6 ms·

Have there been any kind of promising signs for an increase in demand for smaller cars? There's so many narrow residential streets in Ireland and the UK that ar

Have there been any kind of promising signs for an increase in demand for smaller cars? There's so many narrow residential streets in Ireland and the UK that are borderline undriveable now with all the big wide cars on the kerbs and sticking out of driveways. Is it the same phenomenon as people buying massive phones even if they're literally too big for their hands to easily use.

jajko 2y ago
I am definitely an outlier but for me, I need those massive phones (well, their screens) since I am pretty tall and have big hands / thick fingers. Typing on smaller screen is just suffer fest due to many errors, and general usage sucks too regardless of brand (ie Apple mini 13 of my wife makes me wanna cry in 30s of using it). In terms of Samsung's phones, Galaxy S II was tiny and bad, S 22 ultra is OK, wouldn't want anything smaller. Cars are a different topic, but with 2 small kids, small cars are useless when transporting all of us. Very bad safety, storage too tiny and thus not usable for even weekend outdoorsy trips. Now I am not advocating for oversized US style SUVs, but some storage is required and making cars taller like crossovers or european style SUVs sucks for many reasons (high center of gravity and thus bad handling, higher consumption and maintenance costs, more permanent noise in higher speeds).
- SoftTalker 2y ago
  An estate/station wagon style body is great for this. Room like an SUV, handles much more like a saloon/sedan than an SUV or crossover. Used to be popular as a family car back in the 1970s, every automaker made them but there are not nearly as many choices these days.
  - Vecr 2y ago
    Not very safe. Yeah, they could make it better, but then you're mostly back to a SUV anyway.
    - wing-_-nuts 2y ago
      Huh? Volvos are known for their wagons and their cars are among the safest in the industry.
  - nradov 2y ago
    The Subaru Outback is quite popular and is basically a station wagon. But for regulatory purposes including CAFE it is classified as a "light truck", the same as any other SUV or crossover. A lot of this is regulatory arbitrage. The whole concept behind CAFE was idiotic from the start and recent tweaks to the rules haven't fixed the fundamental problem. If we want people to burn less fuel then just tax the fuel instead of distorting the free market by putting weird mandates on manufacturers. The station wagons available in the 1970s had some actual "utility" in that you could use one to carry a family of 5 plus dog and cargo, and tow a boat trailer down a rough dirt road to a lake. Now newer station wagon models have sacrificed that utility in a misguided pursuit of fuel efficiency and styling so they have become useless to a lot of American consumers.
    - wing-_-nuts 2y ago
      > just tax the fuel instead of distorting the free market by putting weird mandates on manufacturers. Unfortunately this is politically impossible when you've got people like Grover Norquist who will primary anyone he thinks had a hand in raising taxes. When you scare most of congress away from using the tool of higher taxes, what you wind up with is massive deficit spending and misguided 'carrot' incentives when the 'stick' of raised taxes is taken away.
- JansjoFromIkea 2y ago
  Assuming you're a decent outlier, does it make sense to you that someone with a hand that could be half the size of yours uses the same sized phone as you? Iirc Steve Jobs had a fixation that a user's thumb should be easily able to reach the entire screen without readjusting their grip and that makes a lot of sense to me. RE: Cars, I tend to think fair enough when kids are involved (although I think they could still be a lot more compact without actually losing much space inside, Japan seems to manage with much smaller vehicles) but it feels like virtually everyone of my parents generation has bought by far the largest car they ever had now that they're retired. I've one aunt who has a car she basically has to climb into, had quite a bad fall getting out of it one time and still doesn't want to downsize because she "wouldn't feel safe" driving something smaller.
hanniabu 2y ago
I'd love a smaller car if everyone had a smaller car. I don't want a smaller car when there's a pickup truck 3x the size/weight with a lift kit and a driver that's on their phone or has road rage.
SV_BubbleTime 2y ago
[flagged]
- NegativeLatency 2y ago
  Do you know of a good source for the footprint thing? Couldn’t find it on the calculation section: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_average_fuel_economy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_average_fuel_economy
  - SV_BubbleTime 2y ago
    First off. Don’t use Wikipedia for such a topic specific thing. You will have to go directly to CAFE, and without being a mfg, I’m not sure how far you get. Second, my source is first hand. I was there as an engineer at the time with Chrysler my paycheck didn’t say Daimler but that isn’t uncommon at CTC, later when we moved to GM I heard the same account. It wasn’t a secret, it was just something no one cared about. Third, it doesn’t matter if you acknowledge my account. Every new body release since 2008 is larger than his previous version. Explain it a different way if you want to “create your own truth” or whatever postmodernism thing you might be into. IDK. Lastly, customers like the bigger vehicles for the most part. It coincides well with an obesity crisis.
    - DCH3416 2y ago
      > Lastly, customers like the bigger vehicles for the most part. It coincides well with an obesity crisis. I disagree. I think it's a run away effect. People don't feel comfortable in smaller vehicles anymore so they buy bigger and bigger. In my observations larger folks try and buy smaller vehicles. Similar to how some women will try and fit into clothes that may be too small for them. Some of the smaller vehicles are also easier for the truly morbid folks to get in and out of. Unlike SUVs which you have to step up for. Older individuals follow the same style patterns.
    - nradov 2y ago
      It also coincides well with an aging population. Older people with reduced mobility find it a lot more comfortable to get in and out of a typical mid-size SUV than a compact car. They don't like having to squat down. The HN demographic is heavily skewed to young urbanites so they tend to be oblivious to average consumer preferences.
tass 2y ago
Not too different in many cities in the United States. There really should be a width limit on street parking in urban environments.
ghaff 2y ago
It’s a trade off. Some people really do prefer the larger phones even if they have trade offs for pocket ability and one handed use while standing.
- nradov 2y ago
  Just buy pants with larger pockets. Problem solved.
- JansjoFromIkea 2y ago
  How many people have actually had a chance to use a modern smaller phone in the last 5 years long enough to have any gauge of that though? The iPhone mini bombed so there aren't really options even on the resale market outside of absurdly small secondary devices and feature phones. People definitely prefer to buy larger phones, and that's ultimately all that really matters. Similarly I feel like a lot of car purchases could have a cycle of a person increasingly bumping up the size they're looking at because a much bigger one is only a few percentage points more.
  - ghaff 2y ago
    Lots of people like what they consider mid-sized option in both categories. Certainly many of us who buy what are considered in the US mid-sized SUVs have no desire to upsize.
bryanlarsen 2y ago
I wish I bookmarked the source, but it's a collective action problem. Bigger vehicles are safer for their occupants than smaller cars, but for every life saved by bigger cars, 12 pedestrian/cyclist/small car occupant's lives are loss. The only practical way to solve collective action problems is through government regulation, and government regulations do not take into account bystander lives.
- wing-_-nuts 2y ago
  >government regulations do not take into account bystander lives. In the US. In the EU pedestrian safety is accounted for in their ncap rating IIRC.

jajko 2y ago

I am definitely an outlier but for me, I need those massive phones (well, their screens) since I am pretty tall and have big hands / thick fingers. Typing on smaller screen is just suffer fest due to many errors, and general usage sucks too regardless of brand (ie Apple mini 13 of my wife makes me wanna cry in 30s of using it). In terms of Samsung's phones, Galaxy S II was tiny and bad, S 22 ultra is OK, wouldn't want anything smaller. Cars are a different topic, but with 2 small kids, small cars are useless when transporting all of us. Very bad safety, storage too tiny and thus not usable for even weekend outdoorsy trips. Now I am not advocating for oversized US style SUVs, but some storage is required and making cars taller like crossovers or european style SUVs sucks for many reasons (high center of gravity and thus bad handling, higher consumption and maintenance costs, more permanent noise in higher speeds).

SoftTalker 2y ago
An estate/station wagon style body is great for this. Room like an SUV, handles much more like a saloon/sedan than an SUV or crossover. Used to be popular as a family car back in the 1970s, every automaker made them but there are not nearly as many choices these days.
- Vecr 2y ago
  Not very safe. Yeah, they could make it better, but then you're mostly back to a SUV anyway.
  - wing-_-nuts 2y ago
    Huh? Volvos are known for their wagons and their cars are among the safest in the industry.
- nradov 2y ago
  The Subaru Outback is quite popular and is basically a station wagon. But for regulatory purposes including CAFE it is classified as a "light truck", the same as any other SUV or crossover. A lot of this is regulatory arbitrage. The whole concept behind CAFE was idiotic from the start and recent tweaks to the rules haven't fixed the fundamental problem. If we want people to burn less fuel then just tax the fuel instead of distorting the free market by putting weird mandates on manufacturers. The station wagons available in the 1970s had some actual "utility" in that you could use one to carry a family of 5 plus dog and cargo, and tow a boat trailer down a rough dirt road to a lake. Now newer station wagon models have sacrificed that utility in a misguided pursuit of fuel efficiency and styling so they have become useless to a lot of American consumers.
  - wing-_-nuts 2y ago
    > just tax the fuel instead of distorting the free market by putting weird mandates on manufacturers. Unfortunately this is politically impossible when you've got people like Grover Norquist who will primary anyone he thinks had a hand in raising taxes. When you scare most of congress away from using the tool of higher taxes, what you wind up with is massive deficit spending and misguided 'carrot' incentives when the 'stick' of raised taxes is taken away.
JansjoFromIkea 2y ago
Assuming you're a decent outlier, does it make sense to you that someone with a hand that could be half the size of yours uses the same sized phone as you? Iirc Steve Jobs had a fixation that a user's thumb should be easily able to reach the entire screen without readjusting their grip and that makes a lot of sense to me. RE: Cars, I tend to think fair enough when kids are involved (although I think they could still be a lot more compact without actually losing much space inside, Japan seems to manage with much smaller vehicles) but it feels like virtually everyone of my parents generation has bought by far the largest car they ever had now that they're retired. I've one aunt who has a car she basically has to climb into, had quite a bad fall getting out of it one time and still doesn't want to downsize because she "wouldn't feel safe" driving something smaller.

hanniabu 2y ago

I'd love a smaller car if everyone had a smaller car. I don't want a smaller car when there's a pickup truck 3x the size/weight with a lift kit and a driver that's on their phone or has road rage.

SV_BubbleTime 2y ago

[flagged]

NegativeLatency 2y ago
Do you know of a good source for the footprint thing? Couldn’t find it on the calculation section: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_average_fuel_economy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_average_fuel_economy
- SV_BubbleTime 2y ago
  First off. Don’t use Wikipedia for such a topic specific thing. You will have to go directly to CAFE, and without being a mfg, I’m not sure how far you get. Second, my source is first hand. I was there as an engineer at the time with Chrysler my paycheck didn’t say Daimler but that isn’t uncommon at CTC, later when we moved to GM I heard the same account. It wasn’t a secret, it was just something no one cared about. Third, it doesn’t matter if you acknowledge my account. Every new body release since 2008 is larger than his previous version. Explain it a different way if you want to “create your own truth” or whatever postmodernism thing you might be into. IDK. Lastly, customers like the bigger vehicles for the most part. It coincides well with an obesity crisis.
  - DCH3416 2y ago
    > Lastly, customers like the bigger vehicles for the most part. It coincides well with an obesity crisis. I disagree. I think it's a run away effect. People don't feel comfortable in smaller vehicles anymore so they buy bigger and bigger. In my observations larger folks try and buy smaller vehicles. Similar to how some women will try and fit into clothes that may be too small for them. Some of the smaller vehicles are also easier for the truly morbid folks to get in and out of. Unlike SUVs which you have to step up for. Older individuals follow the same style patterns.
  - nradov 2y ago
    It also coincides well with an aging population. Older people with reduced mobility find it a lot more comfortable to get in and out of a typical mid-size SUV than a compact car. They don't like having to squat down. The HN demographic is heavily skewed to young urbanites so they tend to be oblivious to average consumer preferences.

tass 2y ago

Not too different in many cities in the United States. There really should be a width limit on street parking in urban environments.

ghaff 2y ago

It’s a trade off. Some people really do prefer the larger phones even if they have trade offs for pocket ability and one handed use while standing.

nradov 2y ago
Just buy pants with larger pockets. Problem solved.
JansjoFromIkea 2y ago
How many people have actually had a chance to use a modern smaller phone in the last 5 years long enough to have any gauge of that though? The iPhone mini bombed so there aren't really options even on the resale market outside of absurdly small secondary devices and feature phones. People definitely prefer to buy larger phones, and that's ultimately all that really matters. Similarly I feel like a lot of car purchases could have a cycle of a person increasingly bumping up the size they're looking at because a much bigger one is only a few percentage points more.
- ghaff 2y ago
  Lots of people like what they consider mid-sized option in both categories. Certainly many of us who buy what are considered in the US mid-sized SUVs have no desire to upsize.

bryanlarsen 2y ago

I wish I bookmarked the source, but it's a collective action problem. Bigger vehicles are safer for their occupants than smaller cars, but for every life saved by bigger cars, 12 pedestrian/cyclist/small car occupant's lives are loss. The only practical way to solve collective action problems is through government regulation, and government regulations do not take into account bystander lives.

wing-_-nuts 2y ago
>government regulations do not take into account bystander lives. In the US. In the EU pedestrian safety is accounted for in their ncap rating IIRC.