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I thought we already understood that US large car sales was the result of the individualist culture and perceived improvements in safety from being in a heavier
by dijit 2y ago
I thought we already understood that US large car sales was the result of the individualist culture and perceived improvements in safety from being in a heavier vehicle during a collision
- techcode 2y agoA while ago I read somewhere that it was because for a long time (American) trucks were technically nit cars. And manufacturers could save money on a bunch of safety things. Which resulted in more money for marketing.
- acdha 2y agoIt’s not any single factor but a lot of it is due to industry-friendly policies which made SUVs and trucks artificially cheap: https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/24139147/suvs-trucks-popularity-federal-policy-pollution https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/24139147/suvs-trucks-popu... It’s important to remember that Japanese car manufacturers weird absolutely slaughtering U.S. companies in the 80s and 90s by making cheaper, better quality, more efficient vehicles. Detroit has a lot of political weight, however, and when they started pushing far more profitable SUVs as the ideal daily driver, nobody in Congress was going to get in the way by suggesting policies intended to help tradespeople should be modified. That campaign in the 90s made them popular enough to cancel out decades of fuel economy and safety improvements, and effectively started an arms race where people who never go off-road started to think that they needed to pay more for one, too, because otherwise they’d be at a fatal mismatch in a crash.
- standardUser 2y agoEVs are generally very heavy compared to similarly sized vehicles.