This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
My previous car is a Yaris.
When I got the Yaris I heard people make snide comments like "Anyone see that big guy get out of that tiny car?" then gas prices went up and they became "Hey, what kind of MPG does that thing get?"
I like hatchbacks. Bigger is fine but nothing huge.
My current car is an '07 Yaris. It's totally bare bones, but everyone who has been in it comments on how spacious the interior is.
I've always driven small cars, because they're economical and I've never needed anything larger. I hate that small hatchbacks are so scarce in the US and that our roads are overrun with ludicrously huge pickups and SUVs. We transitioned from land yachts to small cars in the late 1970's and 1980's, we could do it again with the right incentives.
I have a Yaris and think it's too big. It's 20cm longer than my previous car (2005 Clio) but somehow has less interior space, it feels cramped.
Americans need to embrace public transit. We need trains that don't completely suck in both speed and schedule reliability.
We're never going to convince a lot of folks to leave their lifted F-150 or massive Suburban behind for a small car. But quality, affordable public transit that is not only efficient but saves money over owning a car would actually make a difference. We're more likely to be able to get people to just leave the F-150 in the driveway and eventually move away from it.
Much better for the environment, too, and reduces traffic / congestion, etc. I agree smaller cars would be good, but the goalpost should be getting away from the automobile.
Americans need to embrace public transit.
Bad framing.
Instead of asking Americans to just embrace our absolutely shit public transit (which they won't do and will become more angry and obstinate about in its current condition), we need to push representatives into office that are far more left-leaning and not fucking autocrats who will MANDATE massive increases in taxes on billionaires and legislate much more significant subsidization of public transit to the point that it is MASSIVELY expanded and improved to a degree that it starts to look like what we see in actual 1st world countries like Japan, Europe, and pretty much all the Nordic countries. See "Not Just Bikes" for countless great examples of how other countries do this to a degree that it should be embarrassing for the US.
They didn't get the public to "embrace public transit." They made it good enough to the point that even the rich use it. It's the same for anything. You have to show how good it can be. Then people will "embrace it" and guard it from dismantling by the rich looking to line their pockets. It's why even ghoulish Republicans won't touch Medicare. It was made GOOD by FDR's administration, and now it is political suicide to do anything to water it down.
We need some bold leftist president to yell from the bully pulpit about high-speed bullet trains and advocate for it like Kennedy did for the Moon race.
Fixing things here means not only having lots of trains that stick to schedules, but regulating it very strongly and mandating adequate staffing, paying those staff well enough to live a dignified life, and providing proper training for every employee.
But the real sad fact is, there are so many other problems stacked on top of each other that all need addressing that are not only not being addressed, but directly worsened year over year - things like mass homelessness, housing unavailability, rising cost of living, zoning making nothing everyone needs to access (like grocery stores) within a public transit-friendly distance, that this will probably not happen ever...
americans will embrace small cars like they embrace gun control
We embraced the shit out of them during the oil crisis in the '70's. Then when gasoline got cheap again we snapped right back.
"But my SUV makes me feel so 'safe' and gives me a commanding view of the road!!!!!!"
I am of the opinion that everyone ought to just get a motorcycle.
Have you ever seen Americans drive? Or the ones that ride motorcycles?
Give everyone a motorcycle and half the country would be dead in a week
Normal sized cars* you mean.
Normal cars aren't small. They're just small if you compare them to the giant ridiculous trucks they have over that.
Bold idea here, but maybe if we stopped fucking subsidizing SUV's, people wouldn't buy so goddamn many of them. Just a thought.
some reasons for the raise of vehicle size on the last decades are personal taste, but others are policy driven, we could look into that, as utility vehicles are treated differently in terms of emission requirements
Yup - in the US, pick-ups and SUVs are categorized as "light trucks," which have different fuel efficiency and emission standards and are therefore more profitable to produce.
Add to that some clever marketing to the effect of "big car = more manly/safe" and boom, now you see these big, stupid, fuel-ineffecient, dangerous vehicles everywhere.
Good job 👍
Whenever I'm in the States I hate the fact that everything is a 20 minute car ride away. I understand why road rage can be a thing if you spend so much time in the car.
Or an adequate mass transportation system.
Or walkable zoning, lack of which is the fundamental cause of the car dependency.
Give me a new El Camino EV with a 400 mile range and I'm in.
All my road trips are around 150 miles and there may or may not be a charger at the destination.
The article says range isn't important...if you've ever looked at a map of the US, you'll see why that's a misguided statement.
To be fair, most people aren't driving across the US on an even yearly basis, if ever in their lives.
Unfuck the CAFE standards and manufacturers will quit killing off car models and producing so many "light trucks".
So I live in the cousin-fuckingly-deep south where 90% of what's on the road is trying its best to be a monster truck... I drive what looks like a pregnant rollerskate by comparison cuz I don't want to send half my paycheck into the gas tank.
It's funny-sad how the folks in the giant trucks get offended just by seeing my tiny car. Every day there's always at least one asshole in an F-350 or some shit that likes to ride up on my ass cuz I guess it makes them feel powerful? I just drop a mph every couple seconds until either they fuck off or get annoyed enough to pass.
Anyway, moral of the story is that stupid-big vehicles are here to stay in the US, at least in the regions occupied by Y'all Quaeda. Their trucks are one of their few sources of self esteem.
...I'm really tempted to find one of those rubber testicle things that the cowboys like to put between the rear wheels of their trucks, but like a comically tiny one, color it like the trans flag, and hang it on the back of my tiny car just to annoy the rednecks on the road. ...although here, that'd probably get my car or myself shot.
Forget small cars, we should be embracing non-motorized ways of transit. Make things human-sized again and allow us to walk and/or bike to destinations rather than having to have a motorized vehicle to get around.
Public transit is obviously a good thing to have, but I think it’s also important to have alternate forms of transit as well.
It's time for Americans to stop spending so much time in their cars. Emissions from burning hydrocarbons are destroying the planet.
Here we have higher taxes for cars more than 4m long, so there are lots of small cars. Also, a lot of 3.99m cars.
CAFE is killing the smaller vehicle. Vehicles are getting super round and boring for aerodynamics. Wheel base is getting longer. Track is getting wider. There's no such thing as a small truck. Everything is am SUV ("truck") or crossover (hatchback / station wagon). CAFE allows for less fuel efficiency for wider track and longer wheelbase and trucks over everything else.
Remember how VW got caught cheating on the mileage tests? Remember how every other major manufacturer was caught too?
The govt has set far too high of a standard for mileage, so car companies are making giant ass cars to meet (cheat) CAFE standards. The manufacturers have done everything they can but still can't meet the standards.
Cars have gotten bigger externally, but internally it seems storage space is actually going down. My 2014 Nissan Note has a 10% larger storage capacity than a 2023 Renault Espace, even tho the latter is 50cm larger in all three dimensions and is literally called 'spatious'.
In California, America's largest state by population, our #1 selling vehicle is the Honda Civic. And driving on our roads, Civics, Corollas, Accords etc... dominate the roads. And even the biggest selling SUV the CRV gets like 30+ to the gallon.
Small cars sell in places where small cars work.
There was a time back when gas prices got kinda high when I thought Americans would finally shift down to slightly smaller cars, but now it's practically a cultural thing for half the country to burn as much fuel as possible, so I suspect even if gas prices here hit Europe levels it wouldn't cause them to budge much.
It does feel really odd, though, going somewhere like a school and just being absolutely surrounded by huge SUVs and pickup trucks that you know damn well like 90% of the drivers aren't actually utilizing.
Double-sucks because it's becoming more and more difficult to find a small car. Everything new, even most cars, are huge.
It's time for Americans to embrace bicycles and ebikes and, gasp, walking
Even in Europe we can't, since they replace them with fat Crossovers.
the only problem i had when i was driving a small car (i drive a mid-size car now) was my sense of vulnerability when surrounded by stupid massive lifted trucks bearing down on me. it felt really unsafe. and i live in stupid-giant-truck land, they're not an anomaly here.
eta - plus giant truck owners seem to get off on being scary aggressive drivers.
Increase the gas tax. Set registration fees per pound of car.
We know how to do this. We also know how scared politicians are of angering anyone.
The trend in truck size is, well, yeah.
I mean, yeah. Small electric cars, more trains, more public transport.
The author notes that he would like to see more people take public transportation, and I’m all for that. There’s one problem for me: In Michigan where I live there is no public transportation that really gets you around Detroit, or gets you from the suburbs to Detroit. There is the joke of a QLine that goes no where and the People Mover that also doesn’t do much, but other than that nothing. Convincing people that have private transportation (read: cars) that they should invest/have their taxes used for public transportation is a no-go. Convincing the rich that they should pay more than $0 a year in taxes is even harder. This is probably the case a in several states around the country, but definitely in Michigan (and believe me, we tried with a bus system). So while I get that smaller cars can be and maybe should be thing, I think public transportation, as the author points out, could also be a thing. However, trying to get anyone, especially millionaires and billionaires, to pay a cent more than they are forced to is like pulling teeth.
I drive a 2015 Chevy Spark, the gas version. The ev version was discontinued in 2016, the gas version was discontinued in 2022. The Chevy Sonic, a similar, but slightly larger model was discontinued in 2020. The Chevy Bolt, an ev and larger, but still compact model and a successor to the Spark and Sonic was discontinued this year. It's become apparent that most Americans do not like small cars. I don't think much can be done to make small cars likable here, I'd love to be able to drive a car like the Honda E, but there's no market for it here.
