’t ballooned in the way American cars have.

[ojhughes]

They have ballooned quite a lot, we are still behind the obscene size of the typical American SUV. Range Rovers are seen as a status symbol

[CalRobert]

It's Ford Kugas as far as the eye can see. Lots of absurdly high Rangers too :-(