[jszymborski]

I really don't get the NA car market. There is a demand for small kei car/trucks as is natural with cities growing and parking dwindling.

Yet even compacts are disappearing. My kingdom for an EV compact that is compact. Even the Fiat 500s and Mini Coops feel like they get bigger each year.

[EligibleDecoy]

Because of a quirk of emissions controls in the US. Longer wheelbases and heavier vehicles can get by with poorer emissions. It was done, at the time, to help semi trailers and other huge trucks meet less restrictive requirements without specifically calling them out but now has led to each manufacturer making vehicles as large as possible so meeting emissions restrictions is more economical.

[Amezarak]

This gets brought up on HN every time the subject comes up but it doesn't make sense. It is true that, sensibly, emissions regulations are more relaxed as vehicles get larger. But smaller vehicles are still cheaper to make and sell for lower MSRPs than the same manufacturer's larger cars, and larger cars almost always hugely outsell them. Sadly, this has meant that a lot of small cars, like the Honda Fit, have been discontinued in the US.

HN users are not representative. Kei car enthusiasts are not representative. Americans love F-150s, Tacomas, Highlanders, 4runners, RAV4s, CRVs, etc. They by-and-large buy the largest car/truck they can afford. You look up the sales numbers for this stuff and there's just no contest; e.g., CRVs outsold Fits by almost a factor of 10. The marginal gain of "parking is slightly easier in streets or unlined lots" is something most people don't care enough about to buy a smaller vehicle. They prefer the other conveniences of large cars.

Is it true that manufacturers like selling larger cars because they have higher margins? Sure; they also like to sell you on the higher trim levels of small cars for the same reason. But Americans are happily making that easy for them.

[loloquwowndueo]

Manufacturers are also not making it easy for people to choose smaller cars.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/suv-small-car-affordable-1.7239768

[Amezarak]

The article doesn't really support that claim. Yes, larger vehicles have higher margins, just as higher trim levels do. But it is also true that small vehicle sales are consistently poor. Of course manufacturers aren't very interested in a low-volume low-margin market segment, which led to the tragic death of cars like the Fit.

That's why the article you linked says things like:

> Long, a sustainable transportation researcher at Simon Fraser University, and Jonn Axsen, professor of sustainable transportation at SFU, undertook a study of 1,000 SUV drivers in the Vancouver area. The study revealed that drivers "see them as superior to cars," said Long.

People are happy and willing to pay more for larger cars. Manufacturers are delighted to oblige. Given the choice between a small car and a large car, the typical consumer chooses the larger car. The fact that a small number of consumers like me prefer Honda Fits is not enough to justify their continued production.

[sickofparadox]

Because the fuel standards for those smaller vehicles are not realistic to hit. If you go to page 24 on this pdf [1] you'll see that for a car with ~41 square foot wheelbase they need to get 55 combined miles per gallon. This essentially disqualifies anything that is not a hybrid from even going into production at that size. I'll give you its true that Americans love big cars, but even my Ram TRX driving coworkers are complaining that trucks are too big and that they'd love for a early 00's or late 90's F-150 style truck again.

[1] https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2022-05-02/pdf/2022-0...

[devilbunny]

I drive a 2000-era Chevrolet Tahoe. Large but not huge by SUV standards.

I park between an F150 and a Ram pickup. Despite the fact that all three are built on the same nominal size category - 3/4 ton pickup - the new ones make my 20-ish year old car look like a RAV4.

And it's not exactly a gas-sipping vehicle to drive.

I do wonder why nothing seems to get good highway mileage anymore despite all the improvements that have been made. My mid-90s Pontiac Bonneville got the sort of mileage around town that you might expect from a full-size sedan (even by American standards, it was large for a sedan) with a 3.8L engine driven by an early-20s male, but the top gear was set so high that it got 30 mpg on the road (7.8 L/100 km). Even modern sedans of the same nominal size get worse than that.

[Amezarak]

Thanks for the link, I've been looking for that. Without reviewing it in depth - I appreciate any pointers - it looks like going by the tables on page 26, the requirement for "light trucks" (therefore including SUVs) is also higher than what can be achieved without a hybrid system. I see similar tables near the end seemingly showing the same thing that I think your 55mpg number came from.

[rjzzleep]

> HN users are not representative. Kei car enthusiasts are not representative. Americans love F-150s, Tacomas, Highlanders, 4runners, RAV4s, CRVs, etc. They by-and-large buy the largest car/truck they can afford. You look up the sales numbers for this stuff and there's just no contest; e.g., CRVs outsold Fits by almost a factor of 10.

This is true, but even outside the US in a lot of Asian places with no apparent space for big cars everything is getting bigger, why is that?

[amanaplanacanal]

There is the perception that larger vehicles are safer, at least for the people inside. They aren’t, but that is the perception. And fuck the people outside I guess.

[consteval]

Americans love them because of advertising. It's societal wide manipulation.

For those who doubt the power of marketing, look no further than this case.

American regularly buy worse cars, that don't last as long, and burn more fuel, and require more maintenance, with virtually no upside - purely because that's what's advertised and what makes people feel cool. And they know this is the case. They understand the purchase they are making is an objectively worse one, and they (pretty often) have to create complex orchestrations of lies they tell themselves to obfuscate that.

I mean, the sheer amount of single passenger drivers buying trucks for 70,000, never towing anything, and then complaining about fuel economy is insane. I know many people like this. Little do they know they could pay half the price for a Prius, get a better experience, and get 3x as many miles to the gallon. But they do know this, kind of, but the manipulation exists on a subconscious, unreachable level.

[pandaman]

Put two mountain bikes in a Prius and drive to a singletrack trailhead then tell again how it's objectively better. But on a serious note, there are many more reasons to have a truck than towing. I understand that it's disturbing when others don't share your needs or views, but saying "people other than myself are stupid and do things for silly reasons" is not adding to discussion quality.

[consteval]

> Put two mountain bikes in a Prius and drive to a singletrack trailhead then tell again how it's objectively better

Easy, nobody does that. Okay well not nobody... just almost nobody.

I'm working under the assumption (which I think is correct) that the majority of people who buy large vehicles use them identically to how they would a small one. That is, with usually a single passenger, on roadways, for a regular commute. There's some studies out there on how vehicles are used.

If this doesn't apply to you, then I think you're an outlier. But we're not talking about outliers. You'll notice everyone and their mom is driving an SUV or Truck. Especially when it comes to trucks, 99% of the time I see one its one dude in them, towing nothing, with nothing in the bed.

Even if you DO occasionally use your truck (most don't), you're still making a poor purchase. Because I can rent a day truck for 50 bucks. Let's see... save 30 grand, save hundreds of dollars on gas, save thousands on repairs... and then spend 50 bucks on a rental... let me just do my calculations... oh yeah, it's still obviously a better deal.

As I've said, nobody really wants to admit this sort of stuff because then you're admitting you've been manipulated and you're an irrational consumer (although almost all consumers are). This DOES contribute to the discussion, and I think you know what I'm saying is right. This is the sort of thing that is obvious to everyone, but talked about by no one, because of the implications.

[pandaman]

Yeah, people usually don't tow, off-road, drive through unplowed streets covered with snow 3 feet high, ford through a flash flood, transport vehicles or big appliances, or gardening or construction supplies etc. But people still do these things, which are not possible with a Prius.

You believe that if you don't do these usually then you should never do them? How often do you have more than two people in your Prius? Wouldn't you say that you usually don't? So why would you buy a car with 5 seats by your own logic? Everyone who is not brainwashed by ads and knowing what's good for them would be buying a Miata, if your logic applies, right?

And yes, renting comes up in these discussions all the time. For me to rent a truck right now I would need to call several places to find if they have trucks available at all, find someone to drive with me to that place or take Uber, sign up paperwork and walk-around, pay $100+ day, then return with another walk-around, then find a way to get home from the rental place. Or I could just throw bikes in the box, drive to a trail, ride, and come back by the time you got home in your rental. You saved some money, but likely you saved even more because you stayed home while others had fun outside.

[infecto]

Would love to see data otherwise but I don't believe this is the case. I hear this argument a lot for kei vehicles but its still a niche compared to the broader truck market. 2023 units sold, ford ranger 40k, f-series 760k. The kei market is vastly smaller than the ranger market.

I am sure that profit margin/advertising plays a mix into the decisions but I also think the consumer largely does not want small cars.

Edit: And for small work trucks, most of that market seems to be eaten up by the smaller commercial van vehicles at this point.

[jszymborski]

Im not denying that demand for trucks/SUVs is probably has the largest demand of any segment.

I guess im more just wondering if the lack of demand for small cars is just that after being absent from the market and seeing the least innovation over the last X years, whether there is some sort of collective amnesia that such a segment exists.

Car companies know what they're doing, so im probably just coping. I should stop wishing the free market to do what's right rather than profitable :P

[pandaman]

That's because of the fixed cost of making another model of a car. Look at what happened to Stellantis trying to bring Fiat 500: after three years of great sales it started to drop pretty quickly to the point where they sold only 16 in the 2023 [1]. Do they make enough profit from selling 16 (or even 1600) cheap cars to afford compliance with the US regulations (they need to crash several cars to get the NHTSA "stars", that's quite a cost even before the cost of the testing itself), stocking spare parts, training mechanics etc? And this is assuming they can sell just the euro model without any retooling, if they need to make a different model for the US market they also need to keep factories tooled for that, keep ordering parts etc.

1. https://www.goodcarbadcar.net/fiat-500-sales-figures/

[consteval]

I think it's because they are still a relatively niche pick. Ultimately creating a car is very hard (I assume), so they all tend to converge their efforts on the 95%.

And the 95% want an SUV or a Sedan. The 5% in dense cities, even if you successfully target and sell to 100% of them, isn't much revenue. Whereas if you make a crappy sedan and only 10% of the 95% consider it, that's STILL more sales.

So it might make more sense to simply give up those markets, take that money and dump it into the big sellers. Your Accords and F-150s of the world. To further capture more of the biggest market. So that's my guess.

[karmakaze]

That's how capitalism works for vehicles. The same model name continues to grow and increase spending for people looking to buy them when they do. Eventually a new lower model may be inserted below for new buyers, or sometimes the grown model may be reset to a smaller or different form. It's similar to bundling/unbundling cycles which increase expenditure as you try to keep what you want.

[sidewndr46]

Fuel economy standards, emissions standards, safety standards, & profit margins.

If you want to sell cars and make money, compacts are not where it is at.

[khafra]

Compacts, subcompacts, and microcompacts are very popular in Europe. Is this because Europe has fewer and less restrictive standards for fuel economy, emissions, and safety? I am not an automotive policy expert, but I feel like Europe tends to regulate more than the US does.

[PetitPrince]

One factor to take into account is that streets and roads are narrower (or at least feels narrower). I would be very uncomfortable driving those huge SUV where I live.

[gedy]

Yeah my expat friend owns a midsized (for the US) SUV in Spain, and she finds it incredibly difficult to use in the city she lives in due to the narrow streets + sidewalk cafes.

[troupo]

> Compacts, subcompacts, and microcompacts are very popular in Europe.

They are also growing in size. Most "compacts" are the size of many regular SUVs from 20 years ago

[Tuna-Fish]

Regulations are not just a more/less choice. They can also be better or worse.

This usually comes up when arguing about about FDA, which is uniquely bad at its job. When I try to point that out, people come out of the woodwork and argue as if I'm a nutcase libertarian who wants to abolish all regulations. No, there are countries with drug regulations that are generally tighter, and also the population has had access to UVA-blocking sunscreen for a decade.

The regulations that matter here are terribly written regulations that are more lax if your vehicle is bigger. EU has more regulations, but wouldn't ever make that mistake.

[khafra]

FDA Delenda Est, sure. But I'm still glad that seatbelts and frame strength standards aren't optional for auto manufacturers. Maybe we just need to regulate regulatory capture; have penalties for it that actually hurt the pocketbooks of the market juggernauts who try it.

[sidewndr46]

No, it's because the US has a different set of regulations entirely.