Comment by Someone1234 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Someone1234 | Hacker News Reader

Space requirements for families have also increased. Which is rarely discussed when talking about why more people are buying SUVs.

Car seats are a legal requirement. Most take up more space than a fully grown adult and due to additional padding/side impact protection, keep growing. So a family that needs to fit three kids across, only really has the choice of SUVs or more expensive Minivans (the cheap/fleet tier Minivans cost the same as low end SUVs while being worse/outdated designs).

So why do people buy SUVs? Higher ride means that more of the car's internals can be pushed out of the passenger compartment (particularly the rear seat/trunk) and they have a wider Axle track meaning longer seats. Which is conveniently exactly what car seats and strollers benefit from. Meaning they're great family cars.

The continued rise in trucks is more due to the Crew Cab-style becoming functional, and them being used as a family vehicle as well as utility (e.g. moving, dump runs, DIY projects, etc).

Without even trying to understand why people buy these vehicles, the discussion largely turns into moralizing. People have good reasons on a whole. They don't need to be using a Crew Cab truck exclusively for work for it to make sense, or an SUV for off-road adventures (most SUVs cannot off-road anyway).

> Space requirements for families have also increased.

Wouldn't that be offset by the falling birth rate in the US? [1]

> So a family that needs to fit three kids across

The size of the average household or family hasn't appreciably increased or decreased since roughly 1985.[2]

> People have good reasons on a whole.

They're cheaper than anywhere else in the world, and people feel safer in them. They're reasons, but not especially good ones.

1. https://www.npr.org/2019/05/15/723518379/u-s-births-fell-to-...

2. https://www.statista.com/statistics/183657/average-size-of-a...

> Wouldn't that be offset by the falling birth rate in the US?

So because the birth rate is lower in aggregate, people with three kids don't exist? Or that they should need less space somehow? I don't understand the relevance to either the post you replied to or even the article itself.

Seems like you're responding to a point nobody made, including yourself.

> They're cheaper than anywhere else in the world, and people feel safer in them. They're reasons, but not especially good ones.

Why did you even reply to a post when you're ignoring what it said? If you want to grandstanding about this topic, by all means reply to the thread as a whole. That's what top level replies are for.

Why reply to a specific post if you have no interest in discussing that post's content or ideas? Nothing you replied to even came close to being relevant, I'm not even sure you read the post you replied to.

> people with three kids don't exist

There are fewer of them today than there used to be. I was responding to your point that "space requirements have increased" by showing that on average they have either stayed the same or gone down. And yet sales of big vehicles are at record highs. Which means not everyone (maybe even most) who's buying these things today actually has 3 kids.

A minivan handily beats almost all SUVs in both space for people and space for cargo, while generally being more efficient. Which are the good reasons for choosing an SUV over a minivan?

Price/value.

Minivans are expensive, selection is limited and there's not that much competition. If you want a crossover or midsize SUV the opposite is true.

In my experience, a midsize SUV doesn't really have any more space for child seats than a Prius does, though.

I agree that SUVs are preferable for child-hauling, but if you select car seats carefully for slim ones you should be able to fit three across in a sedan. Specifically, I know a Prius can handle two Diono Radians plus an Uppababy Mesa. I recommend those to anyone worrying about fitting enough car seats in their car.

How have space requirements for families increased when average family size has decreased?

The average size of a family member has increased?

They called out the increasing size of car seats specifically and I can attest to that. The increase in size being driven by safety, not child size.

> Space requirements for families have also increased.

You tryin to say we're too fat?

> So a family that needs to fit three kids across, only really has the choice of SUVs

All 3 of my kids fit with booster seats in my 2005 Prius (deceased) or Ford Focus EV. The 5 of us regularly go out in the EV. It even worked when I had 2x slim carseat (Diono Radian) + booster.

why would you use a business vehicle to transport a family

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