Comment by jack_tripper | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jack_tripper | Hacker News Reader

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>Where is "here"?

Austria, central Europe.

>the ones I see while living in one big European city

Except that statistics don't give a damn about what you see in your city. In 2024 54% of vehicles sold in EU are SUVs.[1] And indications point to 2025 being 57% in some months.

Which matches what I see where I live with a lot of Tesla Model Ys and BYD SUVs. Plus, Volvo only makes SUVs, which should tell you why SUVs are becoming majority.

Also matches the purchases I see amongst my acquaintances where their wives push for bigger cars for perceived safety of their family so they all got SUVs.

>it's on the smaller side (e.g. a Renault Captur, not a Escalade 8 wheeled 65ton)

Now you're moving the goalposts to what a SUV is. A Renault Captur is still classified as a SUV, which is what I was talking about. Don't try to spin this around just because European SUVs are smaller than US ones.

[1] https://www.jato.com/resources/media-and-press-releases/euro...

> A Renault Captur is still classified as a SUV, which is what I was talking about

It can be classified as a fighter jet, it's still a moderately sized vehicle and it's barely bigger than the Renault Clio it's based on. It's a compact SUV. Almost none of the negative points of Americans style massive SUVs or trucks apply to it - it has good visibility, doesn't have a flat front to mow down pedestrians, doesn't weigh double what it should, doesn't consume absurd amounts of fuel.

So my original points, that the average cars in Europe are drastically smaller than their American counterparts, even when they're SUVs, still stands and is even confirmed by your source.

And the fact that Volvo decided to only do SUVs, while having a sister brand for EVs (Polestar), is pretty irrelevant.

Are you considering subcompact crossover SUVs SUVs because the letters are literally in the name?

Not sure what you mean, I'm considering the statistics

The original comment was that the cars are Clio/Golf sized instead of SUV-sized.

You countered that SUVs and crossovers are outselling other categories, but subcompact crossover SUVs like the Captur, Yaris Cross, 2008/3008, etc are, in fact, Clio/Golf sized.

So whatever statistics you're considering, if you're going just based on "type contains SUV" without considering size, then you're missing the actual important part.

If you're going based on your link's content, it also says:

"Compact SUVs (C-SUVs) were the most popular type within the category, accounting for 42% of total SUV registrations last year, followed by smaller models (B-SUVs), with 36% market share."

So that means that about a third (64% of the 54% number you're quoting) of vehicles sold are SUVs larger than the Clio/Golf size they mentioned.

And since this whole sub thread started based on a comment about vehicle sizes, it's not "moving the goalposts" to talk about the actual size of the vehicles being sold.

Of course, one could argue "it's SUV sized if it has SUV in the class name (regardless of compact or subcompact)" but I think that would be willfully sidestepping the point.

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