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Yep, the vast majority of trucks I see in my city are spotless and probably only used for commuting. It's far less environmentally and financially costly to dri

• anonfornoreason 5y ago
  Ahhh yes, the "for my cause and values it's OK and worth it, but for yours, not so much". Even in this example alone you neglected to consider the number of trucks that are used to tow something. Say you need (or want!) to tow a heavy trailer once a month or every other month. Should you buy one vehicle that can do this, and then use it to commute 90% of the time, or should you buy two vehicles, and let one sit around unused most of the time? Now what about the person that needs to haul some things? Surely a small trailer + SUV is superior to a truck? Not so fast: gotta store that trailer and be comfortable with it. My guess is for 95% of people, a truck for utility purposes is far superior. Finally, newer trucks are actually surprisingly efficient. I just got 22mpg 360 miles round trip in my full ton pickup truck. Been shopping for minivans, aside from the rare hybrid minivan, they only get around 26mpg on highway.
  • sofixa 5y ago
    > Should you buy one vehicle that can do this, and then use it to commute 90% of the time, or should you buy two vehicles, and let one sit around unused most of the time Or maybe rent a vehicle if it's only for towing once every other month.. Unless renting costs upwards of 1k, it'd be many years before buying makes sense for usage once every other month.
    • njarboe 5y ago
      In these types of conversations someone always brings up the idea of renting a vehicle instead of owning one that can do what you want to do "once a month". Renting a truck or SUV that can tow a decent amount of weight is expensive, if you can find it, and the friction of finding, renting, insuring, picking up, loading the truck, unloading, dropping off, dealing with things when you ding the vehicle, means you mostly won't do that activity. Once a year, rental makes sense. Once a month, nope.
      • kimixa 5y ago
        This is where local swap or friend groups come in - there's certainly value being "The Guy With A Truck" if you're regularly lending it to people you know who need to do their one monthly thing. e.g. I have a small fiesta - that's (nearly) perfect for my general use case, which is me commuting on my own, maybe a friend or two going out for lunch or whatever. But a friend down the road has a jeep, I borrow that for camping (when I'm not going with them anyway) - same with "bulk" costco trips, or stopping by a landscaping store for garden stuff. That makes it easier for him to justify keeping the jeep, especially as I'm not the only person who regularly takes advantage of it, while keeping costs down (I pay in gas and beer, no rental corporation skimming profits off the top).
      • LilBytes 5y ago
        Even regular cars get to the point of renting being too expensive vs. buying. Quite regularly. I've been using carnextdoor.com.au for years when ever my motorbikes weren't enough to get around. But if you're renting a car even for 1-2 days a week, it quickly cost as much it would have had for running costs and purchasing a car outright. The numbers below are all AUD. I'm about to pick up a new Ute (Dmax XTerrain) thats going to cost $238 per week over 5 years for finance. With running costs on top of that I'm budgeting for $400 per week. That's a rental car for 1.5-2 days. Carnextdoor and rentals made sense when I didn't need a car weekly, just monthly. The new Ute is relatively inexpensive to run (4 cylinder turbo diesel), it's big, big compared to cars from Europe, not big for the US I'm sure. But for me it definitely made sense to get a 4x4 that services all my needs rather than a 4x4 and another small car. Admittedly I go camping a lot so my needs are a little different. And I have dogs now so going camping on my motorbikes isn't much of an option now.
  • KerrAvon 5y ago
    Those are terrible mileage numbers for a modern gas vehicle, let's be clear. I recently averaged 37mpg with a 200hp VW in Comfort mode on a trip up and down CA 101.
    • anonfornoreason 5y ago
      Pretty dang good for an 8500lb vehicle with a 14,500lbs towing capacity! Again, better than owning two special purpose vehicles.
  • deleted 5y ago
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  • rurp 5y ago
    I guess I wasn't clear, but what I meant by "using trucks for truck things" I meant things you can do with a truck but not a car. Towing, moving construction supplies around, and other such tasks are all valid reasons to own a truck since you can't practically do that with a car. On the other hand, commuting through a city can be done just as well or better by a car in every sense. 22mpg is terrible mileage compared to a modern car and the fact that it seems good reinforces my point of how wasteful it is to commute in a truck.
  • nicoburns 5y ago
    Is it really that common to need to haul/tow stuff? I live in Europe, and the only people I know who need this regularly are tradespeople. Most people I know don't even have a car at all! Also, 22mpg efficient. You gotta be kidding me. You should getting at least 35mpg before you can call yourself efficient. A Vauxhall Zafira (MPV) can do 41mpg. A smart car can do 67mpg.
    • anonfornoreason 5y ago
      Depends. Come live out west on some acreage, own a tractor, build stuff, etc. Pretty easy to end up in the place where it makes sense. All my neighbors have large trucks and a "legitimate" reason for them, as long as you consider living the life you want to live on the size of property you want to have, legitimate.
      • nicoburns 5y ago
        I’m not opposed to people living the life they want to live, but I do feel like environmental concerns should be figured in, and energy usage prioritised to the areas you care most about rather than just “it doesn’t matter how much energy I use if I’m doing something I want to do”
        • anonfornoreason 5y ago
          100% in agreement. Fuel should be much more expensive and should find remediation efforts as well as investigating / building out alternatives. The problem that I struggle with is that disproportionately harms poor people. I can afford to fill my tank at 10 bucks a gallon, my mom with a 35mpg Honda who commutes to her job from a suburb can’t. The real problem is energy production. So completely asinine to push for fleet electrification while base load is provided by coal and natural gas.
          • austhrow743 5y ago
            Climate change disproportionately harms poor people. Environmental degradation in general disproportionately harms poor people. Everything disproportionately harms poor people. It's practically the definition. To be poor is to have little power. So for any X you have less to bring to bear to avoid it.
• caoilte 5y ago
  They make you feel safer because you're in a bigger vehicle and higher off the road. Ironically they tend to roll more easily so are often more dangerous.
• stjohnswarts 5y ago
  Very few people use them for "going off the beaten path" and would faint if you suggested them taking their freshly waxed lift kit truck down a dirt road where gravels flung back might hit their gorgeous paint job lol. Yeah I live in Texas and I know this as a fact. 90% of truck owners in the USA don't need a truck (no I'm not talking about commercial trucks so don't "whatabout" that)
• beerandt 5y ago
  The embedded energy of a second vehicle won't be made up for in a 10-20mpg improvement, except in very very niche cases. The lifetime amount of fuel/electricity used by a vehicle generally accounts for only half of the total energy. The other half is in it's manufacturing and disposal/recycling. And there's additional lost efficiency than just the mileage, because you're using twice the embedded energy and presumably aren't doubling the amount of driving you're doing. Maybe rentals or sharing schemes work in some cases, but they present their own inefficiencies, like less than perfect allocation, and transferring vehicles back and forth for each switch. But for the majority of cases, it's much more environmentally friendly to own one single vehicle that meets all of your needs, even if it's relatively inefficient. The most efficient vehicle for any particular person is usually the one that's already been built. (Which is why cash for clunkers was actually a bailout with negative environmental impacts, despite its branding of improved efficiency.)
  • freemint 5y ago
    Why not? both cars will last roughly twice as long. Meaning if you can live with owning your cars twice as long there should be no extra embedded energy needed. (And one of the cars could even be an electric one you charge using ample solar powet
    • beerandt 5y ago
      Because you're sitting on that embedded energy, at the opportunity cost of someone else not being able to use it. So it's additional supply of both material and embedded energy that otherwise could go to someone else, or wouldn't need to be spent until you were sending you old car off to be salvaged. There's a time value to it as well, just like with amortized financials. Think of it this way: if everyone used that strategy, we'd have twice as big of a vehicle market, requiring twice as much material and energy. Even if you expect each vehicle to last twice as long, it all has to be paid for with capital costs up front. Both your cash out of pocket, as well as manufacturing capacity and energy/resource extraction. You might get effective use efficiency of 50% for twice as long, but the overall cost in dollars, energy, and emissions is much greater because of amortization.