People buying SUVs are cancelling out climate gains from electric cars

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2265449-people-buying-suvs-are-cancelling-out-climate-gains-from-electric-cars/

42 57 5 years ago

There are a lot of big pickups and SUVs on the road. There's a tiny percentage where the vehicle suits the use, but in the vast majority of cases, the vehicles are entirely a fashion with no real utility - or even negative utility. There is only a self-reinforcing utility of defending yourself from other tall and heavy vehicles. All this has been said many times before. When it comes to vehicles, people have no shame. What it tells us about the future of global warming seems very clear.

flavius296632• 5 years ago

prisoner's dilemma: if everyone is arming up with larger vehicles, will you keep a sedan just to make a point, putting your family at increasing risks?

richardatlarge4• 5 years ago

Not sure from a rational point of view that the risks are lowered; safest cars today are not SUVs

Tragedy of the commons: everyone takes a bit more land to feed their extra goat, the field is overgrazed, all the goats starve. Ie, in wanting more we end up all losers

UncleMeat3• 5 years ago

People repeat this “defense” thing but it makes little sense to me. The range of crashes where it would be fatal if you were in a sudan and survivable if you were in an suv is surely small. Especially since suvs have additional risk of rolling.

Spending tens of thousands extra to make yourself safer on the road is surely better accomplished with better safety features in the car rather than tons of steel.

smileysteve4• 5 years ago

People are really bad at evaluating risk.

Rollover, Blindspot, and high speed loss of control are huge safety factors that SUVs underperform Sedans in, but "bigger is safer" has somehow persisted.

smtaz1279• 5 years ago

I bought my SUV around 3 years ago. There wasn't and still isn't non-Tesla, non-crossover, somewhat affordable options. I would love it if they just made an electric version of the vehicle I own, Subaru Ascent. I would gladly trade it in for an electric version. I want a vehicle with 3 rows of seating that can fold down and doesn't try to make a statement with the design. Until companies make cars that don't scream "electric car" with their design, we will continue to see these trends. Looking forward to the F-150 Lightning because that seems like Ford gets it and I would have preordered one if the damn thing could fit in my garage length wise.

MandieD• 5 years ago

I’m not the first person to say it, but it’s a shame that the station wagon got such a bad rap in the US, because that’s really what a lot of SUV buyers are after, utility-wise.

Rear-facing child seats are safer; what about a rear-facing third row?

muro• 5 years ago

Rear facing = vomit comet for many.

bdcravens3• 5 years ago

I have a friend who loves minivans. His current one can fold the rear passenger seats into the floor, and easily carry 4x8 plywood

bdcravens3• 5 years ago

2 years from now I think you'll have quite a few SUV options (though many of them are arguably more CUVS) - Kona, Niro, EV6, etc

richardatlarge4• 5 years ago

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-11/the-dange...

Quote: Among the increasingly popular heavy-duty models, the height of the truck’s front end may reach a grown man’s shoulders or neck. When you involve children in this exercise it starts to become really disturbing. My four-year-old son, for example, barely cleared the bumper on a lifted F-250 we came across in a parking lot last summer.

richardatlarge4• 5 years ago

Another quote:

Since 1990, U.S. pickup trucks have added almost 1,300 pounds on average. Some of the biggest vehicles on the market now weigh almost 7,000 pounds — or about three Honda Civics. These vehicles have a voracious appetite for space, one that’s increasingly irreconcilable with the way cities (and garages, and parking lots) are built.

Factorium• 5 years ago

We could ban all gas-powered cars now: just start with vehicles priced over $100,000, and decrease the threshold by $10,000 annually.

relbeek26• 5 years ago

Because people with kids should have to take public transit?

There really isn’t an affordable electric option for people with kids.

smileysteve4• 5 years ago

There are are a number of lower and lower middle class that people with kids do in fact have to take public transit. And if not public at least extended friend, family transit. Even, non electric, there is an SUV premium that only the top 30% of Americans ~can afford.

t0mas88• 5 years ago

Why ban higher priced vehicles first? If it's only about the environment you should ban by level of emissions.

relbeek26• 5 years ago

There isn’t really an affordable option for people with kids, so it’s not a great idea regardless.

natch4• 5 years ago

Sure, so do both. One reason to limit the high priced ones is that those buyers should be able, with that money, to afford a truly fantastic EV, so there is generally little sensible reason for them to be buying an ICE vehicle given the circumstances.

HNTA_12• 5 years ago

If you have two kids and the grandparents live with you (our situation), unfortunately SUVs are more or less the only option. Otherwise you take two cars everywhere, and two sedans are worse for the environment than one SUV.

bdcravens3• 5 years ago

If you frequently have that many passengers, then the vehicle makes sense. However, my guess is that most SUVs and trucks on the road at any times have 1-2 passengers in them. It's not broken up by vehicle type, but the average car has 1.5 passengers.

https://css.umich.edu/factsheets/personal-transportation-fac...

relbeek26• 5 years ago

Maybe an alternative would be to convert all major roads to tolls, then offer discounts for HOV and electric.

rascul• 5 years ago

I suspect this may be in part because many people have a need for something like an SUV to carry children and/or cargo from time to time, but can't justify another vehicle so the SUV or truck doesn't need to be driven all the time.

In my case, I have a pickup truck I need for work, but I don't drive enough outside of work to justify the cost of keeping my smaller car on the road also.

geoduck142• 5 years ago

When I first got my SUV, I was the only passenger 25% of the time. And I NEEDED it.

I would load my 3 kids up, take them to day care, got to work. My wife would pick them up from day care and I would drive home without kids.

The SUV was the smallest vehicle I could get to transport 3 kids in car seats. And I needed to drive my kids to day care.

nvelty• 5 years ago

I think there's a disconnect between some of the folks here and the live of the average suburban family. My mother regularly had to drop-off 4 kids at school then pick up groceries for 6 people. You can't do that with a sedan. There'd be a better case against trucks - they're undoubtedly a fashion statement most of the time, but when you need a truck (which is inevitable for someone with a house/land) there's no substitute. It's even more so in rural areas - no one's gonna throw a deer carcass in the trunk of their Tesla.

TheCoelacanth• 5 years ago

Even a mid-sized sedan can handle that. A full-sized sedan could do it with room to spare.

paulryanrogers• 5 years ago

What happened to minivans?

HNTA_12• 5 years ago

They're still around, just not as fashionable these days. I was under the impression that they get the same MPG that SUVs get, so they're equally inefficient in my mind.

michaelhoney• 5 years ago

I look forward to large SUVs losing their social license. Men can find another way to feel like big tough guys.

zthrowaway• 5 years ago

What a bizarre take on this.

relbeek26• 5 years ago

As if there are zero reasons someone should own an SUV.

bool3max2• 5 years ago

It's okay to feel weak my man.

geonic2• 5 years ago

A huge percentage (about 20%) of all cars I see are SUVs. Even for smaller cars there seems to be a trend towards really bulky bodies. Cars have become larger and larger over the years.

We have a giant problem with climate change yet car manufacturers keep making larger and larger cars. And people buy them. This does not make any sense to me. It only accelerates climate change, parking spaces become even harder to find in cities, and most people don't need an SUV at all.

I think SUVs and all large trucks that are not real utility vehicles should be outlawed.

yostrovs3• 5 years ago

I need my SUV, but I do wonder what you have that you don't need that we can outlaw without thinking about the consequences.

geonic2• 5 years ago

I don't doubt that there are some legitimate use cases for SUVs. The problem is all the people living in cities have virtually zero need for an SUV. Since it is absolutely unfeasible to require people to provide proof that they need an SUV before purchase the only way seems to outlaw them.

The massive push for EVs while simultaneously allowing car manufacturers to build larger and larger ICE SUVs seems stupid and counterproductive.

crocodiletears• 5 years ago

Stricter occupant safety and emissions requirements incentivise the development of larger vehicle platforms.

kgin• 5 years ago

Electric SUVs will be coming very soon. Two of the first vehicles using GM’s new EV platform rolling out in 2022 are SUVs.

smileysteve4• 5 years ago

Something missed in the conversation, because the Honda CR-V is a smaller platform than the Honda Accord; the facts for storage capacity or seating aren't there either.

If we really examine the differences at a fact level, the main child(ren) factor is really the height (not having to bend over @ a car seat). A small convenience, and a convenience that points to Americans continuing to have less physical mobility.

Anecdotally, I do think more people are complaining about the difficulty of squatting down to my sedan seats.

bool3max2• 5 years ago

SUVs look cool. That's why. They are also somewhat of a status symbol.

People buying SUVs are cancelling out climate gains from electric cars

Related Stories