6 ms·

I still don't get why our cities are populated with full sized cars and not 1-2 person cheap electric cars.

api 3y ago
Kids. That’s usually two people plus (for young kids) a stroller, diaper bags, food, other gear, maybe toys… Then you want to be able to also take their friends… If you are young and hip and wonder why some aspect of the suburbs or transport is so absurdly oversized or badly designed, the answer is probably kids and you are not seeing it because you don’t have kids.
- cscurmudgeon 3y ago
  > you don’t have kids. Or rich enough to live in walkable neighborhoods.
  - noelwelsh 3y ago
    Walkable does not imply expensive. If it does, that's a (local government) policy choice.
    - ajmurmann 3y ago
      To my constant dismay, that's the government choice in much of the US these days.
    - api 3y ago
      In the US walkable means either unsafe or very expensive or occasionally both. Changing this would be very challenging because we have also decided that real estate should be an investment. This means it should always go up, which orients urban planning toward making housing unaffordable. The primary role of the car is driving further away to escape rent extraction, which is sharply at odds with making cities walkable. The only way to have a walkable city that is affordable is to get those crime rates up. Maybe that’s what SF is trying to do. But even that doesn’t work if you have people like OpenAI locating there and making people work in the office and paying $300k+ entry level.
      - noelwelsh 3y ago
        I'm eagerly awaiting the urban planning renaissance in Memphis, then :-) (Highest violent crime rate for a large city in the US.) Though violent crime is dropping over time, there was a resurgence following COVID. I couldn't find any statistics on whether that is sustained or has since started to decline.
    - cscurmudgeon 3y ago
      In CA it is.
    - HDThoreaun 3y ago
      I am not aware of a single walkable city or town in the US that is not expensive.
- indymike 3y ago
  I'd love to have a light, inexpensive electric (or even ICE) I can use to transport kids. It would save my family thousands of dollars per year. I don't need the tons of metal.
  - eigenhombre 3y ago
    A lot depends on the size of your kids, and the layout of your neighborhood, and your local climate. In my neighborhood (south side of Chicago) a lot of people schlepp their kids around on the back of bikes (electric or otherwise), either long bikes with a[n extra] seat on the back, or with a trailer, or both. Not sure how that stands safety-wise, but it sure is a lot lower-impact than even my Prius hybrid. Anecdata, but I feel like I'm seeing more of these families lately. edit: add clarifying word
  - dmbche 3y ago
    I mean why not get a used Corolla for something like 4k? Maybe 5k? I don't know how much you are spending, but an old Toyota will be reliable past 200 000 miles, easy and cheap to repair, and you can find one that was a one owner car, ideally a grandma or priest. You might be interested in the Suzuki Mirage as well. If you are stressed about reliability, don't worry. You need to do regular maintenance (oils, fluids, filters, tires) and you'll stay on the road longer than brand new cars. I had a Chevrolet Aveo that had the radiator blow up while leaving the dealer!
- ajmurmann 3y ago
  I understand this argument, but genuinely wonder how this works in European cities. Maybe it's because in cities most people just take the stroller on the subway?
  - noelwelsh 3y ago
    The transport infrastructure very much determines this. If you live in a city with good public transport you don't need a car. I have two kids and live in the UK. When the kids we born we got a car but didn't need it much as many places were accessible by light rail, in a place with ok (but not great) public transport. Then we moved to a place that was badly connected and had two cars. Now we've moved to somewhere with better transport and the kids are old enough they can cycle just about anywhere they're interested in going. Going to sell one of the cars soon.
- lm28469 3y ago
  > I want X, Y, Z and I can't live without A, B, C and also I really like 1, 2, 3 Well yeah sure... that's why we completely fucked up the world in less than 100 years. It doesn't really qualify as an answer though. Plenty of places, and times, where people had kids and no cars, you only """need""" a car now because we built everything around them.
mozman 3y ago
Cars have a purpose - people get older, they are disabled, and they want to shop and not carry things. There is a lot of anti car sentiment here these days but many people depend on their cars and that won't change soon.
- nehal3m 3y ago
  The default reply here would be that people depend on cars because we've built our world that way.
- ajmurmann 3y ago
  The parent was wondering why we don't have smaller cars, not why we have cars at all. Especially for older people whose kids are out of the house, a car for 1-2 people would make a lot more sense. My answer would be that if you only have one car, you buy what accommodates the likely maximum use case. So you buy a car that is sufficient when you have out-of-town visitors to chauffeur or buy something bulky. If car rental was more seamless and common outside of travel elsewhere we might be able to shrink cars. Another factor is feeling safe. I'd love to commute in a single-seater like the Toyota iRoad, but would be terrified between massive pickup trucks.
  - adhesive_wombat 3y ago
    > If car rental was more seamless and common Just not eye-wateringly expensive would be a start. Though, having met people, I can see why renting cars to people can't be a cheap business to be in.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
    and, as was pointed out to me here on HN a few months back, it is extremely hard to rent a vehicle under terms that allow you to tow anything, so if you haul that camper/5th-wheel or the yard trailer just once or twice a year, you pretty much have to own a vehicle that can do that, rather than the small car that would be a better fit for the vast majority of the time.
- lm28469 3y ago
pixl97 3y ago
Because the average American house is huge.
indymike 3y ago
Regulation requires mass for survivability in crash tests.
- sottol 3y ago
  I _think_ this was sarcasm, but... Not as far as I know. Full-size SUVs used to be classed as trucks and (were?) exempt from many safety tests and standards. They used to have the worst safety ratings, actually, despite mass. Modern engineering and production with multi-material crash zones also means the mass is not necessary. Plus, smaller cars don't kill everyone involved in the accident outside of your car. People are just like "my car is bigger than yours", aka super-size me.
- jjoonathan 3y ago
  Survivability in crashes requires mass. It's a race to the bottom (top) unless we figure out how to head it off with better regulation.
one_level_deep 3y ago
I think we are in a loop. All the cars are big, so the only way to feel safe when driving is to have a big car. Just look at Ford trucks. The current Ranger is as big as the old F-150. Everything is a quad cab, 20 years ago those were rare.
tcfhgj 3y ago
Regulations are less restrictive for SUVs because they are supposed to be used for work stuff
dmbche 3y ago
Lot of people are outside the city, and lots of countries are very, very large - the US is a good example. Americans drive double what europeans drive in a year!
Maschinees 3y ago
For me it's simple: my company ev car came only in SUV version for longer range and I use it only on the weekend for longer trips. Unfortunately getting into my car is much nicer than in small cars. A critical factor when you are getting older
nforgerit 3y ago
Can't find it anymore but I've watched a documentary claiming that Henry Ford and other car makers, oil companies and tire manufacturers in US and Europe lobbied city mayors over 100ys ago to get rid of perfectly fine public transport in favor of private cars. It felt ridiculous that we're still falling for that propaganda.
adhesive_wombat 3y ago
Even Jeremy Clarkson knows rear seats are hardly ever used: https://youtube.com/watch?v=wjnxDSMjh5I https://youtube.com/watch?v=wjnxDSMjh5I Though I imagine most journeys with children in the back aren't made on motorways.

api 3y ago

Kids. That’s usually two people plus (for young kids) a stroller, diaper bags, food, other gear, maybe toys… Then you want to be able to also take their friends… If you are young and hip and wonder why some aspect of the suburbs or transport is so absurdly oversized or badly designed, the answer is probably kids and you are not seeing it because you don’t have kids.

cscurmudgeon 3y ago
> you don’t have kids. Or rich enough to live in walkable neighborhoods.
- noelwelsh 3y ago
  Walkable does not imply expensive. If it does, that's a (local government) policy choice.
  - ajmurmann 3y ago
    To my constant dismay, that's the government choice in much of the US these days.
  - api 3y ago
    In the US walkable means either unsafe or very expensive or occasionally both. Changing this would be very challenging because we have also decided that real estate should be an investment. This means it should always go up, which orients urban planning toward making housing unaffordable. The primary role of the car is driving further away to escape rent extraction, which is sharply at odds with making cities walkable. The only way to have a walkable city that is affordable is to get those crime rates up. Maybe that’s what SF is trying to do. But even that doesn’t work if you have people like OpenAI locating there and making people work in the office and paying $300k+ entry level.
    - noelwelsh 3y ago
      I'm eagerly awaiting the urban planning renaissance in Memphis, then :-) (Highest violent crime rate for a large city in the US.) Though violent crime is dropping over time, there was a resurgence following COVID. I couldn't find any statistics on whether that is sustained or has since started to decline.
  - cscurmudgeon 3y ago
    In CA it is.
  - HDThoreaun 3y ago
    I am not aware of a single walkable city or town in the US that is not expensive.
indymike 3y ago
I'd love to have a light, inexpensive electric (or even ICE) I can use to transport kids. It would save my family thousands of dollars per year. I don't need the tons of metal.
- eigenhombre 3y ago
  A lot depends on the size of your kids, and the layout of your neighborhood, and your local climate. In my neighborhood (south side of Chicago) a lot of people schlepp their kids around on the back of bikes (electric or otherwise), either long bikes with a[n extra] seat on the back, or with a trailer, or both. Not sure how that stands safety-wise, but it sure is a lot lower-impact than even my Prius hybrid. Anecdata, but I feel like I'm seeing more of these families lately. edit: add clarifying word
- dmbche 3y ago
  I mean why not get a used Corolla for something like 4k? Maybe 5k? I don't know how much you are spending, but an old Toyota will be reliable past 200 000 miles, easy and cheap to repair, and you can find one that was a one owner car, ideally a grandma or priest. You might be interested in the Suzuki Mirage as well. If you are stressed about reliability, don't worry. You need to do regular maintenance (oils, fluids, filters, tires) and you'll stay on the road longer than brand new cars. I had a Chevrolet Aveo that had the radiator blow up while leaving the dealer!
ajmurmann 3y ago
I understand this argument, but genuinely wonder how this works in European cities. Maybe it's because in cities most people just take the stroller on the subway?
- noelwelsh 3y ago
  The transport infrastructure very much determines this. If you live in a city with good public transport you don't need a car. I have two kids and live in the UK. When the kids we born we got a car but didn't need it much as many places were accessible by light rail, in a place with ok (but not great) public transport. Then we moved to a place that was badly connected and had two cars. Now we've moved to somewhere with better transport and the kids are old enough they can cycle just about anywhere they're interested in going. Going to sell one of the cars soon.
lm28469 3y ago
> I want X, Y, Z and I can't live without A, B, C and also I really like 1, 2, 3 Well yeah sure... that's why we completely fucked up the world in less than 100 years. It doesn't really qualify as an answer though. Plenty of places, and times, where people had kids and no cars, you only """need""" a car now because we built everything around them.

mozman 3y ago

Cars have a purpose - people get older, they are disabled, and they want to shop and not carry things. There is a lot of anti car sentiment here these days but many people depend on their cars and that won't change soon.

nehal3m 3y ago
The default reply here would be that people depend on cars because we've built our world that way.
ajmurmann 3y ago
The parent was wondering why we don't have smaller cars, not why we have cars at all. Especially for older people whose kids are out of the house, a car for 1-2 people would make a lot more sense. My answer would be that if you only have one car, you buy what accommodates the likely maximum use case. So you buy a car that is sufficient when you have out-of-town visitors to chauffeur or buy something bulky. If car rental was more seamless and common outside of travel elsewhere we might be able to shrink cars. Another factor is feeling safe. I'd love to commute in a single-seater like the Toyota iRoad, but would be terrified between massive pickup trucks.
- adhesive_wombat 3y ago
  > If car rental was more seamless and common Just not eye-wateringly expensive would be a start. Though, having met people, I can see why renting cars to people can't be a cheap business to be in.
- PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
  and, as was pointed out to me here on HN a few months back, it is extremely hard to rent a vehicle under terms that allow you to tow anything, so if you haul that camper/5th-wheel or the yard trailer just once or twice a year, you pretty much have to own a vehicle that can do that, rather than the small car that would be a better fit for the vast majority of the time.
lm28469 3y ago

pixl97 3y ago

Because the average American house is huge.

indymike 3y ago

Regulation requires mass for survivability in crash tests.

sottol 3y ago
I _think_ this was sarcasm, but... Not as far as I know. Full-size SUVs used to be classed as trucks and (were?) exempt from many safety tests and standards. They used to have the worst safety ratings, actually, despite mass. Modern engineering and production with multi-material crash zones also means the mass is not necessary. Plus, smaller cars don't kill everyone involved in the accident outside of your car. People are just like "my car is bigger than yours", aka super-size me.
jjoonathan 3y ago
Survivability in crashes requires mass. It's a race to the bottom (top) unless we figure out how to head it off with better regulation.

one_level_deep 3y ago

I think we are in a loop. All the cars are big, so the only way to feel safe when driving is to have a big car. Just look at Ford trucks. The current Ranger is as big as the old F-150. Everything is a quad cab, 20 years ago those were rare.

tcfhgj 3y ago

Regulations are less restrictive for SUVs because they are supposed to be used for work stuff

dmbche 3y ago

Lot of people are outside the city, and lots of countries are very, very large - the US is a good example. Americans drive double what europeans drive in a year!

Maschinees 3y ago

For me it's simple: my company ev car came only in SUV version for longer range and I use it only on the weekend for longer trips. Unfortunately getting into my car is much nicer than in small cars. A critical factor when you are getting older

nforgerit 3y ago

Can't find it anymore but I've watched a documentary claiming that Henry Ford and other car makers, oil companies and tire manufacturers in US and Europe lobbied city mayors over 100ys ago to get rid of perfectly fine public transport in favor of private cars. It felt ridiculous that we're still falling for that propaganda.

adhesive_wombat 3y ago

Even Jeremy Clarkson knows rear seats are hardly ever used: https://youtube.com/watch?v=wjnxDSMjh5I https://youtube.com/watch?v=wjnxDSMjh5I Though I imagine most journeys with children in the back aren't made on motorways.