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Comment by spywaregorilla | Hacker News Reader

Pickups are more of a rural thing. They're hardly normative in urban areas.

You'd think, right? Because very few people in urban areas have a real need for a pickup. But I live in a large city in the US, and I'd estimate that 20-40% of the vehicles I see on the road are enormous pickups like this one [1]. And I think this is fairly typical in most US cities.

[1] https://www.ramtrucks.com/ram-2500.html

It depends on where you go. I tend to see more pickups in cities in the U.S. South (dualies on the freeway with no trailer? Really?). More people with something to prove down there I guess.

Maybe where your familiar with?

Last I lived in Calgary, trucks were absolutely the norm.

>That's especially true in Alberta, where 89 per cent of spending on new vehicles this year has gone to trucks, vans and SUVs. That compares to about 80 per cent, nationwide.

>"We're basically a truck market," said Denis Ducharme, president of the Motor Dealers Association of Alberta.

SUVs and vans are very different from trucks

>"We're basically a truck market," said Denis Ducharme,

And, I mean... I lived there. Saw many more trucks than anything else on the road.

https://www.calgary.ca/roads/conditions/traffic-cameras.html

Traffic camera feeds suggest this is not the case by a long shot? I don't have a particular stake in this race though.

In the past 20 years or so we’ve seen the emergence of car-based SUVs and minivans, but large (and at one time, all) SUVs and vans are trucks with modified bodies.

They're a long shot from the big lifted pickups though

Car-based SUVs are not like trucks. All of the full size trucks sold in NA have SUV counterparts also on the road, and they are exactly like trucks.

For example, the Wagoneer is the SUV version of the RAM.

The Suburban and Tahoe are the SUV versions of GM trucks.

The Land Cruiser, Sequoia, and Lexus LX are the same platform as the Tundra.

Etc.

Automakers don’t do one-off light trucks. They are all shared platforms.

Not when you're on a scooter, I would think.

Having been to both (but not having driven a scooter in Atlanta) I'd suggest scooting around Paris is very different than scooting around Atlanta.

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