The World Is Embracing S.U.V.s. That’s Bad News for the Climate | Hacker News Reader

The World Is Embracing S.U.V.s. That’s Bad News for the Climate

nytimes.com

17 pointsIntronExon34 comments

I've noticed a growing number of people at my work's parking lot seem to have giant trucks, the type that barely fit into the parking space. Given that they work in IT (as everyone in the building does), I wonder why they need such large vehicles.

When my kids get bigger, I'm getting a Fiat (or something small). Seems like it would be more fun and less hassle.

Living in the South, this is all too common. All time favorite was a lawyer, had a lifted F-250 such that the lower bar was about crotch height on my 6'3" frame. It's a "display of virility." The look at me, I'm a real man. I smoke Marlboro Reds and write C++.

Fun Fact: With the rear seat down, a Honda Civic can fit reams of 2x4s just fine, with the trunk closed. I've done it plenty.

Any chance you can fit a 4x8 sheet of plywood into a Honda Civic?

I can probably do it in the Miata, just gotta put the top down :D

Based on the "barrier" between the trunk and rear seat, likely not. You could fit it about half of the way in, and tie it down. Alternatively, Thule racks make it easy to haul over-sized lumber with a sedan.

Is it common for people driving sedans to need to carry 4x8 sheets on a regular basis?

Your rant reads a lot like "stop liking stuff I don't like." Who cares if your coworker likes lifted trucks?

The entire article is about people liking stuff that is bad for the environment. I suppose the reason we care is because the environment affects all of us.

The call out of "virility" has what exactly to do with the environment?

On the road it feels quite different driving a big truck and a small car, let alone a motorbike or a bicycle.

Trucks are safer to ride in than small cars. They have more utility than small cars. Your coworkers may want to have a vehicle that has the ability to do something. Parking is a bit of a hassle but as long as you don't have solid traffic, they're fine to handle. Small cars are more fun to race. Trucks and Jeeps are more fun to run trails.

Has virtue signalling become that bad in HN that this perfectly fine opinion gets downvoted?

I see zero responses to it with the stats disproving his assertion.

If you think something is down voted inappropriately, just silently upvote it. If you've got additional substantive material to add, by all means do. It does no good and is against the guidelines to comment on the downvotes.

> "Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Thanks, I'll try next time.

The sea of gray I see lately doesn't feel right.

Yes, it has.

HN is about one step above high school in that regard.

Not necessarily. Historically (though I couldn't find recent hard data in 60 seconds of searching the nets) cars have been safer [1][2], and in particular, less likely to roll over in an accident. Furthermore, when a SUV or truck collides with a car, it's more dangerous for the occupants of the car than in a car-to-car collision [3].

[1] https://www.trucks.com/2017/03/15/pickup-trucks-struggle-saf...

[2] https://www.quora.com/Statistically-are-you-safer-in-a-lifte...

[3] https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/news/2013/05/suvs-are-sa...

Full disclosure: the last transport I owned was a 2001 Toyota Tacoma pickup. My current transport is the London Underground.

> Given that they work in IT (as everyone in the building does), I wonder why they need such large vehicles.

It's perfectly feasible to operate a small farm on nights and weekends.

I switched from a RAV4 to a Fiat 500. I will admit I sometimes miss the old vehicle, but day to day the Fiat is just so much more enjoyable to get around in. It's quick, agile, and fits in spaces that others won't attempt.

On the very rare occasion that I need something bigger there are always hire options. The difference in running cost is appreciated as well.

Conspicuously missing is any attempt to put a number on how much greenhouse emissions would be saved if people who bought SUVs had bought sedans instead.

Also: if SUVs are 30% less efficient, it’s the same as someone who chooses to live 10 miles from work versus 13 miles. That’s a difference that wouldn’t even register in conversation much less warrant a New York Times article.

I thought driving distance and speed were both targets of the New Urbanism movement? I would certainly support efforts to reduce them.

Driving into the city from the exurbs versus taking public transit, maybe. But even New urbanization would find it hard to get worked up over someone driving in from a slightly further suburb versus a slightly closer suburb. SUVs engender disproportionate reaction because of visibility.

It's a bit easier to choose what you drive / commute with than where you end up living.

But the problem with that is that the basic assumption is that less energy usage means better for the environment ... except of course ...

First of all, that flies in the face of economic logic. Specifically Google "Jevon's paradox" for an explanation. So first of all, this reasoning just isn't true.

Second, you want to use things that cost less energy ? That's easy : use the cheapest possible thing. By necessity it will have less energy usage, since energy still is the major cost in pretty much every product.

But when you look at the Green movement, you see the exact opposite. The Green movement has very little success among the poor. It's a rich person's game ... and so they have plenty of products they push, Tesla's for example, that are absolutely not good for the environment, but are a high-cost way of "proving" you care for the environment, which of course is a very good way of achieving the exact opposite.

Is 30% a reasonable number, though?

Isn’t that number closer to 80% for most modern sedans?

As someone who moves a lot of computer equipment around, the sedan was painful to work with. So I'm definitely attached to the RAV4 if mostly for the hatchback trunk and fold down seats. I don't have one, but hybrid RAV4s are on the market now.

About 20 or so years ago, the big knock on SUVs was how dangerous it supposedly was for a much heavier vehicle to crash with a "normal" vehicle, e.g. a compact car. Does that hold any weight?

I think it depends what you're crashing into. Anything robust and stationary you're probably worse off. Fatal roll-over crashes were significantly worse for SUVs in the 90s, but I believe modern SUVs are now much safer.

Accord to this graph (http://bestride.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/deaths-per-ve...) the safest vehicles seem to be large cars and midsized SUVs. Pickups and large SUVs seem really dangerous. With that said, consider the role of each class of vehicle: Large cars (station wagons, vans) and mid-sized SUVs are all likely "family cars."

Crashing with a very large vehicle (semi scale) is still incredibly dangerous.

Most SUVs are not even close to semi scale though. Large pickups (1-ton) are about ~7000lbs, more if loaded. A semi maxes out (by law) at nearly 80,000lbs, fully loaded.

Crash technology has improved so much in 20 years that I would bet the risks posed by large SUVs is negligible, especially compared to a semi or similar.

You may find this interesting.

https://www.fmcsa.dot.gov/safety/data-and-statistics/large-t...

Yes, I'm sure that it's so. I mean, it's basic physics. There's more mass, higher center of gravity, and sometimes more ground clearance. So in collisions, the velocity and direction of the SUV change less, and it tends to ride over smaller vehicles. All of which are bad for them.

On the other hand, those are all selling points for SUVs. In places with bad roads, especially ground clearance. That's why VW bugs and Ford pickups used to be so popular in Mexico, as I recall.

Why haven't SUVs fallen prey to the soccer Mom curse yet? Station wagons and minivans fell out of fashion because they were family vehicles. That's what SUVs are now, yet they're still cool.

They're cool among soccer moms doing school runs and javascript developers. "Chelsea tractor" is the common ephitet, I think. Give it another 5 years and they will go the way of the minivan in the US.

(Problem is China, where they love to warm up US trends from a decade ago, and amplify them hundredfold...)

I predicted the same thing about 10 years ago. I believe we'll both be right, eventually. But I'm afraid that your 5 year estimate is too optimistic.

Or just buy a Model X. :p

Well, they're 2300-2500 kg. That's about the same as large SUVs, given the battery weight. Tesla Model 3 are 1600-1700 kg, vs 1200-1400 kg for compacts generally.

Maybe make a hardened Tesla compact. Add more batteries in the front, plus a serious steel space frame, and depleted uranium armor :)

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