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The closest Polestar dealership (er, "retail location") is still a long drive or plane ride away for me. The Polestar 2 does seem the closest to what I want in

The closest Polestar dealership (er, "retail location") is still a long drive or plane ride away for me. The Polestar 2 does seem the closest to what I want in the current market, though 2" wider isn't ideal and the Polestar 2 has a boxy Volvo thing about it that I don't quite like aesthetically (and that 2" wider does give it a bit of a land yacht feel to me), so it doesn't seem worth that sort of distance trip just for a test drive. (Also, and this is a silly complaint/wishlist item, but I had friends describe an old Volvo buying experience where you could pay a premium on top of the car purchase to include a factory tour and week's stay in the Swedish Alps; they said it was one of the best vacations they ever had. If Polestar offered that I'd be very much more inclined towards Polestar.) The Mach E strikes me as way too big for just me. Those inches add up, it seems way bigger than Volt I have. More than half a foot taller is a huge difference. Maybe I'm just a bad American because I use my car so rarely and mostly alone, and everything about the SUV form factor seems absolutely ridiculous to me for a solo driver mostly out to get groceries or visit family for a few hours. I'm not just making fun of the Hummer-sized monstrosities, I'm absolutely confused by the American love affair with the SUV entirely. It's way too much. (Not to mention I have almost been wishing I could downsize to a nice coupe or compact and that is entirely off the US market to even consider getting my hopes up. I've had love affairs from a distance with the Honda e and BYD Dolphin. Those are cute looking cars. Not really possible to put on a US road, and one company wouldn't sell me one even if I tried because their US arm is a Truck company now, and the other isn't allowed to sell cars in the US at all through trade tariffs and embargoes.)

vel0city 1y ago
I get what you're saying about the American love affair for SUVs, it's insane how large so many people think their cars need to be to have a car seat and a dog and groceries. But I also think it's disingenuous to lump a car like the Mach E and Ioniq 5 in the same size class as a Chevy Suburban and Honda Pilot and Ford Expedition. They're far closer to the hatchback of yesterday than they are to any of those monsters, and yet they're both called "SUVs". And I do wish there were more smaller cars on the market. You're absolutely right, if it's pretty much only you or maybe you + 1 with a small bit of cargo even something like a Mach E (or even the Volt) is pretty much oversized. I do think people should have more choice in right-sizing their vehicles.
- WorldMaker 1y ago
  > But I also think it's disingenuous to lump a car like the Mach E and Ioniq 5 in the same size class as a Chevy Suburban and Honda Pilot and Ford Expedition. There's an inflation factor here. The Mach E is about the size of the 1990s Ford Expedition or Chevy Suburban (and the Honda Pilot didn't yet exist). Everything has gotten bigger. Everything keeps getting bigger "just a couple inches" at a time. The ("hot") hatchback of the 1970s, which defined the class, was closer to the size of a Geo Prism than a Chevy Volt, much less a Mach E. In my view the lower end of the SUV class has been relatively consistent, it's just gotten so much wider as class (just like the cars) and shifted huger with all sorts of inflation. I don't think I'm disingenuous here: I feel consistent. I was dismissive of the class as too large when it broke out in the 1990s. I'm dismissive of the class today. The fact that the class has become so dominant and inflated so largely hasn't changed my baseline of when a car seems "too big" even if it seems to have raised the floors of so many other people. I drove a Geo Prism for a decade and change. I've now driven a Chevy Volt for another decade and change. I've been here the whole time, it seems to me SUVs as a class that's gotten worse.
  - vel0city 1y ago
    > The Mach E is about the size of the 1990s Ford Expedition or Chevy Suburban This is untrue. The Mach E is 186" long, 64" high, and 74" wide. The 1997 Ford Expedition is 205" long, 75" high, and 79" wide. More than half a foot is a huge difference but nearly a foot is about the same size, and the Expedition is a foot and a half longer. 2" is way too much to add to the width but 5" is about the same size. A Geo Prizm is 173" long and 53" high, and was considered a very small car for the time in the US market. So the difference in length of a Prizm to a Mach E is 13". The difference in length of the '97 Expedition to the Mach E is 19". The height differences are both 11" So yes, the Mach E is closer in size to the Prizm than it is to the first-generation Expedition. And its laughable to compare it to a modern Expedition, its far closer to the Prizm. Even if you were to say "well, what about the early SUVs like the Bronco", and yeah sure they actually aren't as long as a Mach E was, but they were only 7" longer in length than that Prizm and yet were once again about 10" taller than the Mach E while your standard of 6" is a huge difference in height. And obviously the Bronco was going to have a short wheelbase, it only had a single row of seating. That you seem to think the Mach E is about the same size as the 90's SUVs once again really points me to the failure of both kinds of cars having the same category. They're very different sizes. And I'm not trying to argue the Mach E is any kind of compact car or anything, but its downright tiny compared to "real" SUVs like Suburbans and what not. As someone who daily drove a large SUV and a Ford Focus Hatch, the Mach E I drive today is considerably closer in size to the Focus than it is the older SUV. Definitely a bit bigger than the Focus, but it's not even close.

vel0city 1y ago

I get what you're saying about the American love affair for SUVs, it's insane how large so many people think their cars need to be to have a car seat and a dog and groceries. But I also think it's disingenuous to lump a car like the Mach E and Ioniq 5 in the same size class as a Chevy Suburban and Honda Pilot and Ford Expedition. They're far closer to the hatchback of yesterday than they are to any of those monsters, and yet they're both called "SUVs". And I do wish there were more smaller cars on the market. You're absolutely right, if it's pretty much only you or maybe you + 1 with a small bit of cargo even something like a Mach E (or even the Volt) is pretty much oversized. I do think people should have more choice in right-sizing their vehicles.

WorldMaker 1y ago
> But I also think it's disingenuous to lump a car like the Mach E and Ioniq 5 in the same size class as a Chevy Suburban and Honda Pilot and Ford Expedition. There's an inflation factor here. The Mach E is about the size of the 1990s Ford Expedition or Chevy Suburban (and the Honda Pilot didn't yet exist). Everything has gotten bigger. Everything keeps getting bigger "just a couple inches" at a time. The ("hot") hatchback of the 1970s, which defined the class, was closer to the size of a Geo Prism than a Chevy Volt, much less a Mach E. In my view the lower end of the SUV class has been relatively consistent, it's just gotten so much wider as class (just like the cars) and shifted huger with all sorts of inflation. I don't think I'm disingenuous here: I feel consistent. I was dismissive of the class as too large when it broke out in the 1990s. I'm dismissive of the class today. The fact that the class has become so dominant and inflated so largely hasn't changed my baseline of when a car seems "too big" even if it seems to have raised the floors of so many other people. I drove a Geo Prism for a decade and change. I've now driven a Chevy Volt for another decade and change. I've been here the whole time, it seems to me SUVs as a class that's gotten worse.
- vel0city 1y ago
  > The Mach E is about the size of the 1990s Ford Expedition or Chevy Suburban This is untrue. The Mach E is 186" long, 64" high, and 74" wide. The 1997 Ford Expedition is 205" long, 75" high, and 79" wide. More than half a foot is a huge difference but nearly a foot is about the same size, and the Expedition is a foot and a half longer. 2" is way too much to add to the width but 5" is about the same size. A Geo Prizm is 173" long and 53" high, and was considered a very small car for the time in the US market. So the difference in length of a Prizm to a Mach E is 13". The difference in length of the '97 Expedition to the Mach E is 19". The height differences are both 11" So yes, the Mach E is closer in size to the Prizm than it is to the first-generation Expedition. And its laughable to compare it to a modern Expedition, its far closer to the Prizm. Even if you were to say "well, what about the early SUVs like the Bronco", and yeah sure they actually aren't as long as a Mach E was, but they were only 7" longer in length than that Prizm and yet were once again about 10" taller than the Mach E while your standard of 6" is a huge difference in height. And obviously the Bronco was going to have a short wheelbase, it only had a single row of seating. That you seem to think the Mach E is about the same size as the 90's SUVs once again really points me to the failure of both kinds of cars having the same category. They're very different sizes. And I'm not trying to argue the Mach E is any kind of compact car or anything, but its downright tiny compared to "real" SUVs like Suburbans and what not. As someone who daily drove a large SUV and a Ford Focus Hatch, the Mach E I drive today is considerably closer in size to the Focus than it is the older SUV. Definitely a bit bigger than the Focus, but it's not even close.