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by jillesvangurp 930 days ago
In general, the market for trucks in Europe is pretty much non existent. Just not a thing here. Blue collar workers use normal cars and vans here with a cheap trailer if they need to move lots of stuff/garbage/sand etc. Anything with a high fuel consumption is a non starter for commercial usage given the fuel cost. Besides, big vehicles just aren't very practical on narrow roads, in dense cities, etc.

Getting this thing approved for safety reasons might also be a challenge. I'd say a lot of people don't really want these things anywhere near pedestrians, children, or cyclists; all of which are very common in European traffic.

1 comments

There's a market, it's tiny compared to the USA but I've seen bigger trucks like the Dodge RAM, Ford F-250, and similar peppered around Stockholm's area more affluent neighbourhoods/municipalities.

When I lived in Huddinge (a higher income municipality with lots of villas/detached houses) it seemed like 1 every 5 houses had at least one of those trucks parked in their garage, some had 2 or more. Same around the Danderyd area...

I've noticed the uptick in larger trucks, and bigger SUVs around the streets here for the past 4-5 years.

I really hope this trend doesn't continue, it sucks.

Yeah, we have those in Finland too. They're all for pavement princesses. They're always immaculately detailed, not a scratch, dent or dirt stain on them.

If people need a "truck" for actual work, they'll get a Toyota Hilux. And even those tend to have a hard shell over the bed essentially making it a van with huge ground clearance.

Throughout Europe, total sale of _all_ pickup trucks is about 100k/year. US annual sales are in the region of 2 to 3 million.
It will continue unless we legislate against it. There are many things that can be done.
As long as we don't incentivise them like they (accidentally?) did in the US by having large enough vehicles be exempt from most environmental regulations...