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Oversized SUV's littering urban landscapes (taking effectively twice the space of a small electric car) are the tangible evidence of how society grows not just

Oversized SUV's littering urban landscapes (taking effectively twice the space of a small electric car) are the tangible evidence of how society grows not just unsustainable and unequal, but aggressive and in-your-face. I don't think there is any other period where the front "face" of a car aimed to create such an ugly, intimidating impression (i am huge and i will tear you apart). Their popularity speaks volumes about the true psychological state of a good fraction of moneyed society. While wealth display is always a thing, the manner in which it is done is not preordained, it provides insights into the state of society. Once car manufacturers realized the larger and scarier the better selling the trajectory was locked.

paganel 3y ago
> aking effectively twice the space of a small electric car Not that many "small electric cars" out there, Teslas are big, as are the ID.3s and the like coming from Volkswagen. For reference, an ID.3 weights a maximum of almost 2 tons (1935 kg, to be more exact), that's compared to the maximum of 1500 kg for a Golf 7. To say nothing of my 2006 1.4 NA Seat Ibiza weighting just 1054 kg, but which is seen as worst than the devil itself because of its age. So, yeah, I don't buy this crusade against SUVs coming from EV people, seeing as my very lightweight petrol car is also on their chopping block.
- isoprophlex 3y ago
  Fiat 500e, Nissan Leaf, Renault Zoe, Peugeot 208e, whatever ugly shit Opel/Vauxhall is pushing out...
  - paganel 3y ago
    None of those cars (toys) get you very far outside of the city. And inside of the city we've got public transportation.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - master-lincoln 3y ago
      I'd argue all of the cars you listed get you as far as you have gasoline. Even with room for at least one passenger and luggage. What's your argument? And public transport cannot always replace individual mobility. E.g. transporting big things or sick people is not really an option on public transport
      - yodelshady 3y ago
        If you argue that you'd be a liar. They just don't. They all get about 200 miles real world, my (£10,000 cheaper !) hatchback, petrol with a 55 L tank and much more interior space than any of those, can push 400. Why say things that aren't true? People aren't going to be fooled.
        fragmede 3y ago
        > can push 400. That is to say, not 400? Why say things that aren't true? People aren't going to be fooled.
        adhesive_wombat 3y ago
        400km on 55l of fuel is pretty low. A car that gets 50mpg (UK gallons), which is fairly middle of the road efficiency, would go 600 miles, or 965km on that, assuming motorway driving. I regularly do 550 miles (850km - 5 return trips of 55 miles each way) on a single 60l tank of diesel in an older car and can do more if I dawdle and cruise more. I know I've been driving badly when the fuel light comes on on before the end of the fifth trip.
        bdavbdav 3y ago
        How come not true? My 3L A6 Quattro did more than 400mls on a tank of you were careful. That’s normal territory for European cars.
      - 3y ago
  - therealdrag0 3y ago
    The size difference between a Leaf and a RAV4 is negligible.
- audunw 3y ago
  The issues talked about here are mostly about size (width, length), not weight. Yes, the higher weight of EVs is a bit of an issue. But not as much as people make it out to be. But there are a lot of big EVs now. I think it’s mainly due to all car manufacturers coming out with a new generation of EVs and the first models they make are the ones with the highest margins. I.e. big cars. In the previous generations you had cars like Hyundai Kona EV which is completely reasonable size. But the first in Hyundais new generation is Ioniq 5 which doesn’t look like a monster but is surprisingly big.
  - paganel 3y ago
    ID.3s are also big in terms of size, it's just that they're not branded as CUVs/mini-SUVs and that's why they get a pass. For example they're bigger than a Mazda CX-3, which is branded on wikipedia as a "Subcompact crossover SUV (B)".
  - _Microft 3y ago
    > Yes, the higher weight of EVs is a bit of an issue. But not as much as people make it out to be. Not to detract from the discussion‘s topic but weight is an issue. Road damage scales with fourth power of axle load. That’s is, a car with 2t instead of 1.5t does three times the damage. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_power_law https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_power_law
    - zemvpferreira 3y ago
      True but that should also tell you that road damage comes almost exclusively from commercial-sized vehicles, coming back to the main point: Added EV weight in passenger cars is a non-issue.
    - OJFord 3y ago
      > Road damage scales with fourth power of axle load. Why? That's not intuitive to me. (I'm not saying you're wrong, just want to understand.)
      - 3y ago
stuaxo 3y ago
It's amazing how ugly cars have become. The upsizing is stupid - lots of cars either new versions of renamed versions of old ones but with another layer sandwiched in to make it higher, or just grow all dimensions and more clearance. A lot of them don't even have much / any more room inside.
- resuresu 3y ago
  They exist for a reason. Some people have more to haul than just groceries.
  - fragmede 3y ago
    Agreed. The kids won't drive themselves to soccer practice!
    - doubled112 3y ago
      BMX practice for me. Suddenly I was looking at bike rack systems worth more than some of my previous cars. It’s a station wagon though. Still car shaped, SUV cargo space inside.
  - thunfischbrot 3y ago
    That‘s what station waggons are for, it has worked for decades. It‘s surprising to me how little space there is inside of SUVs compared to their exterior dimensions.
  - throw0101b 3y ago
    > They exist for a reason. Some people have more to haul than just groceries. What in daily life is different in the last ~20 years (when SUVs have grown popular), compared to the ~20 years before that (when minivans were a thing), compared to the ~20 years before that (when station wagons were a thing)? Further, how often is the 'extra' hauling occurring? Why do you need to drive such a thing daily when the haulage is much less often than that? Wouldn't it save people cost (especially in gas, which everyone in the US seems to whinge about) by driving a more efficient vehicle for the most common case of the daily commute and simple weekend errands? (Renting when something 'extra' is needed.) Further, what percentage of SUVs (and cross-overs/CUVs) actually have towing hitches to haul things? And for carrying things inside, how many SUVs have more internal volume that a minivan? SUVs, especially the larger varieties, don't seem optimal for anything except vanity. (Speaking as someone who owns a Golf and who borrowed his parents' minivan almost every weekend as a teenager.)
spaer 3y ago
I don’t think the size differences are as drastic as that. An opel Astra hatchback is 4374mm long and 2062mm wide, while a Volvo XC90 is 4950mm long and 1923mm wide. As long as they both fit comfortably in a normal parking space the dimensions are not going to contribute meaningfully to more congestion or other inconvenience. In the Netherlands I often see people with Dodge rams that are noticeably wider and longer than every other passenger car. If this was a large or growing category I can see myself being inconvenienced and annoyed more
- rich_sasha 3y ago
  I suppose Volvo SUVs are maybe not at the sharp end of this complaint. They aren't obnoxiously oversized. I realized that when I saw an obnoxiously oversized American urban pick up truck. XC90 ain't small but ferries 7 people, there are plenty of larger SUVs that carry less inside.
  - pharmakom 3y ago
    XC90 is one of the less offensive examples for sure. However, it could be lower to the ground and still have the same carrying capacity. People just love that rugged off road look though. Perhaps they haven’t come to terms with the fact that the adventurous stage of their life is over now.
numpad0 3y ago
IMO, everyone should start from phasing out street parking. Mandatory private parking would create selection pressure towards smaller and less obnoxious cars, proportionate to mental as well as financial investments by its owner.
- jayski 3y ago
  Denmark taxes car purchases at 150%. I think Singapore does something similar.
  - petre 3y ago
    Denmark taxes lower income rural residents disproportionally. Singapore is a city state.
    - jayski 3y ago
      Not sure what that has to do with anything... I wasn't commenting on the equality of the Danish tax system, or the status of Singapore. I was just saying taxing car purchases is another idea to disincentivize cars.
      - malinens 3y ago
        In rural places car is neccessity everywhere in the world, but in urban it is not
    - herbstein 3y ago
      While our car taxes are very high, the 150% is the top marginal rate and isn't applied to cheap economy boxes.
- fragmede 3y ago
  That sounds more like a transfer of wealth from government coffers to private parking structure owners. How would that affect the size of vehicles?
jayski 3y ago
I live in a smallish city in Mexico. For many years I had a Honda City, and I hated it the whole time because the streets are awful. Which means I was always scraping the bottom of my car. Potholes, uneven pavement, damaged pavement etc. It was so bad the plastic coverings underneath tore apart and now I was dragging plastic everywhere I went. Needless to say for my next car my main priority was ground clearance. I ended up getting a Jeep and now my problems are solved. So that's my only point, I agree we should all have small eco cars. I would love to have a 2 seater and save on gas. But you have to live in a place with good infrastructure. A lot of cities in the third world are basically "off road" in practicality. Especially in the third world a car can be an extraordinary purchase, people need their cars to not get damaged easily.
- dash2 3y ago
  The equivalent in the developed world is when there are so many speed bumps that it incentivizes having a SUV! My city is a bit like that.

paganel 3y ago

> aking effectively twice the space of a small electric car Not that many "small electric cars" out there, Teslas are big, as are the ID.3s and the like coming from Volkswagen. For reference, an ID.3 weights a maximum of almost 2 tons (1935 kg, to be more exact), that's compared to the maximum of 1500 kg for a Golf 7. To say nothing of my 2006 1.4 NA Seat Ibiza weighting just 1054 kg, but which is seen as worst than the devil itself because of its age. So, yeah, I don't buy this crusade against SUVs coming from EV people, seeing as my very lightweight petrol car is also on their chopping block.

isoprophlex 3y ago
Fiat 500e, Nissan Leaf, Renault Zoe, Peugeot 208e, whatever ugly shit Opel/Vauxhall is pushing out...
- paganel 3y ago
  None of those cars (toys) get you very far outside of the city. And inside of the city we've got public transportation.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - master-lincoln 3y ago
    I'd argue all of the cars you listed get you as far as you have gasoline. Even with room for at least one passenger and luggage. What's your argument? And public transport cannot always replace individual mobility. E.g. transporting big things or sick people is not really an option on public transport
    - yodelshady 3y ago
      If you argue that you'd be a liar. They just don't. They all get about 200 miles real world, my (£10,000 cheaper !) hatchback, petrol with a 55 L tank and much more interior space than any of those, can push 400. Why say things that aren't true? People aren't going to be fooled.
      - fragmede 3y ago
        > can push 400. That is to say, not 400? Why say things that aren't true? People aren't going to be fooled.
        adhesive_wombat 3y ago
        400km on 55l of fuel is pretty low. A car that gets 50mpg (UK gallons), which is fairly middle of the road efficiency, would go 600 miles, or 965km on that, assuming motorway driving. I regularly do 550 miles (850km - 5 return trips of 55 miles each way) on a single 60l tank of diesel in an older car and can do more if I dawdle and cruise more. I know I've been driving badly when the fuel light comes on on before the end of the fifth trip.
        bdavbdav 3y ago
        How come not true? My 3L A6 Quattro did more than 400mls on a tank of you were careful. That’s normal territory for European cars.
    - 3y ago
- therealdrag0 3y ago
  The size difference between a Leaf and a RAV4 is negligible.
audunw 3y ago
The issues talked about here are mostly about size (width, length), not weight. Yes, the higher weight of EVs is a bit of an issue. But not as much as people make it out to be. But there are a lot of big EVs now. I think it’s mainly due to all car manufacturers coming out with a new generation of EVs and the first models they make are the ones with the highest margins. I.e. big cars. In the previous generations you had cars like Hyundai Kona EV which is completely reasonable size. But the first in Hyundais new generation is Ioniq 5 which doesn’t look like a monster but is surprisingly big.
- paganel 3y ago
  ID.3s are also big in terms of size, it's just that they're not branded as CUVs/mini-SUVs and that's why they get a pass. For example they're bigger than a Mazda CX-3, which is branded on wikipedia as a "Subcompact crossover SUV (B)".
- _Microft 3y ago
  > Yes, the higher weight of EVs is a bit of an issue. But not as much as people make it out to be. Not to detract from the discussion‘s topic but weight is an issue. Road damage scales with fourth power of axle load. That’s is, a car with 2t instead of 1.5t does three times the damage. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_power_law https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_power_law
  - zemvpferreira 3y ago
    True but that should also tell you that road damage comes almost exclusively from commercial-sized vehicles, coming back to the main point: Added EV weight in passenger cars is a non-issue.
  - OJFord 3y ago
    > Road damage scales with fourth power of axle load. Why? That's not intuitive to me. (I'm not saying you're wrong, just want to understand.)
    - 3y ago

stuaxo 3y ago

It's amazing how ugly cars have become. The upsizing is stupid - lots of cars either new versions of renamed versions of old ones but with another layer sandwiched in to make it higher, or just grow all dimensions and more clearance. A lot of them don't even have much / any more room inside.

resuresu 3y ago
They exist for a reason. Some people have more to haul than just groceries.
- fragmede 3y ago
  Agreed. The kids won't drive themselves to soccer practice!
  - doubled112 3y ago
    BMX practice for me. Suddenly I was looking at bike rack systems worth more than some of my previous cars. It’s a station wagon though. Still car shaped, SUV cargo space inside.
- thunfischbrot 3y ago
  That‘s what station waggons are for, it has worked for decades. It‘s surprising to me how little space there is inside of SUVs compared to their exterior dimensions.
- throw0101b 3y ago
  > They exist for a reason. Some people have more to haul than just groceries. What in daily life is different in the last ~20 years (when SUVs have grown popular), compared to the ~20 years before that (when minivans were a thing), compared to the ~20 years before that (when station wagons were a thing)? Further, how often is the 'extra' hauling occurring? Why do you need to drive such a thing daily when the haulage is much less often than that? Wouldn't it save people cost (especially in gas, which everyone in the US seems to whinge about) by driving a more efficient vehicle for the most common case of the daily commute and simple weekend errands? (Renting when something 'extra' is needed.) Further, what percentage of SUVs (and cross-overs/CUVs) actually have towing hitches to haul things? And for carrying things inside, how many SUVs have more internal volume that a minivan? SUVs, especially the larger varieties, don't seem optimal for anything except vanity. (Speaking as someone who owns a Golf and who borrowed his parents' minivan almost every weekend as a teenager.)

spaer 3y ago

I don’t think the size differences are as drastic as that. An opel Astra hatchback is 4374mm long and 2062mm wide, while a Volvo XC90 is 4950mm long and 1923mm wide. As long as they both fit comfortably in a normal parking space the dimensions are not going to contribute meaningfully to more congestion or other inconvenience. In the Netherlands I often see people with Dodge rams that are noticeably wider and longer than every other passenger car. If this was a large or growing category I can see myself being inconvenienced and annoyed more

rich_sasha 3y ago
I suppose Volvo SUVs are maybe not at the sharp end of this complaint. They aren't obnoxiously oversized. I realized that when I saw an obnoxiously oversized American urban pick up truck. XC90 ain't small but ferries 7 people, there are plenty of larger SUVs that carry less inside.
- pharmakom 3y ago
  XC90 is one of the less offensive examples for sure. However, it could be lower to the ground and still have the same carrying capacity. People just love that rugged off road look though. Perhaps they haven’t come to terms with the fact that the adventurous stage of their life is over now.

numpad0 3y ago

IMO, everyone should start from phasing out street parking. Mandatory private parking would create selection pressure towards smaller and less obnoxious cars, proportionate to mental as well as financial investments by its owner.

jayski 3y ago
Denmark taxes car purchases at 150%. I think Singapore does something similar.
- petre 3y ago
  Denmark taxes lower income rural residents disproportionally. Singapore is a city state.
  - jayski 3y ago
    Not sure what that has to do with anything... I wasn't commenting on the equality of the Danish tax system, or the status of Singapore. I was just saying taxing car purchases is another idea to disincentivize cars.
    - malinens 3y ago
      In rural places car is neccessity everywhere in the world, but in urban it is not
  - herbstein 3y ago
    While our car taxes are very high, the 150% is the top marginal rate and isn't applied to cheap economy boxes.
fragmede 3y ago
That sounds more like a transfer of wealth from government coffers to private parking structure owners. How would that affect the size of vehicles?

jayski 3y ago

I live in a smallish city in Mexico. For many years I had a Honda City, and I hated it the whole time because the streets are awful. Which means I was always scraping the bottom of my car. Potholes, uneven pavement, damaged pavement etc. It was so bad the plastic coverings underneath tore apart and now I was dragging plastic everywhere I went. Needless to say for my next car my main priority was ground clearance. I ended up getting a Jeep and now my problems are solved. So that's my only point, I agree we should all have small eco cars. I would love to have a 2 seater and save on gas. But you have to live in a place with good infrastructure. A lot of cities in the third world are basically "off road" in practicality. Especially in the third world a car can be an extraordinary purchase, people need their cars to not get damaged easily.

dash2 3y ago
The equivalent in the developed world is when there are so many speed bumps that it incentivizes having a SUV! My city is a bit like that.