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And why is that. Small cars should be as practical in the USA as in rest of the world, and it seems it is only the mentality of the American consumer that seems

And why is that. Small cars should be as practical in the USA as in rest of the world, and it seems it is only the mentality of the American consumer that seems to avoid them, perhaps?

ryan93 6y ago
It would be scary to drive european sized small cars on back roads with big SUVs and trucks whizzing by.
dheera 6y ago
I live in the USA (California) and it's almost impossible to get anywhere without getting onto a highway. The only local roads are littered with stop signs or red lights at every goddamn intersection and then some speed bumps. It's either the highway or the obstacle course. I do have a electric scooter (max 40 km/h, so can only stick to local roads) which I use for <5km trips and and I can definitely say those stop signs cut my battery range by a factor of 2 or 3.
nowherebeen 6y ago
Americans have this weird fascination of bigger is better mentality to the point that practicality goes out the window. The hummer is a prime example: burns a ton of gasoline with little benefit to the owner or others.
- an_opabinia 6y ago
  Bigger cars are almost always safer, which isn't a weird fascination at all.
  - Etheryte 6y ago
    This used to be true back in the 80s and such, but with modern safety standards, you have to take extreme ends of big and small to get anywhere close to a statistically significant difference. How you drive, what kind of airbags your car has, what the general traffic culture is in your country etc are all considerably more important factors than your car size. To put it another way, you're way more likely to walk away from a crash in a modern small car than in an older large car. For all intents and purposes, size being safety is an urban myth today.
    - CincinnatiMan 6y ago
      Are you sure? In a Consumer Reports article [0] from 2013, they mention in head-on crashes involving a car and SUV, the car driver was 7.6 times more likely to die than the SUV driver. So in a world where there are SUVs driving around, buying an SUV for yourself instead of a car is a safer move. Just think about getting t-boned in an intersection. Would you rather be in a light, low vehicle or in a heavy, tall vehicle? I'd pick the latter, especially if the vehicle t-boning me is tall and its bumper at the height of my head if I were in a small car. [0]: https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/news/2013/05/suvs-are-safer-than-cars-in-front-crashes-but-there-is-more-to-the-story/index.htm https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/news/2013/05/suvs-are-sa...
      - freeflight 6y ago
        > So in a world where there are SUVs driving around, buying an SUV for yourself instead of a car is a safer move. That sounds like the same kind of circular reasoning that's often cited to oppose any gun regulation: "When everybody has a gun, you also need a gun to stay safe!".
        rsj_hn 6y ago
        A lot of people are confused about the difference between a stable and unstable equilibrium, because hey, they are both equlibria! No one having a big car is an unstable equilibrium.
      - NickNameNick 6y ago
        Thats because the SUV is too big, not because the car is too small. If you lived somewhere where all the cars were small, both vehicles would be better off, because there would be much less energy in the collision. SUV's aren't safer, they're more dangerous to other people. and that shouldn't be OK.
  - TLightful 6y ago
    But it is a dumb fascination when the logical conclusion is everyone riding around in tanks.
nicoburns 6y ago
There's a lot more space in the US. Roads are bigger. Parking spaces are more numerous, etc. Small cars are practical in the US, but big cars are not practical in Europe.
babesh 6y ago
Low gas prices in the US. Small cars became very popular in the late 70’s and early 80’s in the US due to gas shortages. They gradually died out as gas prices came back down. Go look at car sizes in the 1950’s and 1960’s in the US. Compare that to car sizes in Europe as it recovered from WW2. Think Cadillac boat like cars vs the Mini. Also, cars are essential transportation in parts of the US and raising gas prices would/have result(ed) in a lot of protesting. In fact, high gas prices would be seen as regressive.
sitkack 6y ago
We have more space, so US auto manufacturers used the space differential to change the dynamics of the market. Small cars have been removed from the situation by the SUV Wars. They were able to shift the Overton Window so they are no longer a valid answer. Volkswagen and the Japanese auto companies filled this role in the 60s, 70s and 80s. In the 90s foreign vehicles started on the same obesity trajectory, 2nd born generation regresses to the mean.
gvd 6y ago
A small car would disappear in the Bay area pot holes unfortunately
hedora 6y ago
They’re not available for purchase here. Part of it is safety standards, and part is bad marketing. For example, a subcompact Ford in the US might get 35mpg, vs 33mpg for the next size class up. The two cars cost about the same. In Europe, Ford will sell the same subcompact body style with a smaller engine, and maybe a diesel, and it’ll get 50+ mpg. No one buys the tiny gas guzzler, in the US and then Ford execs claim there’s no market for fuel efficient cars in the US. It was this way 5-10 years ago; maybe it changed since then.
tw04 6y ago
I'm sure a large part of it is we're more spread out. My anecdotal refute to the compact car is: when I've been in europe and have to travel from country to country, I personally saw about the same ratio of "large cars" on the highways in europe as I do in the US. Obviously the pickup truck is basically non-existent, but otherwise the mix was about the same. Europeans don't seem anymore excited about taking what I'd call "city cars" on the highway than Americans are. That being said: I think far more Europeans can spend almost all their time in their local city and don't NEED to get on a highway with large trucks and vehicles. In the US that's basically unheard of unless you're in a large city. I'm sure during holiday the roads look quite different than a regular workday. I'm guessing if you compared New York to most of Europe you'd see similar numbers, public transit and city layout in the rest of the US basically makes that impossible.
m463 6y ago
I think most cities and highways are designed for larger cars. I've wondered what it would be like if there were cities with tight, maybe even exclusionary urban areas. "you must be less than this big to enter downtown" There are some cities in Florida where retired people can drive golf carts, and it has become very popular. https://www.wired.com/2009/09/ff-ecars/ https://www.wired.com/2009/09/ff-ecars/

And why is that. Small cars should be as practical in the USA as in rest of the world, and it seems it is only the mentality of the American consumer that seems to avoid them, perhaps?

ryan93 6y ago

It would be scary to drive european sized small cars on back roads with big SUVs and trucks whizzing by.

dheera 6y ago

I live in the USA (California) and it's almost impossible to get anywhere without getting onto a highway. The only local roads are littered with stop signs or red lights at every goddamn intersection and then some speed bumps. It's either the highway or the obstacle course. I do have a electric scooter (max 40 km/h, so can only stick to local roads) which I use for <5km trips and and I can definitely say those stop signs cut my battery range by a factor of 2 or 3.

nowherebeen 6y ago

Americans have this weird fascination of bigger is better mentality to the point that practicality goes out the window. The hummer is a prime example: burns a ton of gasoline with little benefit to the owner or others.

an_opabinia 6y ago
Bigger cars are almost always safer, which isn't a weird fascination at all.
- Etheryte 6y ago
  This used to be true back in the 80s and such, but with modern safety standards, you have to take extreme ends of big and small to get anywhere close to a statistically significant difference. How you drive, what kind of airbags your car has, what the general traffic culture is in your country etc are all considerably more important factors than your car size. To put it another way, you're way more likely to walk away from a crash in a modern small car than in an older large car. For all intents and purposes, size being safety is an urban myth today.
  - CincinnatiMan 6y ago
    Are you sure? In a Consumer Reports article [0] from 2013, they mention in head-on crashes involving a car and SUV, the car driver was 7.6 times more likely to die than the SUV driver. So in a world where there are SUVs driving around, buying an SUV for yourself instead of a car is a safer move. Just think about getting t-boned in an intersection. Would you rather be in a light, low vehicle or in a heavy, tall vehicle? I'd pick the latter, especially if the vehicle t-boning me is tall and its bumper at the height of my head if I were in a small car. [0]: https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/news/2013/05/suvs-are-safer-than-cars-in-front-crashes-but-there-is-more-to-the-story/index.htm https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/news/2013/05/suvs-are-sa...
    - freeflight 6y ago
      > So in a world where there are SUVs driving around, buying an SUV for yourself instead of a car is a safer move. That sounds like the same kind of circular reasoning that's often cited to oppose any gun regulation: "When everybody has a gun, you also need a gun to stay safe!".
      - rsj_hn 6y ago
        A lot of people are confused about the difference between a stable and unstable equilibrium, because hey, they are both equlibria! No one having a big car is an unstable equilibrium.
    - NickNameNick 6y ago
      Thats because the SUV is too big, not because the car is too small. If you lived somewhere where all the cars were small, both vehicles would be better off, because there would be much less energy in the collision. SUV's aren't safer, they're more dangerous to other people. and that shouldn't be OK.
- TLightful 6y ago
  But it is a dumb fascination when the logical conclusion is everyone riding around in tanks.

nicoburns 6y ago

There's a lot more space in the US. Roads are bigger. Parking spaces are more numerous, etc. Small cars are practical in the US, but big cars are not practical in Europe.

babesh 6y ago

Low gas prices in the US. Small cars became very popular in the late 70’s and early 80’s in the US due to gas shortages. They gradually died out as gas prices came back down. Go look at car sizes in the 1950’s and 1960’s in the US. Compare that to car sizes in Europe as it recovered from WW2. Think Cadillac boat like cars vs the Mini. Also, cars are essential transportation in parts of the US and raising gas prices would/have result(ed) in a lot of protesting. In fact, high gas prices would be seen as regressive.

sitkack 6y ago

We have more space, so US auto manufacturers used the space differential to change the dynamics of the market. Small cars have been removed from the situation by the SUV Wars. They were able to shift the Overton Window so they are no longer a valid answer. Volkswagen and the Japanese auto companies filled this role in the 60s, 70s and 80s. In the 90s foreign vehicles started on the same obesity trajectory, 2nd born generation regresses to the mean.

gvd 6y ago

A small car would disappear in the Bay area pot holes unfortunately

hedora 6y ago

They’re not available for purchase here. Part of it is safety standards, and part is bad marketing. For example, a subcompact Ford in the US might get 35mpg, vs 33mpg for the next size class up. The two cars cost about the same. In Europe, Ford will sell the same subcompact body style with a smaller engine, and maybe a diesel, and it’ll get 50+ mpg. No one buys the tiny gas guzzler, in the US and then Ford execs claim there’s no market for fuel efficient cars in the US. It was this way 5-10 years ago; maybe it changed since then.

tw04 6y ago

I'm sure a large part of it is we're more spread out. My anecdotal refute to the compact car is: when I've been in europe and have to travel from country to country, I personally saw about the same ratio of "large cars" on the highways in europe as I do in the US. Obviously the pickup truck is basically non-existent, but otherwise the mix was about the same. Europeans don't seem anymore excited about taking what I'd call "city cars" on the highway than Americans are. That being said: I think far more Europeans can spend almost all their time in their local city and don't NEED to get on a highway with large trucks and vehicles. In the US that's basically unheard of unless you're in a large city. I'm sure during holiday the roads look quite different than a regular workday. I'm guessing if you compared New York to most of Europe you'd see similar numbers, public transit and city layout in the rest of the US basically makes that impossible.

m463 6y ago

I think most cities and highways are designed for larger cars. I've wondered what it would be like if there were cities with tight, maybe even exclusionary urban areas. "you must be less than this big to enter downtown" There are some cities in Florida where retired people can drive golf carts, and it has become very popular. https://www.wired.com/2009/09/ff-ecars/ https://www.wired.com/2009/09/ff-ecars/