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It's hard for me to look at the absolute domination of US roads by enormous vehicles and not think that part of the reason people don't want small cars is because they're unable to see past the big ones and are also quite concerned about being crushed we're effectively subsidizing very large vehicles while punishing small ones and it's completely insane but KYOON I'll agree that you also see people just insist that there's a market here for <random thing> with nothing to really back it up other than they, personally want it and that's very common and annoying too.
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May 16, 2024 22:01
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Leperflesh posted:It's hard for me to look at the absolute domination of US roads by enormous vehicles and not think that part of the reason people don't want small cars is because they're unable to see past the big ones and are also quite concerned about being crushed I am 100% with you on this one as well, the on road arms race for vehicle size is very real, plus CAFE, plus condition of roads is kind of crap due to our crumbling infrastructure. hypnophant posted:I don't disagree with any of this but I don't think it is enough evidence to say americans wouldn't buy foreign-built light trucks if they were made available at the market price, and I think foreign imports of cheap trucks would ultimately collapse the market for american medium trucks in the same way that it has collapsed the market for american sedans. Ford doesn't offer any sedans or hatchbacks any more, chevy only offers the malibu, stellantis has the chrysler 300 and a couple muscle cars and that's pretty much it. I don't think that foreign competition directly killed the domestic sedan. Later domestic sedan product from Ford was pretty compelling. The problem is, it takes the same plant capex to make a lower margin sedan versus a higher margin CUV. Why would you pour money in to R&D of a less profitable platform and then capex in to a plant to build it when margin is king? The factors above are also very real in the overall demise of the sedan. Domestic manufacturers are just the most aggressive - the Japanese and Koreans are building CUVs like crazy.
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May 16, 2024 22:06
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What's the point of buying a sedan these days? I feel like the SUV or CUV design is just far superior and they now get acceptable gas milage.
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May 16, 2024 23:11
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:The problem is, it takes the same plant capex to make a lower margin sedan versus a higher margin CUV. Why would you pour money in to R&D of a less profitable platform and then capex in to a plant to build it when margin is king? In the absence of protectionist tariffs and de facto protectionist regulations, would the f150 be able to maintain its margin against real competition from imported light trucks? that's a key part of my argument - like I don't think you can make cars and light trucks with enough margin in north american production, but if market-distorting regulations weren't bloating sales of the f150 i'm not sure you could make any mass-market autos in NA profitably. re subcompacts, the fit never did that well in australia either - it's not a convincing argument that there's no demand for compact pickups in the US, but i can see how it would make the japanese makers balky Gucci Loafers posted:What's the point of buying a sedan these days? I feel like the SUV or CUV design is just far superior and they now get acceptable gas milage. SUVs suck to drive
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May 16, 2024 23:14
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Gucci Loafers posted:What's the point of buying a sedan these days? I feel like the SUV or CUV design is just far superior and they now get acceptable gas milage. it is categorically worse for everyone to have commuters driving themselves by themselves in 6000lb vehicles when a 3000lb vehicle would do exactly the same job and use less fuel, also be less dangerous to pedestrians, use less resources to make, be cheaper to maintain, and as someone pointed out, put less wear & tear on the roads SUV/CUV designs are great because the carmakers have poured their development dollars into them because they're very profitable, not because it's an inherently better design for a vehicle that moves people around also the difference in size has become more of a continuum, the best-selling "SUV" is the Rav4 which is really just a boxy sedan that weighs 4300lbs, the best-selling sedan is the Camry which weighs 3500lbs as a "midsize" sedan, they get similar mileage because they have similar weights basically full-size SUVs do not get "acceptable gas mileage" though, the Chevy Tahoe with the 6.2L gets 14/20, the best Tahoe is the 2WD 3L that gets 21/28. This is garbo compared to most reasonable sedans. to answer your question though, the 'point' of buying a sedan over a light CUV these days is to make an insignificant gesture in the face of macroeconomic forces we have no direct control over, as if it'd change anything.
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May 16, 2024 23:37
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Definitely getting far afield, but I do kinda want to buy a maverick fx4, think I can get everything I want on it for around 33K, and it would prolly be a great vehicle for my kid in a few years. Except that my 20 year old F150 is still running pretty drat well, and it would be kinda dumb to get rid of it when it's working fine. See, light truck buyers are just too practical to make any money off of. You definitely gotta go for the people going massively in debt churning 100K jeeps every couple years.
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May 16, 2024 23:55
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Yeah most SUV are really CUV which is just a funny looking station wagon with a weak lift kit OG Rav 4 had a lot of parts overlap with the toyota sedans of the era
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May 17, 2024 00:05
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lol the maverick fx4 gets 40mpg city... 34 highway still that's impressive for a midsize truck (I know we call these "light" trucks in the US now, but it's been some kind of shift in terminology and I don't like it. My S10 is a light truck at 2700lbs. Today's "light" trucks are mediums IMO.)
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May 17, 2024 00:09
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your S10 is possibly longer, depending on configuration. maverick has the normal hybrid fuel economy curve plus the additional curse of bad aero which really kills highway fuel economy. All cars are a lot heavier in large part because they are safer.
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May 17, 2024 01:14
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my S10 is dead, and has been waiting in my driveway for me to admit it for like six years now. But yes it's a "sierra cab" which means it has two tiny fold-down jump seats, and it's a long bed which means you can actually put real work things in it. When it was in good running condition the small block chevy 4.3L v6 got around 22MPG or so, it's a 2WD which is fine. Basically the perfect truck. Obviously lacking in all manner of safety features that we need and I haven't used it for anything besides runs to home depot or the garden center for years, but it was cheap to insure and maintain until I had to do the transmission and then not long after it was burning oil and basically the engine has 220k miles on it and needs to be rebuilt it might actually be worth rebuilding it, even though it's rusty and has numerous other problems, because the resale value has climbed from something like $1000 seven years ago to something more like $6k+ today.
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May 17, 2024 02:19
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:All cars are a lot heavier in large part because they are safer.* * against similarly oversized vehicles, exclusively for those in the car; for everyone else or for smaller vehicles, they're significantly more dangerous
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May 17, 2024 02:30
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Having had to have meals with extremely wealthy japanese gearheads and mouthpieces for japanese car companies, the feeling I got is Japan wants hydrogen to work because Toyota wants it to work and Toyota wants it to work because they didn't want to do electric. There are an inordinate amount of businesses, mine included, where upper management/board of directors can be stared in the face by what the future of the business needs to be and refuse to adapt. Often what can save these businesses funnily enough is key people aging out/dying and the turnover being less a stone wall.
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May 17, 2024 03:14
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Leperflesh posted:it is categorically worse for everyone to have commuters driving themselves by themselves in 6000lb vehicles when a 3000lb vehicle would do exactly the same job and use less fuel, also be less dangerous to pedestrians, use less resources to make, be cheaper to maintain, and as someone pointed out, put less wear & tear on the roads I don't see how it's significantly worse? Modern SUVs or CUVs, like the Honda CRV Hybrid, weighs 3,500 pounds, while the alternative, the Honda Accord Hybrid, is only 3,200 pounds. The newer hybrid models, like the CRW, get 36 mpg in the city, which is insanely good. I understand there's a danger to pedestrians, but this can be mitigated with technology, such as sensors or cameras. The pedestrian detection system on my Accord rental actually works. While full-size and older SUVs are indeed terrible, I don't think it applies in a general sense. And this is America, where people often travel long distances and need to haul around kids, dogs, and other stuff. hypnophant posted:SUVs suck to drive True but does that matter for the majority of drivers? Not really.
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May 17, 2024 04:41
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If you want to specifically talk about hybrid light/compact SUVs, yeah they're not hugely worse. But Americans buy a lot of full size non-hybrid SUVs and if you just ignore them you're not really comparing "SUVs" as a category to "sedans" as a category.
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May 17, 2024 05:09
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Barudak posted:Having had to have meals with extremely wealthy japanese gearheads and mouthpieces for japanese car companies, the feeling I got is Japan wants hydrogen to work because Toyota wants it to work and Toyota wants it to work because they didn't want to do electric. Somebody somewhere on these forums in the last six months insinuated that someone in the Japanese government bet big on hydrogen and lost, but we're gonna have to wait for him to die, lest his honor be compromised in any way. I have absolutely no proof to back any of this up, but on the surface appears to be the correct answer. Japan's hydrogen strategy gets billions of dollars and nobody can figure out to what benefit. Nobody else is doing it In other news, you can buy a low mileage Toyota Mirai (hydrogen car) for like, less than $10,000 in California. Nobody will touch those things
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May 17, 2024 06:14
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I think the funniest part is I had to meet their mouthpiece writers/economists/thinkers/etc. for their hydrogen and not a one had any answer for their very simple question I asked of "If hydrogen is so great, why aren't consumers buying it?"
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May 17, 2024 06:25
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I wonder how Japanese automakers feel about China taking the crown with EVs. That has got to be tough to swallow.
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May 17, 2024 06:28
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Gucci Loafers posted:I wonder how Japanese automakers feel about China taking the crown with EVs. That has got to be tough to swallow. Not well, if you want the answer. In a very funny Detroit getting blindsided by cheaper quality economy focused cars kind of way, too.
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May 17, 2024 06:30
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Gucci Loafers posted:I understand there's a danger to pedestrians, but this can be mitigated with technology, such as sensors or cameras. The pedestrian detection system on my Accord rental actually works. Can you show on the graph of skyrocketing pedestrian deaths in the US how this technology is actually helping? These cars are clearly killing people in huge numbers, and handwaving it with "technology solves this" is really weird.
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May 17, 2024 07:26
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My car specifically will emergency stop for pedestrians when traveling below 25mph I haven't personally tested this but I have it on great authority that the Germans have mostly figured this out
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May 17, 2024 08:39
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Orio posted:Can you show on the graph of skyrocketing pedestrian deaths in the US how this technology is actually helping? These cars are clearly killing people in huge numbers, and handwaving it with "technology solves this" is really weird. If you are making the claim that larger vehicles are cause of increasing accidents, I'd be more than happy to read it. It's still a serious issue but the newer safety equipment in cars is very, very real. My gut tells me it's not about size but how terrible roads are designed that are simply to close to pedestrians and people in the US don't take driving seriously.
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May 17, 2024 11:27
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I gotta see if I can find it but I used to have a graph of collision rates in the US and you could see a very distinct inflection point when the iPhone was released. Before that, collisions were steadily decreasing due to technology and redesign of infrastructure. Then people got a handheld internet fun box and started crashing a lot more. Bigger vehicles change the point of impact and have more blind spots, but the problem is mix shift and behavior not the vehicles themselves. CP, a modern CR-V is probably less likely to strike and fatally injure a pedestrian than the 2003 version. The problem is the person who swapped in to a more dangerous vehicle class, and who is also busy tiktoking on their phone while driving or whatever. Edit: larger vehicles are almost certainly one of the factors driving increasing pedestrian fatalities but not the only one for sure KYOON GRIFFEY JR fucked around with this message at 11:41 on May 17, 2024 |
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May 17, 2024 11:34
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From a little research I found an economist article detailing japans usage of hydrogen for industrial processes, mostly steel production. It mentions 20 years worth of Japanese automotive research but doesn’t give a size of the incestment. https://www.economist.com/business/2021/07/24/japan-inc-wants-to-become-a-hydrogen-superpower
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May 17, 2024 11:35
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Leperflesh posted:my S10 is dead, and has been waiting in my driveway for me to admit it for like six years now. But yes it's a "sierra cab" which means it has two tiny fold-down jump seats, and it's a long bed which means you can actually put real work things in it. When it was in good running condition the small block chevy 4.3L v6 got around 22MPG or so, it's a 2WD which is fine. Basically the perfect truck. Obviously lacking in all manner of safety features that we need and I haven't used it for anything besides runs to home depot or the garden center for years, but it was cheap to insure and maintain until I had to do the transmission and then not long after it was burning oil and basically the engine has 220k miles on it and needs to be rebuilt   People love my truck and I have lost count of the number of times random people have come up to me in a parking lot asking if I'd consider selling it. spf3million fucked around with this message at 15:26 on May 17, 2024 |
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May 17, 2024 13:22
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Gucci Loafers posted:. The newer hybrid models, like the CRW, get 36 mpg in the city, which is insanely good. 36 city is not insanely good for a modern hybrid. I've got recent model year prius which routinely gets in the mid-50s city driving. I've got a 15 year old one too that equally routinely gets in the mid-40s. 36 is acceptable, and frankly I think it should be the minimum in a couple years. But it isn't insanely good by any measure other than "better than a land rover I guess"
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May 17, 2024 13:53
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spf3million posted:
That car is awesome and I hope it serves you forever.
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May 17, 2024 14:13
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Not directed at anyone in particular, but as we're talking about fuel efficiency, keep in mind that MPG is a somewhat misleading metric to use. Moving from 17 MPG to 20 gives a larger reduction in fuel used per 100,000 miles than moving from 35 MPG to 50.
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May 17, 2024 14:30
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Americans everywhere are demanding BEV El Caminos Wait, just me?
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May 17, 2024 15:49
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Agronox posted:
Stop posting my dream car.
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May 17, 2024 15:56
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Agronox posted:Americans everywhere are demanding BEV El Caminos Hyundai is making a ute for the US market, but sadly its ICE 
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May 17, 2024 17:14
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drk posted:Hyundai is making a ute for the US market, but sadly its ICE That bed could barely hold the average americans snacks for the day
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May 17, 2024 17:37
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thats what an ute is, fundamentally. not a work vehicle
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May 17, 2024 17:40
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Ok this has been a fun derail, but let's keep it focused on economics.
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May 17, 2024 17:45
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removed
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May 18, 2024 01:56
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