The Ford F-150 has been America’s top selling car (not just truck) for a long time. So lots and lots and lots of Americans buy pickup trucks.
And when I'm not doing that, it's basically a spacious luxury vehicle on the inside. What's not to like?
The deaths and injuries caused from allowing any average person to drive a vehicle with a 6’ high hood with massive blind spots on crowded public roads.
Here's a video demonstrating frontal blind zones for several cars/trucks: https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/14/21065319/suv-truck-front-...
Many have a comparable cabin to SUVs for two rows. So essentially if you buy the "Crew Cab"-style you're buying an SUV but instead of a traditional indoor trunk, you have a much more flexible outdoor one.
I'm not saying everyone needs a pickup truck, but what I am saying is that it makes just as much or as little sense as a similarly priced/sized SUV, and maybe more in certain circumstances. Even for non-pros (assuming a smaller/cheaper pickup, like the F150).
I've lived in both places, and in Europe the default assumption is that you'll have no way to transport stuff (e.g. Ikea furniture, large TVs, DIY supplies, etc) so everyone offers inexpensive delivery. In the US, a lot of places won't deliver or it will be expensive so either owning or having a family member own a pickup is very valuable.
It is one of those things you cannot know until you live in the US.
But cars have tow hooks, and IKEA and the hardware store lends you a trailer for free. Or you can rent one for $20 for a few hours. Where in Europe do people not want to use trailers? I (Sweden) wouldn't buy a car without a tow hook, because they are hard to resell.
This is what I don't get about pickups: all the time that I'm not hauling stuff I'm still hauling around that big space.
Granted, towing a trailer to get a sofa from IKEA isn't the best experience either, but it seems to be pretty good compromise for aerodynamics/cost/weight.
By that logic you'd buy a vehicle with no trunk, since you're hauling around that "big empty space." Or a vehicle with only a single seat for when you have none or fewer than capacity passengers.
You're just arbitrarily distinguishing an outdoor trunk space from an indoor one, and claiming one is wasteful without actual justification. If anything an outdoor trunk has less vehicle side panels, glass, mechanics, and weight therefore less drag: Making it more fuel efficient for its relative size.
The complaint reads like: "It is different to here, therefore I assume it is wrong."
As I said I've lived in both for tens of years, what is popular in the US makes sense for the US, and what is popular for Europe makes sense there too. Without considering the big pictures (e.g. size of roads, size of homes/apartments, parking, quality of public transport, etc) it is difficult to grasp.
It's a compromise for all vehicles obviously. Ideally you'd want one that didn't have those empty seats - but that's not practical. If you want to minimize weight/drag/cost/fuel consumption while at the same time hauling x cubic feet and 5 people, then that is an optimization problem. I don't know what the optimal solution is, but I doubt it looks anything like the traditional pickup (A cybertruck possibly comes closer). The optimization problem becomes differeent if you add more constraints, for example ability to tow X thousand pounds.
> an outdoor trunk space from an indoor one, and claiming one is wasteful without actual justification. If anything an outdoor trunk has less vehicle side panels, glass, mechanics, and weight therefore less drag:
Drag is a shape coefficient, not a weight coefficient. Most modern cars, even SUV's, have drag coefficients in the low .30's. Most pickup trucks don't come close, even in marketing values (One of the lowest claimed values is the Ram 1500 with .36, and the Cybertruck will be lower). An F-150 is north of .50 in testing [1]
[1] https://thenextweb.com/plugged/2019/12/02/heres-how-the-cybe...
This is a very valid point.In Europe the default expectation for anything that weights more than 10kg is that someone will deliver ro your door and most often put it where it need to be( furniture, washing machine). That's why I don't know a single person who has a house and needs a pickup truck. In the worst case scenario, people simply hire a trailer,which solves 99% of transportation issues. Also in Europe,most things are close to you and a thought of driving two hours for some shopping is almost surreal.
There's also those fold into floor seats in some minivans, and you can buy a correctly sized mattress online to turn them into a sleeper. They're definitely very comparable to cargo vans in Europe, and I've seen small businesses use them as delivery vehicles with no modifications.
For example: I would not _ever_ haul chicken manure in my Toyota Sienna (even if I'd haul some muddy mountain bikes post-ride)
But I wouldn’t want one as my daily driver.
The biggest downside to a truck is frankly meh fuel economy. The F150 for example is currently 21 city / 28 highway, which in 2020 is not competitive (e.g. Subaru Outback/Nissan Rogue get 26/33, and Toyota RAV4 26/35).
Creature comforts are comparable to SUVs, the driving/handling is "fine," and while the prices start out higher because they sell more there're more deals to be found too.
I could see myself driving a hybrid Crew Cab-style truck.
Also if you want to haul toys like jetskis, boats, quads, motorcycles, campers, you need a truck. Tons of rural americans have those.
Countries often implement backdoor protectionism through things like vehicle emissions regulations.
In America, the American auto makers weren't competing effectively for anything smaller than an SUV - and when CAFE standards were set, requirements for SUVs and trucks were made much laxer.
And the auto companies' marketing responded rationally: If you're paying for the hero in a movie to drive one of your vehicles, better make it the SUV or truck if possible.
Europe, meanwhile, had auto makers who were disproportionately successful at making diesel cars - and promptly set emissions standards that were barely possible to achieve unless you knew that everyone else was cheating and you needed to cheat too. And decided tax gas and diesel by volume, when diesel happens to have 20% more energy per unit volume and higher emissions.