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Comment by abe_m | Hacker News Reader

For a given size, they are aero optimized. While a Honda Fit is more efficient than an Suburban for almost all people in almost all driving situations, few people want to buy a Fit relative to bigger SUVs. The car companies can only sell what people will buy, while also having meet the CAFE (or similar regs in other countries). While some people love to bag on car companies for building trucks and SUVs, they only do that because a huge segment of the culture has decided those are the desirable vehicles to have. If that wasn't true, the F150 would be as popular as a Blackberry. Given that market constraint, the car companies have to optimize the fuel mileage on the oversized vehicles.

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Car companies build big trucks and SUVs because the fuel economy rules are more lax. Rather than try to squeeze more efficiency out of what they had, they simply built bigger vehicles and turned on their marketing engines to convince everyone that’s what they needed to be safe and happy.

People should really be pointing a finger at the government. Their regulations backfired and they haven’t done anything about it.

That's not entirely true. The most common 1500 or 150 sized "half-ton" trucks are included in CAFE and do affect the fleet fuel economy rules. It is the heavier 3500 or 350 and up "1 ton" trucks that are considered commercial and not included in the CAFE fleet fuel economy requirements. If you can take 1 MPG off the fuel economy rating of a half-ton truck, the auto manufacturers are all ears and ready to buy if you can prove it on the drive cycle. They are motivated to optimize the trucks where they can, while still having a salable product.

But the desire for larger, taller vehicles in North America wasn't all about fuel economy relaxation either. The minivan replaced the sedan and station wagons as family cars in the 80's, and cross over SUVs replaced minivans in the 00's. Even small cars of the 90's like Camarys and Civics ended up bigger and taller in the 00's.

> The car companies can only sell what people will buy, while also having meet the CAFE (or similar regs in other countries).

I’ve met actual contractors with overgrown SUVs/trucks who prefer a Prius. The big trucks are macho, but they suck for loading and unloading. A couple weeks ago, I helped load some furniture into an Escalade. It’s truly remarkable how little interior volume the Escalade has compared to how large it is. And have you ever looked under a modern overgrown vehicle? They are high off the ground, and they may rock the approach, breakover and departure angles, but check out all the suspension components, the axles, and the differentials hanging down below the wheel axis! All that height buys very little usable clearance if you’re driving over crap.

I think Telo is on to something (although they seem to be nowhere near having a vehicle to sell). The automakers are largely not selling high-capacity, efficient, easy to load vehicles. They’re all over Asia, though.

Real big SUVs like Escalades are certainly for "status" and vanity for the most part. I'm no fan of driving pickup trucks personally. I'd rather drive a car. But that isn't where the market is. The best selling vehicles for personal use in USA and Canada are big.

That is still orthogonal to the earlier claim that aerodynamics are irrelevant if you're just going to have any oversized vehicle anyway and style should be promoted. Particularly on the luxury end of the spectrum aerodynamics are even more important as they directly go to road noise and handling. If you have poor airflow, you get turbulence, and turbulence is loud. If there is a bunch of lift generated at speed, the steering can get twitchy, and feel unconfident on the highway. It takes the luxury out of the ride if you sacrifice aerodynamics for style.

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