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I hate the huge SUVs you see all over the roads, I have a 2021 Seat Leon FR PHEV hatchback, and around here the Kia EV9 is really popular.
While not as large as the stupid Ford F-150s, the EV9 is fucking huge.
The bonnet of an EV9 reaches almost up to my Leon’s roof:
https://www.carsized.com/en/cars/compare/seat-leon-2020-5-door-hatchback-vs-kia-ev9-2023-suv/
It should be illegal to have a car with the headlight at the eye level of a driver of a standard WV Golf type car.
Bonnet height for private vehicles should be tightly regulated, they are a key contributer to lethality in car accidents yet increasing every year. I could imagine some steep increase in taxes (at least at purchase if nothing else) the further you deviate from a defined reasonable height. People do care about money, make lethal asocial choices more expensive.
WV
Ah, the Wolksvagen.
station wagon superiority
i need an electric station wagon goshdarnit!!
Back before any good electric vehicles I drove a station wagon and I was following all the EV news in the hope of converting it to electric (the V6 ecotech was thirsty).
There was an Australian consortium of car industry companies proposing that the Australian car industry could continue, specialising in electric muscle cars, and their demo was the sedan version of the same model as mine
That came to nothing
Then there was the US company AC Propulsion which was producing kits for converting a car to electric, but the lead acid batteries of then would prevent the car carrying a load
That got funded by Musk and became Tesla. Tesla has never made a wagon
I think Chinese Volvo sells a wagon, but I don’t really need one anymore
Convertibles and coupes are also a dying breed.
I really want a large electric station vagon, or even better an electric camper with decent range.
Hopefully its just a few years away.
this is the only new car I would consider buying. Of course, if they did offer it in my market, it would be full of touch screens and spyware, so I still wouldn’t buy it
tbh this is why i am still following that “Slate” EV Truck
A truly minimalist vehicle that not only doesn’t have a touch screen, it also doesn’t have a stereo system, a cellular data uplink, gps navigation, or even power windows (you can technically get power windows if you want to opt for them but the others are Bring Your Own Tech)
of course, i’m not putting any money down until the day i can actually get in and drive one off the lot MYSELF… been too burned by vaporware products -_-
this thing though, at the very least, feels like it might still be LIKELY because it’s a minimum viable product single purpose tool:
It is a MACHINE
that turns ELECTRICITY
into GOIN’ SOMEWHERE
And That’s It.
NO MORE, NO LESS!I’ve been tempted by a FordRanger/MazdaB2000 over the years. still am
I have a wagon. It’s rusted to shit. I should have taken better care of it, but I didn’t realize how difficult it would be to replace when I bought it nearly 10 years ago. I just bought a slightly smaller wagon, with a little less towing and hauling capacity (both power and space and capability). a little pickup would be a good way for me to still be able to tow some slightly heavier loads safely, and have some of the “this is a just work vehicle” capability. but until then, we’ll see how the smaller wagon handles the utility trailer. mostly just worried about braking, I’ll have to lighten the max load a bit. this new car is a 2012 and basically rust free on the frame. I’m hoping to make it last until cars are inoffensive again. or at least far less offensive
Here in Australia there’s the new Deepal E07 which is a weird and interesting concept. Looks like a sedan / truck / station wagon all in one.
It doesn’t look like a wagon. There is no d pillar
I love mt Subaru Levorg (aside from its fuel consumption), I wish they made a new version with an electric drivetrain, instead they made the fuckin Solterra
I wish we got those in the US. I would trade my Outback for one in a heartbeat.
The Outback is cool too
I do love mine with the H6
VW ID7 was advertised as the new Passat stationwagen.
It ended up just being a standard sedan with more tacky LEDs on the outside starting at like € 70k
Yes! Me too. I think the only option at the moment is the MG5 here in Europe.
There’s also the Opel/Vauxhall Astra electric.
In the interim, the Toyota Corolla Touring Sports Hybrid is an excellent alternative. Versatile, spacious, fuel efficient, reliable, and dare I say quite attractive as well. The Toyota Prius V / α also deserves a shout out
Taycan Cross Turismo or Sport Turismo is incredible. It had better be for its sticker price tho. But they’re probably great on the used market.
There’s also the Opel Astra electric.
Not the 90s, return to most people not owning a car
Make cars a choice again. Not a necessity!
And watch car ownership rates plummet. Turns out most people would gladly save their car money for something else if they could.
Hell yeah, I want to have a horse and a wagon
I want rural people to have cars, and people who live in cities to not need one
Yes please!
Proper public transportation and maybe a bicycle would mostly do it
I agree completely, I forgot to add a “/j” to the my other comment XD
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Streetcars and tram lines everywhere!
Imagine a wagon with suspensions, it would be so sick (and i wouldn’t get
carwagon sick!)
Yes!
Finally a nuanced take in this community.
Cars wouldn’t be so bad if they weren’t so oversized
“Fuck cars”, like “ACAB”, is often a quick tagline to a problem people understand is more nuanced. I don’t think so many people here would literally like all cars in existence to be crushed in a heap.
I left reddit because I was apparently too anti car for /r/fuckcars. If this community becomes like the reddit diluted sub where people were making car apology and justifying their use, I’m going to be very disappointed.
I would really love that all cars in existence be crushed into a heap. It’s a fantasy and I know it won’t happen. I can compromise. But if most could be crushed in a heap, that would be very great too.
people were making car apology and justifying
Lmfaooo, car apologists… can’t stop picturing them as sentient things now, like Lightning McQueen at a press conference commenting on his recent scandal
I’d like that. Take however much chaos or inefficiency you think that day would cause, now imagine centuries of climate change.
Cars wouldn’t be so bad if they weren’t so oversized
And if there weren’t so many of them.
And if they didn’t pollute so much
Edit: oh and the traffic accidents of course! But aside from their size, the required infrastructure, their number, the pollution, and the traffic accidents, cars are totally fine!
Edit 2: And the noise! But other than those things…
And noise
Speaking as an American: And if there were realistic options to driving.
And if Americans could drive. Majority limply hold the steering wheel with one hand, more concerned with looking cool than being in control of their 5 ton truck of entitlement.
We suffer from decades of society built up around the assumption that Cars Are The Way, and infrastructure/systems built around supporting cars. Zoning laws that separate business from homes, funding for supporting car infrastructure but not public transit, etc.
What we have, we have because people profited from ensuring cars were the solution most people moved to, then spending that money lobbying for numerous initiatives to ensure life was extremely inconvenient if you didn’t have a car.
The solution is neither “accusing anti-car people of having so sense of what’s going on”, nor “accusing car people of blindly feeding into a bad system”. It’s gonna take holding industries and lobbyists to account, and sustained action by many concerned citizens across multiple venues.
Smaller cars will continue to kill a few billion animals yearly. They will also continue to kill around a million of humans every year, or about one human every 30 seconds.
The area covered by parking lots is mostly impervious and contributes to flooding as well as heat islands. Cars and parking lots make cities hotter and are worsening climate change. They also contribute to noise pollution. And no, electric cars are not better for noise because at highway speed they are as noisy as fossil fuel cars, and at low speed, their pedestrian warning system is also louder than fossil fuel cars.
I can be nuanced and understand that some people will always need a car, but most people in the world live in a town, a suburb, or a city, and the existence of the vast majority of those cars cannot be justified, whatever their size. Of course smaller cars are desirable. Electric cars are desirable A mix of electric and smaller would be better than status quo. But fewer cars is even more desirable.
The ugliest urban environments were designed around older cars, long before SUVs were the norm. Like you said, it’s not just the car, but also the infrastructure it requires.
I’d honestly argue the infrastructure is the bigger issue because of all the other shit it influences as well. The poor infrastructure is a massive factor in both pedestrian and occupant safety, it makes cities spread out and inefficient, which causes all the buildings to also be leff effecient (more walls exposed rather than shared with other buildings etc).
The scale and lack of established alternatives makes it very difficult for even a small city to make minor changes without extreme push back (speed cameras and bike lanes were made illegal on province wide scale in my area, making it hard for a city to make improvements to cycling and speeding).
This hasn’t even touched on the environmental factors, road noise, or maintaince budgets. The infrastructure is the biggest part of the problem, it has gone on long enough to let the SUV become so wide spread.
their pedestrian warning system is also louder than fossil fuel cars.
Hasn’t been my experience, not that I disagree with your overall argument. Might differ by country and regulations etc.
It does vary depending on the manufacturer. Some are pretty quiet. I can’t hear any Tesla “honking at low volume” when they pass by, but they probably just don’t comply with new regulations. I find Hyundai to be the worst.
I live in a tower at the intersection of a busy street with traffic lights and I can hear the Hyundai EVs while sitting in my couch when the windows are open. In fact, they’re open right now and I can clearly hear a Chevrolet EV decelerating before coming to a stop at the traffic light while I’m typing this. Toyota EVs are also pretty loud. Granted I can also hear loud and modified fossil fuel engines but most of them usually blend into a white noise.
When walking around the smaller streets of my neighbourhood, cars are going pretty slow and the noises of Hyundai, Chevrolet and Toyota EVs definitely stand out. It’s weird because I’m a pedestrian. I don’t have a car. I hate them. And I want them to be secure for pedestrians. But some of those warning systems are so loud and annoying that I wish they would just be quiet.
While I agree with your points, those of us in non metropolises need cars. Could we change to smaller cars and motorcycles and outlaw large trucks except for work? Yes.
I literally couldn’t live without my cars. Because I have a house out of town. And towns here are an hour apart
I suspect you and I are saying “fuck cars” for very different reasons
Does it involve dragons?
Cars also have become bigger because of safety standards and regulations. Like even small cars like a Volkswagen Polo have become larger than their 80’s/90’s counterparts while the interior space didn’t increase that much.
That doesn’t explain ever expanding legroom and cabin space though. Why is every new generation of car an inch larger in each direction? The human body isn’t on average getting taller at anywhere near the scale that cars are (though maybe we are getting a bit wider…)
No. Fuck cars.
In a surprising reversal, the meme got it right (SUVs, 90s) and the title did not (SUV’s).
Even when dealing with acronyms and numbers, " 's " indicates possession.
I mean this clearly shows how rectangular cars were back then, which is not great for collisions. They should at least stay round.
Also i read a discussion recently about how EVs are heavier due to their battery (and that’s supposedly bad for pedestrians when they get into a crash with the car), and i immediately had to think of how enormously overweight SUV vehicles are today, and people don’t complain enough about how enormously overweight SUVs are. In fact some people praise it and say that the heavy mass is good for the car-driver of the SUV because when they get into a crash, they’ll take less damage (while everyone around them takes more, btw).
Really shows how arguments are twisted and turned around when it’s the oil lobby that stands to profit from it.
In the case of SUVs, it’s not primarily the oil lobby, it’s car manufacturers. Put simply, they get to charge way more than the extra materials costs, for a “premium” vehicle. They’re making bank out of this shit.
Yeah, “cost plus” pricing strategy (link) means that you make a fixed percentage of profit. When you sell a vehicle for $200, you make $20 in profit (at a 10% markup rate); But if you sell a $400 vehicle, you can make $40 in profit. It’s crazy to me that they’re not just selling the same $200 vehicle for $220 to make $40 profit ($180 manufacturing cost), but that’s apparently the world we live in: People accept that companies can make more profit on higher-cost items.
It’s worse than that actually.
It’s not the same markup rate for a higher priced product. It’s a higher markup rate. Crossovers in particular aren’t much bigger than sedans and wagons. It’s only actual SUVs with off-road equipment (lockable diffs, 2 speed transfer case, etc) that cost significantly more to manufacture than regular cars.
Ditch cars
You’ll never convince me that SUVs don’t exist solely to sell what is effectively a minivan to deeply insecure men.
SUVs exist because they cost roughly $1,000 more to make but consumers are willing to pay $3-4,000 for an SUV than a car. That’s it. As always. The answer is our Lord, and savior - Money.
I mean, it might be small but it got worse gas mileage, was heavier and would kill you in a fender Bender.
Turning a corner was like opening a submarine hatch. The brakes locked up causing more accidents and deaths. The suspension allowed the cars to roll easier. And if you were hit by one of them, you had a much higher chance of severe injury or death due to the lack of crumple zone.
People really need to stop looking for solutions to modern problems by looking to the past at the things that were the reason we ended up with the modern problems.
you’re thinking 60s maybe, 90s cars had servos, crumple zones, even abs and tcs. maybe not the bottom tier ones, but it was def available
i was skimming the wiki page for crumple zone and they had simulations for the '86 vw polo
you’re prolly right on the fuel efficiency thoughAre you trying to say:
Wrong. 2005 was peak for cars.
I do like my crumple zones, but would like modern cars to downsize like they did in the malaise era.
Imagine if speed limits were variable based on a car’s weight and lethality. Only small cars are allowed to go fast.
Montana does this actually. Cars can do 60 for example, semis must go 50. Granted its not divided up for bro trucks and huge SUVs like it should be. Every state should. And speed limits slow down at night!
The proper big brodozers (F350 at least, not sure about 250) are legally limited to 90 km/h in my country because if total weight (that includes the legally allowed cargo + passenger capacity, but not towing capacity) is over 3500 KG, it’s considered a heavy truck and same regulations apply as for a big ass lorry lol
Thats good at least. They should be illegal for normal joes IMO. Or have to be used for work once a week.
I do have a truck myself. Only used for work. 8 ft bed. No ac or radio. A real work truck, not some fluffy bullshit Cadillac mom truck. And, my “truck” is still smaller than any of those pavement queens.
Bring back wagons!!!
It’d be a difficult calculation to make. Bigger cars usually have better brakes and wider tires and in sporty trim levels of premium cars those can even help them stop faster than smaller cars.
Audi RS4 with it’s sporty brakes, stops 1800 KG down from 140 km/h to 0 in 65 meters. Corolla 1.8 hybrid will do 130 to 0 in 66. Weighs about 1400 KG. Yes I cherrypicked it, but that’s the point.
The extra weight actually helps grip so that cancels it out somewhat.
And yes, you’ll be hurt more if you’re hit by a bigger car at the same speed - but speed matters more (energy equals mass times velocity squared after all) and if the bigger car is able to stop faster, that means it’s more survivable, assuming the driver or some driver aid system does indeed try and slow down the car - if not, then the heavier car is for sure more dangerous.
Bigger cars do WAY more damage. To pedestrians, the impact is higher on the body and far more lethal; and to other vehicles, well that’s obvious.
I think you’re right though, with simplified physics the additional traction does cancel out the additional momentum.
But wider tyres and expensive brakes actually don’t make a difference. More contact with the ground just reduces the traction per area, total traction hasn’t changed (assuming a smooth road). As for brakes, as long as they’re strong enough to lock the wheel, that’s enough. ABS helps a little, but expensive designs are only useful if you’re in a race.
Yet, performance cars with wider tires and bigger brakes (that don’t overheat and fade quickly) stop quicker than economy cars.
If they do that’s probably softer tyres and aerodynamics. Maybe suspension and weight distribution. Many factors anyway.
This is a nice thought, but if that older car hit a wall at the same rapid speed as any of those modern cars, everyone in it dies while the people in the modern car walk.
Well, not so much walk, but crawl on a pool of their blood racking up $$$$ cost to be paid by their families over the various future years of the rest of their lives…have a crash? Surprise! You’re a slave now! No need to thank me for saving your ass! Oh by the way, that left nipple is gone, and well, we removed the entire thing, but we did re attach your penis and your vagina… Oh…what do you mean passenger? Ah that does explain the extra legs. You know what, you need to rest, well talk later, again, no need to thank, K bye!
…Huh? I was talking about the crumple zones and modern safety features.
Yes me too. Those allow you to survive as a slave… High insurance, ambulance, hospital stay, meds,therapy… the other guy’s Chevy Malibu convertible super charged turbo powered rear window cleaning system with real live 2D naked Lady decal.
If you just die, that’s it, nothing to pay. Your quarter is over and daddy has no more quarters, but you owe nothing. If you survive, you’re screwed.
People in modern 5 star cars can expect to walk away from collisions that will kill everyone in a 1980s car
And I mean walk. They will have no injuries worse than bruising
Though the trucks often have the same tech, so they don’t suffer much more
Oh, that Ford Escort model was truly Fix Or Repair Daily.
God, how bad it was. The shittiest and most unreliable car I ever had.
My grandad had one, a 1.4 “Eclipse”. Granted he was a mechanic and very handy at fixing his own cars but that thing was super reliable. Now the Orion he got it to replace was another story, utterly useless hunk of crap. Technically the same car but still…
I enjoy my small shitbox (2007 KIA Rio5 hatchback) and wish I had a smaller shitbox to commute in
One of the biggest perks is the fact that my little shitbox is FIXABLE by sane people with standard tools! No special tools, parts are literally everywhere, and all the parts are DIRT CHEAP. The engine is in Hyundais and KIAs from 1989 to 2011. If it’s a 1.6L 4 cylinder made by those 2 companies it’s the same engine between ALL OF THEM.
EDIT: The biggest difference is the exhaust routing. The midpipe on the Hyundais is straight, the KIAs it’s got a bump.
It was always an american disease from my perspective. But it slowly infected Europe. Now every goddamn household drives a fucking huge ass minibus/truck/Fucking Hummer sized family wagon to work.
The worst part is when they take up so much parking space that the lots next to them are practically unusable because they fuck you, I needed this bigass milonstertruck for casual commotion.
