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Carmakers are ‘pushing’ SUVs because a large fraction of buyers want SUVs. I find it concerning that this seems incomprehensible to many people. You can’t rea

by fooker 4y ago

Carmakers are ‘pushing’ SUVs because a large fraction of buyers want SUVs. I find it concerning that this seems incomprehensible to many people. You can’t really change what people want without enacting dystopian/fascist policies.

grumpyprole 4y ago
> You can’t really change what people want without enacting dystopian/fascist policies. Yes you can, you can educate them. Decide on how to categorise the environmental impact of each car and mandate that it is labelled as such. Unless you deem such regulation as dystopian?
- gruez 4y ago
  I think he's talking about policies similar to natural gas stove bans, which ostensibly seem less concerned about addressing externalities and more concerned about imposing a choice onto others.
  - rootusrootus 4y ago
    Worth noting is that there really isn't a push to ban natural gas stoves, that is just politics hyping up something someone somewhere said because it gets uncritical supporters spun up and paying attention to who they're supposed to be angry at today. There are definitely some places that'd like to stop building out new housing with natural gas service, however. But that isn't quite as rage inducing as telling people the leftists are coming for their cherished gas range.
    - dahfizz 4y ago
      > Worth noting is that there really isn't a push to ban natural gas stoves, that is just politics hyping up something someone somewhere said NY state has banned gas stoves in new buildings[1]. Someone is pushing enough for legislatures to act. [1] https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/03/us/new-york-natural-gas-ban-climate/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/03/us/new-york-natural-gas-ban-c...
      - rootusrootus 4y ago
        That's a push to ban gas service from new construction. It's not specific to gas stoves. Nobody is coming for your gas stove. Not now, not ever. It's such a huge political loser that nobody other than a few crazy municipalities will even talk about it.
    - gruez 4y ago
      >Worth noting is that there really isn't a push to ban natural gas stoves [...] There are definitely some places that'd like to stop building out new housing with natural gas service There might be a tangible difference between "banning gas stoves in new construction" and "banning gas stoves", but as it relates to this conversation they're still the same. ie. >ostensibly seem less concerned about addressing externalities and more concerned about imposing a choice onto others
      - rootusrootus 4y ago
        The push isn't anything to do with stoves, though. Nobody cares about stoves, the primary negative externality is the health of the user, and presumably they made that choice of their own free will. The push is to ban natural gas utilities at all, which are a meaningful contribution to pollution. The idea that it has anything to do with stoves is just politicians & 'media' personalities playing to the fears of their base.
- rootusrootus 4y ago
  This assumes people buy cars based on the environmental footprint. Sure, a few people do, but most people just look for something that meets their needs. In my driveway sits a Chevrolet Bolt. In my garage is a Model 3. When I replace one of them, it will be with a crossover. A Model Y, if I could just wave a magic wand today and replace the Model 3. I want a slightly taller car. And not because of some conspiracy of marketing, either, but because it will be a better fit for my needs.
- dahfizz 4y ago
  For such an expensive and important purchase, only a small fraction of people would care about this label. There are too many other factors at play (Can this car fit my whole family? Is this car safe, affordable, reliable? etc)
outside1234 4y ago
What Europe has done is to tax the externalities in for these vehicles. They are heavier, so they wear the roads more, so there are higher taxes to cover that. They are less efficient per km, which uses more grid, so there are higher taxes/charges to cover expanding the grid. This seems to work and they same thing could work here
- _zoltan_ 4y ago
  You talk about Europe like it's a single entity. It's not. Road tax is a country local matter, not regulated at the EU level - for example France has no road tax. Similar to your other example: it's made up and is not the reality.
- tonyedgecombe 4y ago
  Although it isn’t to the same extreme as the US there are plenty of large SUV’s on the roads in Europe.
hnav 4y ago
or just tax the shit out of vehicles by weight.
nyc640 4y ago
The US government was also largely responsible for incentivizing the supersizing of American cars with emissions standards based on footprint (road to hell paved with good intentions, etc.), which then had a knock-on effect on consumer demand. So it's certainly possible to incentivize automakers to go the other way, even if you can't change public behavior directly.
0xcde4c3db 4y ago
> Carmakers are ‘pushing’ SUVs because a large fraction of buyers want SUVs. It's the other way around. Making SUVs desirable has been an absolutely massive marketing project since the '90s, to take advantage of weaker regulations on "light trucks" and bigger per-unit profit on larger vehicles.
- gruez 4y ago
  >Making SUVs desirable has been an absolutely massive marketing project since the '90s examples of this? If SUVs have better sight lines from being higher, people want better sight lines, and car manufacturers put that on their advertisements, is that really carmakers "pushing" SUVs or people wanting SUVs?
  - 0xcde4c3db 4y ago
    As far as I know, actual features are mostly mentioned as points of differentiation from other SUVs. The overall marketing slant has primarily been emotionally-driven stuff about being bigger, tougher, more independent/adventurous, etc. than people who drive conventional passenger cars (e.g. notice the general shift in tone and emphasis in the compilation at [1]). It was a big enough trend that The Simpsons lampooned it in 1998, complete with a jingle sung by Hank Williams Jr. [2]. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYnRHiWpmc0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYnRHiWpmc0 [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PI_Jl5WFQkA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PI_Jl5WFQkA
  - r00fus 4y ago
    I rented an SUV once (I have a minivan + econobox EV) and I have to say for that week I was an asshole driver. It had better visibility for cars, but less visibility for pedestrians.
- HDThoreaun 4y ago
  All cars are "light trucks" these days according to CAFE rules. Even sedans
- bombcar 4y ago
  SUVs are exploding in popularity in Europe, too, though they do tend to be smaller there.
piva00 4y ago
> You can’t really change what people want without enacting dystopian/fascist policies. Or you can, by using marketing, exactly the strategy auto manufacturers in the USA used to push SUVs, SUVs that conveniently skirted emissions regulations which smaller cars were required to fulfill. Interesting how your definition of dystopian is exactly what marketing/PR has been invented to do, to change the minds of people about what are their "needs". If you haven't seen, I thoroughly recommend Adam Curtis' "The Century of the Self".
- fooker 4y ago
  > SUVs that conveniently skirted emissions regulations which smaller cars were required to fulfill. How would you expect a larger car to adhere to the same emissions regulation as a smaller car? >Interesting how your definition of dystopian is exactly what marketing/PR has been invented to do, to change the minds of people about what are their "needs". When the government does it, it's definitely a problem because there is not much mechanism to check this power. When it's a company doing it to sell a product, it's a problem if there are no competitors. That's sort of why we have fairly stringent anti trust regulation.
  - piva00 4y ago
    > How would you expect a larger car to adhere to the same emissions regulation as a smaller car? I don't, never said that, don't create a strawman. SUVs are classified under small trucks instead of passenger vehicles for emissions regulations in the USA, that's the issue. > When it's a company doing it to sell a product, it's a problem if there are no competitors. That's sort of why we have fairly stringent anti trust regulation. No, it's a problem when a whole industry decides to skirt some inconvenient laws by using marketing tactics to slowly change consumers' perception of their product. That's what automakers in the USA did, sold an idea that SUVs are safer, that they are needed for families and so on because it was more convenient to not have to abide by stricter emissions regulations in their smaller cars. There's competition, and the competition is doing the same because it benefits the whole industry's profits. This form of collusion is impossible to prosecute, USA's laws infamously end up having lots of these holes for loopholes to poke through... How much of that is on purpose or just simple incompetence is left as an exercise to the reader.
to11mtm 4y ago
> Carmakers are ‘pushing’ SUVs because a large fraction of buyers want SUVs. I think this is an overgeneralization, and there are a few factors at play: Carmakers and dealers push SUVs because typically they have a better margin. I know when I bought my first car back in 2006, lots of folks tried to push me into an SUV even though I -knew- I wanted a basic compact sedan. [0] One of my past partners had the same problem even last year when shopping for a Sedan from the brands that -do- still sell them. Many consumer groups overbuy on vehicles in general; Whether it's folks who buy a full size truck when a midsize would be more than enough, or as a 'status symbols' (e.x. Cadillac Escalade or Range Rovers at the start of the century) Then there's the 'Miseducated' group that think that SUVs/Trucks are 'inherently safer' than a Sedan (maybe in some cases, but then it's a weird game of MAD at best since the counter-argument is that SUV->Sedan accidents tend to go worse for the sedan...) > You can’t really change what people want without enacting dystopian/fascist policies. IDK. Fixing EPA Footprint rules would be a great start while being more on the 'pragmatic' side than dystopian/fascist. [0] - RIP Saturn and their no pressure sales.
- fooker 4y ago
  I don’t buy the margin argument. If this had been really true, some car company would have decided to sacrifice the extra margin to sell at a lower price point to capture a larger market share.
andrepd 4y ago
Confidently incorrect. The popularity of SUVs is the result of a "loophole" in government incentives. By being classified as light trucks, regulations which apply to cars don't apply to them. This lead automakers to push trucks and SUVs rather than smaller cars. Simple as that. If the regulatory pressure were applied in another direction, e.g. by scaling road tax with the 4th power of mass (as road damage scales) or by removing this ludicrous loophole, we would have smaller and more efficient cars rather than monstrosities with hoods as tall as a 14 year old.
- fooker 4y ago
  The US is not the whole world. Check out stats for other countries which don’t have this loophole. SUVs are getting really popular in India and most of Europe nowadays, despite narrower streets and lack of parking infrastructure.
slg 4y ago
>You can’t really change what people want without enacting dystopian/fascist policies. This is a funny thing to say considering most of these vehicles already come with a tax rebate to entice people to buy them over their ICE counterparts. Are taxes and tax rebates "dystopian/fascist"?
- fooker 4y ago
  Tax rebates are fairly dystopian. It’s pretty much only useful if you have a large taxable income. Sucks for you if you are a student, a retiree, a small business owner, etc etc.
  - slg 4y ago
    The percentage of the population that can afford a $50k+ car and doesn't pay enough in taxes to get the full rebate is rather small and I would imagine mostly extremely wealthy. Even so, it depends on how the tax rebate is designed. We can set them up to pay out a negative income tax if that is desirable. Hardly dystopian in my opinion and inarguably not fascist.
    - fooker 4y ago
      Most middle class people in the US end up buying a car which costs approximately equal to a year's income. (Average new car price: 46k, Median Income: ~54k before tax) If tax rebates become a way to control what people can and can not afford to buy, it's just a welfare program deceptively designed for benefiting the top few percent of people drawing a steady income. Maybe most people are buying cars they can not afford, but that is not an excuse to take away that choice.
ChrisHyung 4y ago
Automakers are pushing SUVs and pickups to the American market because it makes them more money and it's easier to meet emissions standards. Cars cost less to buy and maintain, have stricter emissions standards, and don't create an arms race for a getting a bigger and higher seating vehicle, so you can actually see and feel safe when driving around inattentive drivers in giant unwieldy SUVs. You can't change what people want without fixing safety regulations to account for the people outside the vehicle, instead calling it a day after 45mph crash tests. Changing the polices that led to the SUV/pickup arms race just so automakers and dealerships can sell vehicles for higher profit margins is not dystopian/fascist. Pedestrians deaths are going up, smaller lower seating vehicles are becoming unsafe, and the climate crisis keep getting worse.

by fooker 4y ago

grumpyprole 4y ago

> You can’t really change what people want without enacting dystopian/fascist policies. Yes you can, you can educate them. Decide on how to categorise the environmental impact of each car and mandate that it is labelled as such. Unless you deem such regulation as dystopian?

gruez 4y ago
I think he's talking about policies similar to natural gas stove bans, which ostensibly seem less concerned about addressing externalities and more concerned about imposing a choice onto others.
- rootusrootus 4y ago
  Worth noting is that there really isn't a push to ban natural gas stoves, that is just politics hyping up something someone somewhere said because it gets uncritical supporters spun up and paying attention to who they're supposed to be angry at today. There are definitely some places that'd like to stop building out new housing with natural gas service, however. But that isn't quite as rage inducing as telling people the leftists are coming for their cherished gas range.
  - dahfizz 4y ago
    > Worth noting is that there really isn't a push to ban natural gas stoves, that is just politics hyping up something someone somewhere said NY state has banned gas stoves in new buildings[1]. Someone is pushing enough for legislatures to act. [1] https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/03/us/new-york-natural-gas-ban-climate/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/03/us/new-york-natural-gas-ban-c...
    - rootusrootus 4y ago
      That's a push to ban gas service from new construction. It's not specific to gas stoves. Nobody is coming for your gas stove. Not now, not ever. It's such a huge political loser that nobody other than a few crazy municipalities will even talk about it.
  - gruez 4y ago
    >Worth noting is that there really isn't a push to ban natural gas stoves [...] There are definitely some places that'd like to stop building out new housing with natural gas service There might be a tangible difference between "banning gas stoves in new construction" and "banning gas stoves", but as it relates to this conversation they're still the same. ie. >ostensibly seem less concerned about addressing externalities and more concerned about imposing a choice onto others
    - rootusrootus 4y ago
      The push isn't anything to do with stoves, though. Nobody cares about stoves, the primary negative externality is the health of the user, and presumably they made that choice of their own free will. The push is to ban natural gas utilities at all, which are a meaningful contribution to pollution. The idea that it has anything to do with stoves is just politicians & 'media' personalities playing to the fears of their base.
rootusrootus 4y ago
This assumes people buy cars based on the environmental footprint. Sure, a few people do, but most people just look for something that meets their needs. In my driveway sits a Chevrolet Bolt. In my garage is a Model 3. When I replace one of them, it will be with a crossover. A Model Y, if I could just wave a magic wand today and replace the Model 3. I want a slightly taller car. And not because of some conspiracy of marketing, either, but because it will be a better fit for my needs.
dahfizz 4y ago
For such an expensive and important purchase, only a small fraction of people would care about this label. There are too many other factors at play (Can this car fit my whole family? Is this car safe, affordable, reliable? etc)

outside1234 4y ago

What Europe has done is to tax the externalities in for these vehicles. They are heavier, so they wear the roads more, so there are higher taxes to cover that. They are less efficient per km, which uses more grid, so there are higher taxes/charges to cover expanding the grid. This seems to work and they same thing could work here

_zoltan_ 4y ago
You talk about Europe like it's a single entity. It's not. Road tax is a country local matter, not regulated at the EU level - for example France has no road tax. Similar to your other example: it's made up and is not the reality.
tonyedgecombe 4y ago
Although it isn’t to the same extreme as the US there are plenty of large SUV’s on the roads in Europe.

hnav 4y ago

or just tax the shit out of vehicles by weight.

nyc640 4y ago

The US government was also largely responsible for incentivizing the supersizing of American cars with emissions standards based on footprint (road to hell paved with good intentions, etc.), which then had a knock-on effect on consumer demand. So it's certainly possible to incentivize automakers to go the other way, even if you can't change public behavior directly.

0xcde4c3db 4y ago

> Carmakers are ‘pushing’ SUVs because a large fraction of buyers want SUVs. It's the other way around. Making SUVs desirable has been an absolutely massive marketing project since the '90s, to take advantage of weaker regulations on "light trucks" and bigger per-unit profit on larger vehicles.

gruez 4y ago
>Making SUVs desirable has been an absolutely massive marketing project since the '90s examples of this? If SUVs have better sight lines from being higher, people want better sight lines, and car manufacturers put that on their advertisements, is that really carmakers "pushing" SUVs or people wanting SUVs?
- 0xcde4c3db 4y ago
  As far as I know, actual features are mostly mentioned as points of differentiation from other SUVs. The overall marketing slant has primarily been emotionally-driven stuff about being bigger, tougher, more independent/adventurous, etc. than people who drive conventional passenger cars (e.g. notice the general shift in tone and emphasis in the compilation at [1]). It was a big enough trend that The Simpsons lampooned it in 1998, complete with a jingle sung by Hank Williams Jr. [2]. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYnRHiWpmc0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYnRHiWpmc0 [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PI_Jl5WFQkA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PI_Jl5WFQkA
- r00fus 4y ago
  I rented an SUV once (I have a minivan + econobox EV) and I have to say for that week I was an asshole driver. It had better visibility for cars, but less visibility for pedestrians.
HDThoreaun 4y ago
All cars are "light trucks" these days according to CAFE rules. Even sedans
bombcar 4y ago
SUVs are exploding in popularity in Europe, too, though they do tend to be smaller there.

piva00 4y ago

> You can’t really change what people want without enacting dystopian/fascist policies. Or you can, by using marketing, exactly the strategy auto manufacturers in the USA used to push SUVs, SUVs that conveniently skirted emissions regulations which smaller cars were required to fulfill. Interesting how your definition of dystopian is exactly what marketing/PR has been invented to do, to change the minds of people about what are their "needs". If you haven't seen, I thoroughly recommend Adam Curtis' "The Century of the Self".

fooker 4y ago
> SUVs that conveniently skirted emissions regulations which smaller cars were required to fulfill. How would you expect a larger car to adhere to the same emissions regulation as a smaller car? >Interesting how your definition of dystopian is exactly what marketing/PR has been invented to do, to change the minds of people about what are their "needs". When the government does it, it's definitely a problem because there is not much mechanism to check this power. When it's a company doing it to sell a product, it's a problem if there are no competitors. That's sort of why we have fairly stringent anti trust regulation.
- piva00 4y ago
  > How would you expect a larger car to adhere to the same emissions regulation as a smaller car? I don't, never said that, don't create a strawman. SUVs are classified under small trucks instead of passenger vehicles for emissions regulations in the USA, that's the issue. > When it's a company doing it to sell a product, it's a problem if there are no competitors. That's sort of why we have fairly stringent anti trust regulation. No, it's a problem when a whole industry decides to skirt some inconvenient laws by using marketing tactics to slowly change consumers' perception of their product. That's what automakers in the USA did, sold an idea that SUVs are safer, that they are needed for families and so on because it was more convenient to not have to abide by stricter emissions regulations in their smaller cars. There's competition, and the competition is doing the same because it benefits the whole industry's profits. This form of collusion is impossible to prosecute, USA's laws infamously end up having lots of these holes for loopholes to poke through... How much of that is on purpose or just simple incompetence is left as an exercise to the reader.

to11mtm 4y ago

> Carmakers are ‘pushing’ SUVs because a large fraction of buyers want SUVs. I think this is an overgeneralization, and there are a few factors at play: Carmakers and dealers push SUVs because typically they have a better margin. I know when I bought my first car back in 2006, lots of folks tried to push me into an SUV even though I -knew- I wanted a basic compact sedan. [0] One of my past partners had the same problem even last year when shopping for a Sedan from the brands that -do- still sell them. Many consumer groups overbuy on vehicles in general; Whether it's folks who buy a full size truck when a midsize would be more than enough, or as a 'status symbols' (e.x. Cadillac Escalade or Range Rovers at the start of the century) Then there's the 'Miseducated' group that think that SUVs/Trucks are 'inherently safer' than a Sedan (maybe in some cases, but then it's a weird game of MAD at best since the counter-argument is that SUV->Sedan accidents tend to go worse for the sedan...) > You can’t really change what people want without enacting dystopian/fascist policies. IDK. Fixing EPA Footprint rules would be a great start while being more on the 'pragmatic' side than dystopian/fascist. [0] - RIP Saturn and their no pressure sales.

fooker 4y ago
I don’t buy the margin argument. If this had been really true, some car company would have decided to sacrifice the extra margin to sell at a lower price point to capture a larger market share.

andrepd 4y ago

Confidently incorrect. The popularity of SUVs is the result of a "loophole" in government incentives. By being classified as light trucks, regulations which apply to cars don't apply to them. This lead automakers to push trucks and SUVs rather than smaller cars. Simple as that. If the regulatory pressure were applied in another direction, e.g. by scaling road tax with the 4th power of mass (as road damage scales) or by removing this ludicrous loophole, we would have smaller and more efficient cars rather than monstrosities with hoods as tall as a 14 year old.

fooker 4y ago
The US is not the whole world. Check out stats for other countries which don’t have this loophole. SUVs are getting really popular in India and most of Europe nowadays, despite narrower streets and lack of parking infrastructure.

slg 4y ago

>You can’t really change what people want without enacting dystopian/fascist policies. This is a funny thing to say considering most of these vehicles already come with a tax rebate to entice people to buy them over their ICE counterparts. Are taxes and tax rebates "dystopian/fascist"?

fooker 4y ago
Tax rebates are fairly dystopian. It’s pretty much only useful if you have a large taxable income. Sucks for you if you are a student, a retiree, a small business owner, etc etc.
- slg 4y ago
  The percentage of the population that can afford a $50k+ car and doesn't pay enough in taxes to get the full rebate is rather small and I would imagine mostly extremely wealthy. Even so, it depends on how the tax rebate is designed. We can set them up to pay out a negative income tax if that is desirable. Hardly dystopian in my opinion and inarguably not fascist.
  - fooker 4y ago
    Most middle class people in the US end up buying a car which costs approximately equal to a year's income. (Average new car price: 46k, Median Income: ~54k before tax) If tax rebates become a way to control what people can and can not afford to buy, it's just a welfare program deceptively designed for benefiting the top few percent of people drawing a steady income. Maybe most people are buying cars they can not afford, but that is not an excuse to take away that choice.

ChrisHyung 4y ago

Automakers are pushing SUVs and pickups to the American market because it makes them more money and it's easier to meet emissions standards. Cars cost less to buy and maintain, have stricter emissions standards, and don't create an arms race for a getting a bigger and higher seating vehicle, so you can actually see and feel safe when driving around inattentive drivers in giant unwieldy SUVs. You can't change what people want without fixing safety regulations to account for the people outside the vehicle, instead calling it a day after 45mph crash tests. Changing the polices that led to the SUV/pickup arms race just so automakers and dealerships can sell vehicles for higher profit margins is not dystopian/fascist. Pedestrians deaths are going up, smaller lower seating vehicles are becoming unsafe, and the climate crisis keep getting worse.