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Comment by throwaway0a5e | Hacker News Reader

Yup. It's hilariously naive to think that as GDP goes slowly up over time (with the occasional dip) people are gonna somehow accept lower standards of living, smaller cars.

Society just doesn't go backwards in terms of living standards unless there's literally no other choice and forcing it backwards artificially is not something people will take kindly to.

Given a sufficiently strong government you might be able to get people to suck it up for awhile but that "awhile" is gonna end with a lot of people getting shot.

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>lower standards of living, smaller cars.

Associating smaller cars with « lower standards of living » isn't exactly universal.

Not everyone lives in big cities without snow and without kids.

Being bigger doesn't automatically make a car better at snow.

A family with kids probably has more than one car, and probably only needs one big one.

> Being bigger doesn't automatically make a car better at snow.

Huh yes it does. Especially 4x4 and higher to the ground which are two qualities SUVs and trucks tend to have compared to "normal" cars.

> A family with kids probably has more than one car, and probably only needs one big one.

First of all that's not true, it's pretty much 50/50 if there's only one car or not and it mostly depends on budget, work location and schedule. Also, people with families tend to bring with them more stuff than what can be put inside the trunk.

I bet a small car with 4x4 will beat a big car without it under most snow situations. And you don't need all that much ground clearance for snow in most of the US.

Saying bigger vehicles "tend to" have 4x4 is not a counter to what I said.

There are plenty of "regular" cars with 4x4, and mini SUVs. There's even a little Fiat Panda 4x4. Just because the US market is dominated by large SUVs and trucks doesn't mean that there's something inherent about that.

Small 4x4 cars tend to cost way to much for what they provide (that transmission and two differentials take place!) and again, clearance under the car is very important to not get stuck (which can happen one-two weeks)

Snow tires make a far bigger difference than anything else and yet people rarely get them. I drive my Camaro year round in MN.

Hard disagree. I've got a couple identical wagons (same model, year and everything) and one of them is optioned AWD while another is optioned FWD. The FWD one gets snow tires every winter and it's still the crap one of the bunch. I bet if I constructed some tire commercial-esque test where I compared handling on a literal ice rink it might win but in real world driving conditions (snow under 6" that's been churned into partial slush by the melting action of road salt and the last bunch of cars) it's still second place.

I am comparing some of the cheapest all-seasons on earth to some of the cheapest snow tires on earth in a vehicle platform that was renown at the time for having one of the most effective AWD systems so if I were to compare high dollar all seasons to high dollar snow tires in a vehicle known for having particularly bad AWD the results may be different.

Tire quality makes all the difference. If you value traction and safety, please don't skimp on tires. Buy the good ones, the difference in braking performance alone is massive.

Spend some time in actually wintery places, like the north of Sweden/Norway/Finland, or Siberia, and you'll find most people don't drive large vehicles. AWD and snow tires make a far bigger difference than raw size, and plenty of SUVs are utterly terrible in winter conditions.

Scandinavian countries tend to have moderate climates due to marine currents warming the air. Siberia is poor AF.

I am guessing that you haven't been to the north of any of the Scandinavian countries I mentioned. Stockholm is indeed pretty moderate. Luleå in winter, not so much. Svalbard, not moderate at all.

I drive an "old" e-golf with the kids all winter. No problem with winter tires (no studs).

We have a free market, this isn't the DDR were only one car was sold.

SUVs and pickup trucks sell. A lot. Yes even in the cheaper segments- you can buy a new SUV for under €25k. Clearly people like them.

People will often make choices of accepting an inferior product for vastly cheaper price. So yeah it is possible it is about how many choices you have and what are the different costs for each choice.

This is in the form of not having the latest and greatest where suburban families might buy used 5-10 year old large sedans and SUVs instead of a comparable small car from 2019. If Americans were fine with smaller cars, they'd buy more smart cars and MINIs, but that isn't the case.

Either we all accept smaller cars, or the earth's climate becomes incompatible with human life. Your call.

I live in a city that likes to call itself progressive, near an major arterial. There have been no significant changes to the way its traffic moves in 20 years. During the first couple months of Covid, with a lot of businesses shut down, there was a noticeable traffic reduction. But since mid-summer there's been as much traffic on Saturdays as there is on weekdays. And most of the newer cars are no smaller (every 10th one is quieter).

Short of putting Greening on a wartime-footing - massive incentives for change, including gas-rationing - I don't see the end of the tunnel-vision. The home-heating elephant in the room gets no press.

The earth’s climate will not become incompatible with human life in the next 500+ years in the worst case climate models. Where did you even get that idea?

Something tells me humans will let those 500 years pass without doing anything.

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