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Comment by WJW | Hacker News Reader

I always got the impression that the vast majority of the F150s are never used as trucks either. Americans just like really really big cars because fuel is cheap there and none of the cities are old enough that big cars are impractical.

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Obviously it doesn't affect the electric vehicles but light trucks being excluded from CAFE def did a lot to acculturate americans to always buying a big car

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SUV#1980s_to_1990s

This seems to have kicked off a bit of an arms race. Smaller cars are more dangerous to drive as other cars get bigger.

No, the F150 has great sales numbers but this is mostly due to commercial/work use. And commercial buyers need trucks that can tow, haul, be fitted with large toolboxes, booms/cranes, winches, plows, etc. The F150 electric solved none of those problems.

You're dismissing a cultural aspect of the popularity of trucks in america. There is way more trucks in Texas than say in Indiana, or Massachusetts on the road. Texas is one of the only states where people still drive hummers. They're not all doing off-roads

The f150 did all of that. Range may have been an issue, though.

The chevy/gm ev trucks have bigger batteries.

Yeah my neighbor has a Sierra EV truck and he claims 500 miles range towing a camper, which I doubt but he loves it. He's all-in on EVs, has a another car as well and solar on his roof to help charge them.

Yeah 205 kWh is a huge battery (and charging at 350 kW is faster than anything else except a semi). But I doubt the 500 mi number too. Maybe he was going downhill.

You need a 250 or 350 class truck for a lot of those uses - plows or heavy loads for example.

Well that's true. Loads of F150s in service as work trucks though. Potentially many could be EVs but the added cost and need for charging infrastructure for a fleet works against that.

Plenty of our cities predate cars. We were able to bulldoze walkable neighborhoods to build highways through them because of racism.

Big cars are certainly impractical in SF, but it's more due to parking than anything else :)

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