I wonder if this is completely true. There were quite a few electric vehicles around 1900 while cars with diesel engines were rather uncommon at that point in time.
France required identifying plates as early as 1783 for horse carriages in various form and then made it standardized as of August 14, 1893. Germany followed in 1896, to keep track of its growing vehicles. First state in USA, New York, required registrations as of April 25, 1901. And Britain required them as of January 1, 1904.
Not sure that you really should. Or that you were incorrect. The 'rounded year 1900' was the very onset of both vehicle conversion to horseless, and the onset of registration legislations, but not necessarily its enforcement. It's reasonable to think that compliance will always trail behind regulations.
But in the grand scheme of things, we've never had more horseless cars in circulation than today, in 2020. The electric ratios of 1900 we're talking about are rounding errors by comparison to today.
But what I find fascinating most of all that it's been a hundred years and we're having similar conversations, again. Hundred years ago there were massive arguments about traffic pollution in the cities. However, it revolved around horseshit in the streets. People welcomed the newfangled gas belching cars and hailed them as the clean wave of the future.
According to wikipedia, the first diesel car sold commercially was in 1933 (Citroën Rosalie). "In history" can probably be seen as relative to that.
Most electric car companies were bankrupt before 1920, however I would be surprised if not some application survived, making your statement technically correct.
Sounds like good news, but... the way the headline reads, gives me some disquiet.
Diesels gained popularity as the more eco-friendly, efficient car, justifying their higher price tag. Then it turned out to be a lie. Now they are replaced by the more eco-friendly, efficient electric cars.
What part of it is a lie? It's only a lie if you have been indoctrinated by EPA because of hegemonial car politics in the US favouring gas.
Diesel still is more efficient than electro taking the whole supply chain into account. The lack of efficiency of e-vehicles is only justified if you have a "I do not care about efficiency" power source = the sun. And even in that case its questionable if the required ressources to produce, distribute and refurbish batteries will ever outcompete the production ressource requirements of carbon fuel.
Not to speak about that you can pour every diesel in every car, this is not true for car batteries.
Electric beats diesel even on the current UK grid mix which still heavily relies on natural gas. This is far from "not caring about efficiency". It just turns out a centralized big turbine plus electrical distribution is more efficient than ICE in every vehicle.
I fully understand the thermodynamics of ICEs and that every electric motor in a car is easily more efficient in converting power into torque.
However the efficiency of converting sun into electricity is around 35%. While driving your car carries a heavy battery of 100es of kilogramms which can only store 1/3 of energy per volume compared to eg. Diesel.
So in my calculation the net efficiency of diesel is higher.
Every study that looks at total carbon emissions for a vehicle's lifespan, including manufacturing batteries for EVs and drilling/transporting the oil for ICE (whether gas or diesel) has EV coming out on top. The first year the ICE wins quite handily, but the EV chips away over time and after 3-4 years (depending on the local grid and driving habits) is a net carbon reduction.
Plus the ICE vehicle is the cleanest it will ever be on delivery day. Even with modern catalytic converters and engine management ICE vehicles will start to use more fuel and emit more particulates over its lifespan. EVs get cleaner as the green decarbonizes.
Then take into account that ICE worst case scenario for carbon emissions is around town, stop and go traffic, which is what most passenger cars spend their lives doing. It also happens to be the EV best case, since region braking makes the most out of the available energy.
I don't understand what measure of efficiency you are trying to use, in which Diesel would end up being better.
In environmental discussions that measure is usually something of grams-of-CO2-equivalent emitted per km. One oddity is that the usually communicated figure is only that emittted 'at the tailpipe', which is obviously zero for full electrics. Often people try to compensate by taking the kWh-per-km figure and multiplying by the CO2-per-kWh figure for their environment. This is however still misleading if compared with the tailpipe CO2 for an ICE, because the production of gasoline or diesel are also fairly CO2-intensive.
The official term of use is well-to-wheel efficiency or emissions; there is no doubt at all that electric vehicles beat ICE vehicles easily, basically on account of the ICE being relatively inefficient because of size/performance constraints.
Obviously the actually interesting figure of merit is the lifetime emissions (and the 'useful work' gained from those emissions) and while methods and tools to compute this exist computing this in a reasonable way means making a lot of assumptions (such as the miles-per-lifetime), assumptions that will be easily attacked on internet fora, and assumptions that can easily be tweaked to show what you want to show.
The reality is that (full) electric vehicles are practical and efficient for most of the population today, if not in the very near future, and that it's hard to imagine that the current dependency on oil will last very long. Ten years is a long time.
I'm hopeful that electric cars are the saviour, and don't know of any reasons to think otherwise.
It's more that last time we had the eco-friendly saviour of Diesel Cars given to us, it was also rosy, until it wasn't. For example, British cities have way-too-high levels of NO2 pollution, and this is usually attributed to diesels. And not nice to live through, truth be told.
Britain has great difficulties making any restrictions on motor vehicles. Only London has any significant restrictions.
Look at the map [1] where many mid-sized German, Dutch and some Italian towns restrict old/polluting cars from being used.
Meanwhile, British cities talk a lot, but delay any implementation until the following year. Fuel duty has stayed the same for 10 years, but public transport fares have risen every year.
The lie was cheating on their emissions test that was estimated to haves 5000 premature deaths a year. Of course, the EU hegemon would rather enforce vague definitions of "competition" on American tech companies. Renault, which cheated on emissions got a $5 billion bailout instead.
Local air pollution caused by Diesel engines is a real issue in many European cities where Diesel was embraced. The big picture matters of course, but you can't discard smaller scale issues either.
Diesel engines are usually significantly louder too.
They're absolutely more efficient cars (relative to petrol), and arguably still the more "eco-friendly" - but that's not a well-defined term.
They exhaust high amounts of nitrous oxides (high-temperature lean combustion - same thing that makes them efficient!), and particulates (hard to evaporate and burn the fuel in the few milliseconds where power is made), which are bad for anything living by a major road, but don't hang around in the atmosphere for more than a few weeks. I've seen limited evidence of regional effects, but certainly not the global, centuries-long effects of CO2.
However, it did that at the cost of increased local air pollution. That doesn't matter much in the countryside, or for long distance goods transport, but it does matter in cities.
How would it be physically possible for BEV to be terrible for the local air like diesel? I could see lies being peddled, and yes there is a bit of tire and brake dust of course, but that doesn't warm the atmosphere. Overall, diesel just seems much dirtier than Bev.
Note that the majority of particulate emissions from traffic _aren't_ from the power train. The fact that BEVs are heavier than the vehicles they replace means tyre, brake, and road wear are all worsened. In terms of particulates (and local air pollution), they're a marginal win if they're a win at all.
It wasn't a total lie, it turned out some diesel vehicles were much worse than others. I seem to remember Renault and Nissan were particularly bad but BMW and Land Rover were very good. We threw the baby out with the bath water.
Having said that I have little doubt EV's are a better option for the majority of uses.
No, the majority of French households are using gaz.
The reason France faces power cuts could be because they recently shut down a nuclear powerplant (which is a non-sense considering nuclear doesn't emit any CO2 and we'll have to buy coal electricity from Germany instead...)
What? In Germany, they tell us we have to buy evil nuclear power from France ;)
And the rise in EV sales is because they're being subsidized left and right, including installation of wall boxes with 900 EUR. It's antisocial, though, because you've got to own a house in the first place. And so is the ongoing exodus of producing small cars in most of EU's car industry because of draconian Euro 7 emission requirements impossible to meet at a reasonable price point; ie. the enormous cost of maintaining roads being financed via taxes are only benefitting those who'll be able to afford long-distance EVs and undesired (from CO2 PoV) e-commerce/road logistics.
Sorry about that I didn't know about its reputation, I took the first link in English Google gave me, but the basic fact comes from an official statement anyway.
No problem at all. Sadly we have quite a few of these style of tabloids in the UK.
Many of the negative, highly polarising affects of social media that people complain about today have been visible in certain segments of the UK press since the Westminster Gazette invented the term in 1901...IMHO. :(
Only because the state is throwing money at it like crazy. No taxes on EVs. Subsidies to the tune of 10000€. Per private purchase. There are certain types of lower end EV (like Renault Zoe) that can be purchased effectively for nearly free right now.
which state? this article is about europe as a whole?
>No taxes on EVs. Subsidies to the tune of 10000€. Per private purchase. There are certain types of lower end EV (like Renault Zoe) that can be purchased effectively for nearly free right now.
big if true, please point me towards this subsidy because I would like a free car
In Romania, we have a gov-funded program[1] that subsidizes up to ~9300€ off the price (but not more than 50% of its price) of a new electric/hybrid car, when you trade in an old car. Some conditions apply.
nitpick. there are two programs. "rabla plus", the 9300 euro one, applies regardless. you can receive an additional 1300 euros through the "rabla" program if you trade in a car (which will be discarded to the junk yard). this second subsidy applies to any new car purchase.
No one (or rather, very few, where a carbon tax exists) is paying for the externalities of burning fossil fuels (a subsidy), and jurisdictions are rapidly moving to outlaw new combustion vehicle sales (California by 2035, the UK by 2030, etc).
If enough jurisdictions enact a hard deadline ban, automakers will have no choice but to rapidly retool for EV only manufacturing. We’re right at the precipice of the inflection point. Pushing for these deadlines in a few more large markets will push us over the edge.
Obligatory ask: If this is important to you, contact your government representatives and demand a timetable for combustion vehicle phaseout in your jurisdiction.
It's because the current car industry and all of its supply chains are so dead crazy efficient, that the government can no longer squeeze any taxes out of the business without disrupting the circle.
Therefore a new, way more inneficient industry is required, which will become very efficient of course over time. Otherwise there would be no growth, measured in GDP. There is no profit in commodity unless you are a monopolist. Which the car industry given the large-scalre mergers of the past is increasingly becoming.
I don’t think this is the case. Imho, it’s a matter of EVs requiring fewer moving parts and much less labor for manufacturing and ongoing maintenance, which is going to cannibalize existing organizations, supply chains, labor arrangements, etc (not to mention related job losses in petroleum supply chains as demand for vehicles wanes). This, in turn, will cause government to have to do “real work” to manage the transition (so that you can attrition citizens out at a rate where you’re balancing cost to the nation against quality of life for those who don’t have a career path anymore). Very similar to the coal industry phasing out.
It’s going to be beautiful for the planet and humanity, but devastating to entrenched interests.
That’s not paying for putting any of the CO2 emitted back into the ground. Maybe it’s paying for roads, or directed to a general fund, but it ain’t covering the cost of climate change caused by the emissions.
The government receives revenue from gas taxes, and they spend money on EV incentives and renewable energy, so in a way the taxes do pay for reducing CO2 emissions.
AFAIK the fas taxes are mostly paying for infrastructure (mostly roads) and often they often don't cover the costs. This is the reason why some countties are introducing similar charges for EVs. Now you could argue it's a subsidy, but to mean it seems more like an oversight.
Bit off-topic perhaps, but he SUV popularity remains baffling to me especially in this age. That's maybe because I'm looking from the wrong angle or I'm just wrong when it comes to physics. In general I see a pretty big car with a rather big front with flat parts and a high wheelbase. So in comparision with a more 'normal' one that means the user pays extra per mile because of the additional weight and wind resistance?
So what makes that extra cost worth it, why does this type of car thrive so well? Is it just looks (I think they're ugly but that's irrelevant)? Is it the 'everyone has one' effect? Does it handle better perhaps? More on-topic: will the energy problem come into play when transitioning these cars into the EV-space?
edit to clarify, seeing the comments regarding hard to reach areas etc, where an SUV does something useful: I'm talking standard Western European countries here with mild climate, hardly any snow, i.e. no use for 4WD or so.
In the US fuel prices are low enough to just not worry about the difference in fuel consumption. Especially for people shopping for the $40,000+ models. Several thousands gallons over the life of the vehicle or so.
Yeah, but this article is about Europe, and SUVs make up over 40% of new registrations. Mind you, the typical "European" SUVs, while bigger than other European cars, are midgets compared to what someone from the States would call an SUV.
I don't think many people in Europe really prefer SUVs, perhaps it's just the best type of electric car that is on offer or maybe the one with the biggest subsidies.
Of course I speak from my point of view as someone who was raised in The Netherlands. In The Netherlands I never saw many SUVs on the road.
Elon Musk is actually contemplating [0] to produce smaller EVs for the European market and I think those could become very popular indeed. Smaller cars are generally just nicer to use in compact crowded cities.
>I don't think many people in Europe really prefer SUV
Oh I think you're wrong, there's definitely a significant market for people who prefer SUVs, electric or not. This is not new. After all most of these European urban SUV are really neither S or U, they're just SUV shaped.
I remember watching a French TV show about cars maybe 15 years ago where they were talking about the growing popularity of SUVs, and back then diesel was the norm.
That's very true, there's a shop on the outskirts of Paris that specializes in selling import American cars (a booming business apparently) and never having been to the USA I was genuinely amazed at the scale of the vehicles. It's the first time I saw a "car" that was basically as tall as I am, and I'm not small. Everything truly is bigger in America. Since then started paying attention to the size of the vehicles in American-produced media and I realized how absolutely huge cars can be over there.
I was also remembered of an HN thread years ago where people were commenting on the failure of Smart cars in the US. Many Americans were basically arguing that the car was too small to feel safe in traffic, which sounded a bit silly to me, but now that I know that every other car in the US is closer in size to a tank it makes a lot of sense.
I can only speak for myself. I have a second home in a remote area with a very bad gravel road. In winter, when there is snow, I was frequently unable to get there.
Then I bought a SUV. It's a 4WD with and ample trunk. Now I can use my property to my liking according to my job time constraints rather then weather conditions.
But I sense your sub-sonic tone. I think the vast majority of SUV owners lives in a city with perfect snow removal in winter (if there even is snow at all) which hardly justifies owning such an ineffective car.
He gave a practical reason. Take a second to introspect if your moral outrage might be envy in disguise. It is very easy to rationalize these things and dress them up nicer than they really are.
People like you are the reason why "green" & "sustainability" get a bad rep.
"Why even enjoy anything? Why even drive? Why even go on vacations? Why even eat meat? Why even have kids? Why even socialize? Why even live outside of the matrix instead of having all your entertainment & nutrients delivered directly to your brain/veins? Why even live?"
inb4 "no arguments": parent post isn't very heavy on arguments either, it's basically just passive-aggressive moralizing.
Yeah, I agree. But on the other hand, if someone is even willing to make an argument like this, that does tell you something about their personality...
Why would you even start anywhere? You don't need to start anything.
If someone wants to drive an inefficient car, let them enjoy it, or push for legislations that tax those cars, you are being judgmental without affecting real change.
> If someone wants to drive an inefficient car, let them
I don't believe I've stopped them. (If only it were that easy!)
No, it's a fair response to the the laiz a fair comment "in order to consume more than is morally acceptable (a second home, especially when others have none, but regardless), I need to drive an environmentally unfriendly car".
Until 10 years ago me and other 3 friends used to go snowboarding weekly, we live in Rome and the nearest ski stations are in Abruzzo, about an hour away in the central Italian Appenines.
One of the places we went more often is called Campo Felice, which is famous for its extreme weather conditions. Sudden snowfalls are pretty common and they can be very heavy.
But the main danger are temperature drops, sometimes temperature can go as low as -33 C, forming thick layers of ice on the roads.
We got stuck there a few times because either the car doors were completely frozen and would not open or it was too cold and the engine refused to start, not mentioning the suboptimal traction of our 2WD cars.
To solve the problem we put some money together and bought a used Fiat Panda 4x4 (https://i.pinimg.com/564x/b4/d6/dd/b4d6dd1544d24d3c8d73dadda...), it's an affordable 4WD with many features that rival with much more expensive cars (excluding of course the luxury stuff).
We never had a problem after.
The new model costs only ~16 thousand euros and it improves a lot over the old one which was admitedly quite spartan, but for me it was a feature not a bug.
Not commenting on the other parts of your post like others have, but
> Then I bought a SUV. It's a 4WD <...>
SUV doesn't imply 4WD. Most 4WD are SUVs, but lets not pretend that most SUVs are 4WD, or anything close to it. Most people buying Qashqai's or RR Evoque's aren't buying the 4WD models.
Perfect snow removal in winter in large cities means that your car will be sitting next to to a mountain of snow between it and the road if you park next to the sidewalk overnight. 4WD wins big time there.
I'm a huge fan of sports cars and cars that just plainly handle better on flat roads, but having a sports car that I truly enjoy driving versus my other car (a decent, recent SUV), the advantages with SUVs pretty quickly become apparent.
- Smoother ride over worse roads, especially under-maintained roads
- An extension of that point: more travel options. Dirt road? Sure, and the SUV probably won't get as dirty. Gravel? I can probably take it without worrying. Need to clear a curb? Doable.
- Better visibility, and that's even after factoring in everyone buying an SUV
- Marginal efficiency hit (like 10-15%), which most people ignore with electric SUVs anyway, but even with gas or diesel it's just not enough to stop people from buying anymore compared to when SUVs truly guzzled gas. As an example, I had a BMW from a number of years ago that my SUV today outpaces in average gas mileage despite unchanged driving habits and better engine output as well as increased weight for the SUV. People are essentially offsetting engine efficiency gains by buying more car.
- More car to absorb impact in the event of a crash.
I can see why people buy them even before egos start to get involved around just how big the cars can be.
> - More car to kill people with in the event of an accident
> Always keep in mind that accidents may involve a person on the other side.
This is self-negated with moves by the broader population towards SUVs. The end result is that SUV on SUV crashes will simply include more mass (structured to crumple more effectively as well) protecting occupants in all cars involved.
Your car buying decision should be strictly around your own safety. Your driving habits must factor in both your safety as well as the safety of others; if someone else drives inappropriately and causes a crash and their wellbeing is impaired or concluded as a result of both their driving habits as well as their use of a less safe car, the fault shouldn't be on you for having a car that's safer for you to drive. Perhaps that's what you meant to convey when you edited my quote.
The other person might not strictly be in a car, they might be a cyclist or a person simply walking around, so I don't think your counter argument applies.
I would also argue that centering your car buying decisions around your own safety is selfish and or egotistical; other people are just as valid as you and you should consider their safety just as much as your own, especially the traffic participants that are less able to defend themselves against bigger vehicles like pedestrians or cyclists.
> The other person might not strictly be in a car, they might be a cyclist or a person simply walking around, so I don't think your counter argument applies.
> I would also argue that centering your car buying decisions around your own safety is selfish and or egotistical; other people are just as valid as you and you should consider their safety just as much as your own, especially the traffic participants that are less able to defend themselves against bigger vehicles like pedestrians or cyclists.
If you're willing to buy a car based on the safety of others over your own, that's your right. But if we're being honest, everything you just mentioned is exactly why your active participation in defensive driving techniques is essential. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defensive_driving
Since crashes always have fault, defensive driving and proper maintenance of your car are paramount safety requirements both for myself and to pay respect to other people. However, beyond that, I'm buying my car based on an assumption that other people will not pay me that respect (e.g. by texting and driving), which is also precisely the point of defensive driving in the first place.
It seems like you're here mostly to force a debate. I made my point; I hope you're at peace with it.
I'm not here to force a debate, I'm merely pointing out the obvious. It is my right to buy a car in consideration with others, but honestly, it should be a duty.
> Your car buying decision should be strictly around your own safety.
That is a horrible, selfish attitude.
A car driver is absolutely responsible for their choice of vehicle, their choice to drive any particular journey, their choice to exceed the speed limit, text, phone, chat, and everything else.
I would ban the sale of any car/SUV not in the current top 75% by pedestrian safety. Set that as a baseline, and increase the minimum standard every 5 years.
> A car driver is absolutely responsible for their choice of vehicle, their choice to drive any particular journey, their choice to exceed the speed limit, text, phone, chat, and everything else.
Just their choices not to drive defensively (the portion I italicized in your statement). The car you choose may be based on specific requirements for life. And the journey you take may be all the same. Would you fault someone for not being able to afford a newer car? I picked a car that exceeds the latest pedestrian safety regulations; would you still grief me just because it's an SUV?
100% of the fault comes from how a person chooses to drive and keep their car safe (lighting, brakes, capabilities that allow them to drive defensively). I wouldn't rob someone of their choice of car because I don't know what circumstance necessitated it; it would be selfish of me to tell someone they can't drive a pickup when all of their work revolves around it.
>I would ban the sale of any car/SUV not in the current top 75% by pedestrian safety. Set that as a baseline, and increase the minimum standard every 5 years.
That's called stack ranking and everyone knows it's a crap system with perverse incentives.
That's a bit false feeling you are buying - 2.4 tonne SUV vs 2.1-tonne big wagon if we compare within the same brand and similar sizes (BMW X7 vs 5 series). That's insignificant difference in head-on crash. Crumple zones are +-same so again not a win. If your argument is tiny car vs the biggest then its not about SUV anymore.
SUV has much higher rolling danger in case of crash so better stretch your necks before driving...
> That's a bit false feeling you are buying - 2.4 tonne SUV vs 2.1-tonne big wagon if we compare within the same brand and similar sizes (BMW X7 vs 5 series). That's insignificant difference in head-on crash. Crumple zones are +-same so again not a win. If your argument is tiny car vs the biggest then its not about SUV anymore.
It's weird that I'm here defending SUVs when my favorite car to drive is a low-riding, low-mass dart of a sports car that's far more likely to kill me than the party on the other side, but here I am.
A lot of accidents involve wildlife. Deer where I live, moose in the European North. Big roadkill is pretty common if you live in the countryside, much more common than killing another person.
You are definitely safer hitting the fearless ton of meat that is moose with a SUV.
Where I live, not a ton of moose, though generally if the area is known for roadkill of large animals, you should try driving slower and maybe checking your headlights to make sure they are adjusted. Safer driving beats driving a huge car for the purpose of not having to safely drive.
I'm a very safe driver. When I go through the woods at night, I drive 40 or even 30kph. I've been part of a wild boar crash (southern german wild boars can get hefty), so I want to avoid future incidents.
It's not unrealistic to expect locals to drive safely. Either drive safely or hand in your drivers license, what's even the point of having one then?
> You are definitely safer hitting the fearless ton of meat that is moose with a SUV.
Any data on this? Bigger==safer doesn't always hold with these things. Lots of other car design features play a role there, e.g. a smaller car with a strong roof will likely beat a SUV with a weak roof structure.
(and while lots has happened with safety technology, the classic counter point is that if you have a chance to avoid the crash you're way more likely to roll an SUV while attempting to do so)
> a smaller car with a strong roof will likely beat a SUV with a weak roof structure.
The latter circumstance feels extremely unlikely considering SUVs are generally engineered to support the higher likelihood of more weight ending up on the roof of the car in the event of a roll-over. I'd be surprised if SUVs had weaker structural reinforcement than equivalent-classed sedans.
But I could be very, very wrong here and wouldn't be surprised if I am.
Good point. on the other hand I don't know how a front impact on the roof line compares to the loads in a roll (but I guess a roll at speed also has a strong horizontal force on the roof). What I remember from studies I saw in the past is that features like sunroofs make some difference. But the "we as lay people don't necessarily know", and intuition going wrong on other scenarios, was why I asked if there is a good source on that.
You sit higher up, so if you hit a large animal, like a moose, you don't risk it coming through the windshield. Having anywhere from 300-700kg coming through your windshield is going to hurt you. But that assumes you hit it.
But like you said, you also run the risk of flipping the car. It would be interesting to see some actual data on this. It's the sort of thing that has been repeated so much that it's easy to make bad assumptions.
Anecdotally, I've almost hit a moose two times. Both times I just completely froze up and slammed the breaks. They jumped out of nowhere, the only reason I didn't hit any of them was just pure luck and timing, and had nothing to do with my ability to react or steer away.
If you live in a mild winter climate, sure SUV popularity may be baffling. If you have to experience to winter of, say, Montreal, then an SUV/Pickup is a bit more justifieable.
An SUV typically handles better than (and is cooler looking than) a van, yet will still comfortably carry a family if that’s your life. Older folks with creaky joints like the height, so they don’t have to crouch into a sedan with its lower seats.
That last one is interesting, but the first argument works just as well for cars like Volkswagen Sharan etc which are also very popular and given all things perhaps cheaper?
A big wagon is still a better car - roomier, drives better than comparable SUV (lower centre of mass). If old/injured folks would be the only ones getting them, I would understand it. But that's not the case.
As far as justifying SUVs go... if you're looking for a nice car, subcompact SUVs cost pretty much the same as sedans while offering a lot more trunk space and nice features like electric seat adjustment, nicer center consoles, etc. that might not always be available on sedans.
In my case, my decision was made by the thousands of poorly calibrated aftermarket LED headlights I regularly see in the US. They blind me all the time in a sedan, but in an SUV I'm just high enough up that I usually don't get totally blinded.
I bet a lot of the owners are parents of toddlers. Getting a child in an out of a childseat is a great deal easier with SUVs. The extra cost in fuel is negligible for most people because they don't do mega miles.
Cars around you on the road get bigger so you feel more uncomfortable in your small car (just like some feel uncomfortable driving close to big trucks) so your next car will be a bigger one. I think this kind of anxiety is the reason for most people.
They should try a 2CV for a short while, then their small car would be just fine... (Fun car but the lack of power can get you in dangerous situations, like when people don't expect you slowing down severely going uphill. Noisy too.)
Also, due to increased thickness of doors and frames for safety, car interior space has shrunk over the last decades. So you need a bigger car if you want the same amount of interior space for your head/feet/arms/groceries.
And also (if relevant to you), regulations for children's car seats have appeared and increased so that, if you need to carry three kids, you pretty much need an SUV (or minivan) to do it.
Streets and garages don't get bigger though, so larger cars are increasingly uncomfortable to drive. I've wanted a Model X for a long time, but it's so much wider than the Model S that it'd take significantly more effort to park in my garage and to maneuver through Vienna's narrow and busy streets.
One good reason to drive SUVs in cities are the bad roads, sometimes worsened by speed bumps by the way.
I drive a RAM 2500 with a Cummins 6.7l diesel engine. Perhaps I can help provide some perspective. It’s a uniquely useful vehicle whose utility a regular SUV will never hope to approach. It’s my daily driver and grocery getter. My neighbors and I “time share” a boat in that they pay for the care and feeding of the boat, and I take care of shifting the boat when it’s on land. I never pay to have anything delivered. If it’s small enough to fit in the truck’s bed, I throw it in. If it’s bigger, I rent a trailer, and then sky’s the limit. I moved across the country with it using a 12’ long rented trailer, and it was a breeze. I carry my kayaks in the back - just throw them in, strap them down, and go to the water. Not a week passes without this truck enabling me to haul, tow, or drag something heavy or awkward. My wife’s car broke down, so I towed it using my truck and a rented car trailer to the repair shop. If I had a penny for each time I’d helped pull someone out of a ditch, I’d have enough to purchase a new set of recovery straps.
Let’s talk about some difficulties. It’s a temperamental beast at times. I live in the South, so I don’t have the “cold start” problem, but I don’t have an engine block heater either. So whenever I travel north, I have to take care. Haven’t had any real issues yet - the truck’s remote starter seems to fend for itself - but I’m wary of it. Repairs can be expensive, since all components are commercial-grade and are priced accordingly. Maintenance is more expensive, but it’s a much more rare event than in a gasser. Parking in an urban environment can be a pain. Parallel parking requires skill, and there are some multistory parking structures in which I will not fit. A little bit of upfront planning seems to alleviate these problems. The truck is loud, but you only really hear it when driving slowly between two large buildings. My neighbors don’t complain, especially since they benefit from it so much.
Oh, and I can smoke most other vehicles when doing a little Saturday night racing off a stop light.
I completely understand this, but your RAM and your use for it is nothing like the 40% of cars sold in Europe (apart from the 'just throw it in' perhaps but that goes for other types as well).
With all the modern safety regulations, sedans and hatchbacks need high belt lines that dramatically reduces the greenhouse. There is also a trend for huge wheels that make for harsh rides since tires have so little sidewall.
SUVs and crossovers have more tire sidewall and offer a much better ride around cities filled with pot holes and crumbing roads. The higher H-point (hip placement) means climbing up and in rather than having to lower yourself down, a much easier operation. The belt line is still high, but your seat is also higher, so greenhouse and visibility is better. Being father off the ground reduces the sensation of speed, so more timid drivers feel more confident.
Car markers also get much higher margins from SUV/crossovers, so they are pushing them hard. All the deals are for these big vehicles, so that's what people are buying.
Modern vehicles are so much more aerodynamic, so there isn't that much penalty for a crossover. They also share platforms with their sedan and traditional hatchback cousins, so there isn't even that much of a weight penalty. Tesla Model 3 and Y are the same vehicle underneath, and while Y pays a range penalty, it's pretty small at ~7% EPA.
The sad thing is it's the SUVs that make the roads crumble. It's extremely noticeable in the UK. The roads don't last anywhere near as long as they used to because of everyone driving these heavy things around.
Trucks (lorries) have always been on the road, though. They don't generally drive down country roads every day and stick to the motorways where possible.
It's a psychology thing. People feel less if they are sharing a road with somebody who is sitting way higher than them.
Also big cars feel (and probably are) safer (for the occupants).
So now there is a sort of race to for SUV adoption.
I don't have an SUV but I ride a motorcycle and it's true that being able to see over other vehicles is pretty nice, I feel oddly boxed in when I'm driving a car. But of course it's just an arms race at this point, if everybody has an SUV then the same problem occurs.
That being said, driving a small "urban" car in many european cities can be challenging (and parking even more so), I can't imagine that having a big SUV would be more pleasant overall if you live in a city.
I drive one, in the Netherlands, where the climate and road conditions are such that those are not a factor at all. The only reason I drive it is because it's so comfortable to sit higher up, and to have a better view of the road that way. It's comfortable to get in and out of (I'm 40 years old, work out several times a week, no mobility issues whatsoever - I still find it more comfortable). This is the second SUV I have, before that I had a tiny car and thought the same as you do, it was only once I started driving one that I started to see why people like them.
I don't think for transitioning to EV the form factor will be the problem. BMW will start delivering the first EV versions of my current car (X3) next year. For me, charging it where I live (city center) is the problem. Every time I see my neighbour roll his extension cord across the sidewalk I think 'no way I'm going to do that'.
Only to a degree I think - when you're sitting in a lower car, you can't view over other cars anyway. I guess you can see through other cars' windows, which is harder when the other cars are higher, like for me when I'm between several trucks. I don't recall that as being a 'problem' as such from when I drove a lower car. Maybe other people experience it differently.
Any junction where there's a lane on your outside, a person in a "normal" sized car is unable to see through into the junction.
For some reason, all of the traffic lights installed in my city now don't have a set of lights at the far side of the junction visible, so there is a fairly large window where you can be stuck with no visibility of the traffic lights in 2 lanes of traffic if you might have a filter light.
There's also rear view mirrors (big vehicle takes up more of my window, so I can't see if there's a bike coming)
Main issue I always had with SUVs is the lights. They all have way to bright xenon lights. When you drive a sports car (I drove a fiat coupe & a mx-5/Miata) in the dark you cannot see anything when a SUV is behind you.
Not to speak of opposing(?) traffic on smaller roads. I almost died several times ;)
This is argument of people that don't know how to drive well & safely. Maybe not tailgating every other car and just keeping the safe distance would be enough? It definitely is for me and my car is lower than average sedan.
If the person in front of you isn't driving like such an jerk that you need to be looking around them to predict their moves or to find a passing opportunity it's not really a big deal.
In terms of perspective a raised POV can generally help with visibility, independetly to how tall other cars are.
Or even how tall the windscreen is can be a significant factor, in my car it is so short that the rearview mirror covers a significant part of the street.
I can definitely see why people like them and thanks for being transparent about it rather than try to justify it with secondary reasons.
My only suggestion is irrespective of the environmental aspect is, do check the performance of your next SUV with regards to "Pedestrian Safety" crash tests (Also standardized by Euro NCAP).
Specially when you mentioned city center, and The Netherlands. The difference between a regular sedan and an SUV could be the difference between a kid with fractured legs or the weight of forever taking someone's life.
So what I am trying to say is: yes, "SUV" in general are likely to be worse for pedestrians, but there is so much variability, that "picking a SUV" doesn't mean much about safety.
I understand the concern but it is not based on comparable data.
A few things to take into account:
- The 67℅ in the test in 2016 for the Peugeot 3008 is based on a Pedestrian Impact performance.
- The 56% of the test in 2019 for Peugeot 208 is based on a Pedestrian Impact Performance _and_ ADAS pedestrian detection +Automatic Emergency Braking (AEB) performance
An important point with Euro NCAP is that typically the tests are always getting harder year on year to account for the expected technological development. Such that the same car would progressively score less if it were to repeat the Euro NCAP test year on year.
I hope this helps your concern.
In 'standard height' cars the first impact is usually on lower limbs or torso and secondary trauma to the head will happen on the bonnet or windshield.
In SUV's, pedestrian and cyclists are much likely to suffer head trauma on first impact.
My point is, in the horrific scenario that this should happens the survival rate will always be higher for non-SUV vehicles (ideally with longer bonnets and pedestrian friendly deformable structures).
"At speeds in excess of 40 miles per hour, 100% of the SUV incidents studied resulted in the death of a pedestrian, compared to 54% for crashes involving cars at this speed."[0]
"The GHSA reported that the number of pedestrian deaths involving SUVs increased by 50 percent from 2013 through 2017, while the number of pedestrian deaths caused by passenger cars increased by 30 percent over that same period. That reflects booming sales of SUVs and the fact that pedestrians are much less likely to survive the impact of an SUV."[1]
I assumed you asked in good faith so I will try to ignore the unnecessary sarcasm.
I hope a Cochrane meta-analysis meets your evidence based statistical standards.[0][1]
It's physics, a higher front-end means primary blunt force trauma to the chest and head (specially for children and cyclists), were by primary we mean the first and highest force trauma, and by chest and head we mean trauma to vital organs.
I am not judging if this type of vehicle is your preference but demanding scientific rigor without accepting the physics involved just feels like a cognitive dissonance. I am not arguing that higher front-end vehicles cause accidents, I am arguing that pedestrian are less likely to survive upon impact compared to other vehicles.
The only reason these vehicles are not banned from city centres is purely because they are a marketing and economical success not because of lack of evidence on their dangers.
I have not yet seen scientific evidence, just some correlation which doesn't bother to account for increased driving, increased smartphone and headphone use, etc. Further there doesn't seem to be any indication of SUV sizes, nor inclusion of other large vehicles. Even article itself says it should be taken with grain of salt.
All that said there is little doubt that lower car would be safer for peds. But all I asked is some evidence and you provided some garbage.
I don't think we ought to ban trigger-vehicle-of-the-year just because you feel like it. First I totally think we should discourage driving in cities, no matter the car. Pedestrian only streets, public transport, bike lanes is 100% my vibe. If you really want smaller cars in cities - make smaller parking spots. Make it inconvenient to use them (which is already case in European cities).
So answer me - what is your fetish with SUVs in particular and why you dance around fact that there are ton of other more dangerous vehicles on the road?
p.s. again your second links are irrelevant again - one is tiny sample size, other is about trucks.
> First I totally think we should discourage driving in cities, no matter the car. Pedestrian only streets, public transport, bike lanes is 100% my vibe.
I get the feeling - moving in the opposite direction (from MPV to an estate/ V60), it's definitely more difficult to get in & out. That said - the better view might be a bit misleading, a high position makes you more susceptible to look closer, which is maybe ok at very low city speeds but not great at highway speeds).
That said, it doesn't explain why MPVs all but disappeared (have been almost completely replaced by SUVs).
For me, the main reason is kids. It is a LOT easier to get kids in and out of an SUV. A minivan would have been even better (only convenience wise) but that is a bridge too far for me.
Same here, asked this couple of times and the responses from pro-SUV were mostly for emotional reasons, not rational. Bear in mind that there are proper SUVs for proper terrain, then wannaby suv/crossovers/whatever which don't handle rough terrain well and are just not good cars overall. Also you can have a small crappy dacia sedan or audi a6 all road type.
The reasons pro SUV often boil down to:
- I need to see more - indication that person isn't a good driver to have this need - my older bmw is super low and I see no problem there, sensible drive makes much more difference, but new/bad drivers want to buy extra safety feeling
- people being sheepish, so they buy what is fashionate because others have it (although physics often disagrees its a good choice)
- the "I drive rough terrain" - which often boils down to going to ski resort in the winter, you don't need SUV for that, not even 4x4 if roads are OK (which they 99% are in Europe at least)
- people think only SUV can have 4x4, or only SUV are for rough terrain - marketing win for manufacturers
Disadvantages are numerous:
- more consumption, often higher maintenance (bigger tires)
- mentioned Audi allroad or similar gets exactly same job done as usual SUV
- since they are tall, they are pretty small inside, smaller trunk
- much worse driving properties due to higher centre of mass
- rolling risk is much higher in SUV due again to higher centre of mass
- subjective but within same brand, SUVs are plain fugly as hell, still waiting for a single one I could even remotely call a pretty car
Yeah, I am definitely not a fan of SUV. Between some Audi Q7 and Audi A6 combi allroad, A6 wins in all possible aspects. Its also much more fun and safer car to drive.
People simply prefer the SUVs. They ride higher, people like that elevated feeling. They also give the added space, which is a selling point. They are undeniably trendy, and gas is super cheap, 2.20 per gallon here, so not high at all historically.
A proper diesel estate car like an MB E220d has a more usable cargo area than the typical SUV, rides comfortably and efficiently on the highway consuming less than 5 liters per 100 kilometers (fuel tank range is over 1200 kilometers), and has state-of-the-art safety technologies. In comparison, a SUV just gives you that extra confidence that no matter the weather conditions, you'll make it to your end destination because of the increased ride height, bigger tyres and 4WD systems. For most people that may be 2 or 3 days during the year, and the rest of the time they are paying dearly for this inefficiency.
Ah true, but as someone that might buy a (used) car in the next few years: trendiness & freshness do play into this as estate cars do lose points in my book for their "old-school" look as it was the type of car people had when I was a kid (and I am nearly 40).
So that together with the higher ride height, which makes getting kids in and out easier and almost no extra cost makes the SUV more likely to win than a similarly specced estate.
(and please keep in mind a "SUV" in Europe is not really the same as "SUV" in the states).
You'd be surprised. Most SUVs are really poorly designed and while they look big on the outside and maybe even have a large theoretical cabin capacity they are terrible at carrying cargo. I have witnessed someone fail to get an office chair into their Mercedes SUV that fit into a hatchback car. In addition, the loading height is higher, which makes them less practical.
SUVs generally have tall cabins, but lack in horizontal boot space and depth. The floor plan of the car matters a lot. The main selling point of big estate cars (Volvo V90, E-Class T-Modell, Skoda Superb) is the rectangular shape of the boot, coupled with a flat floor with the seats down. The metal loading lip is also at the level of the floor, making access easy. Some also have additional storage compartments under the boot floor, and even specially designed extra-size fuel tanks.
This is the most reasonable argument, totally agree. People always talk about terrain, "oh you don't need it".
SUVs are a comfortable ride. You see everything, you sit comfortable, they feel spacious (not always are...), it's the design between normal cars and pickup trucks or vans.
It’s 1.22 € per liter (taxes like always included) here currently in Germany which is $6.60 per gallon. Prices will rise next year because of an added CO2 tax.
Interesting thought about SUVs:
The first few cars were actually quite tall, so were carriages for many years.
If you consider that, low sedans that make it harder to easily get in and out of the car for many people, are the abnormality, and the classical adult man high shape will keep increasing in popularity as cost and gas becomes less of an issue for more people.
Households that used to have a minivan or pickup and two commuter cars now have a crossover or SUV and a sedan. As the prices of vehicles go up consumers are forced to pick more generalist vehicles because having a 10yo pickup that you drive once a week isn't a financially justifiable option anymore.
I imagine that you're younger (20's to 30's) and relatively healthy. If so, humor me for a moment. Imagine that you're wearing a pair of ski boots with thumbtacks packed in around the ankles. You shift your weight too far forward or bend it, the thumb tacks cut into your ankle. Not to mention now they're super stiff; you can barely bend them at all without the tacks digging hard into the skin.
Now imagine getting into a Honda Accord sedan. You have to bend down to get into the car, so your back is going to lean over and your knees are going to bend down...naturally causing your ankles to have to bend forward. Except ski boots and thumbtacks; Ow!! To get in you have to more or less turn your back to the car, splay your legs out and kinda fall back with your arms holding the sides of the frame of the car. Not a big deal but now imagine doing this times a day, every day, for the next 5 to 8 years. And I haven't even talked about trying to get out.
In an SUV at the right height, you turn your back, brace your butt atop the seat, lift your legs up and pivot into the car. No fuss. Barely any bending needed.
There's plenty of older people out there with chronic issues in their backs, spines, hips, knees, and/or ankles. Thing is, older people that are later in their careers tend to be the ones with the most purchasing power, and don't mind trading a slightly higher operating cost for more comfort.
Thanks for the info but same remark as for other comments: we're talking 40% here, so while this is a possible reason for a part of that it cannot possibly explain that number entirely, I think. I'm not that young, but my grandma has the exact problems you talk about and she has a bad time dealing with low cars indeed.
I think they also offer a slightly better vantage point. Since your driver seat is a bit up compared to everyone else, you might see a bit more of the road.
Also if you travel a lot outside of city, they make much more sense.
Of course it's not surprising. Dutch pensioners are fucking loaded! They have the 2nd highest pensions as ratio of average earnings in the EU (first is Croatia). But it supports why 40% of vehicles are SUVs - 55% of vehicles are bought by 55+, they won't be squeezing into a Smart
If you have issues bending your knees to sit up, perhaps you should not be driving an object that weights a couple of tonnes and can kill people due to your reduced reflexes.
The decade(s) before SUVs had cars big enough to pack all that, I grew up in one. Seeing all other comments I think it's going to be a combination of reasons which make actually a difference with other cars and cannot be found in that combination (height seems a big factor, handling (though mainly the bigger wheels), safety, idea that it can do more, perhaps looks) and marketing etc.
You mean weight/drag related? That's tough to guess i.e. if you take something with roughly the same features and internal volume as an SUV it could be lighter (not necessarily), it's wheelbase is normally lower which helps but on the other hand some of them don't look very aerodynamic for the rest. Should be possible to make them as safe I guess.
A few reasons. Note: I say this as a big outdoor recreator, so consider that bias.
1) the US has experienced a massive boom in outdoor recreation over last five years. All west coast campgrounds booked out months in advance (if they accept reservations), ski destinations never been busier, etc. west coast culture has a large outdoor recreation aspect, even if most people only do one or two outdoorsy things a year, their self perception is they are “outdoorsy”. Multiple neighbors have suvs so they can occasionally go camping. Could easily do it in a car but then you’d have to have a self perception that’s a closer match to lazy city dweller
2) external image. Related to above, I have observed coworkers purchase new cars and the perception of the car was important. One particular example was a coworker who got a minivan for family. Wife was miserable for six months because she was worried about being perceived as a boring mom. Finally took a 5k hit and traded it in on a new Subaru. They drive 4K miles a year, never go camping, but wanted to fit that west coast image of active family.
3) they are just more comfortable and can fit more stuff. You can get by without a truck and still haul bags of soil etc. there are some small hatchbacks that can work for this (loved my old Honda Fit, amazing storage for tiny car), but a hatchback suv makes this much easier
4) actually use it as intended. I consider this the least common reason, but some people load up their AWD suv with four people and snow shoe or cross country ski gear and get out every weekend. You can do this in a car (I’ve done it in all sorts of vehicles) but you are more likely to run into issues with a car.
I’ve had tiny cars, compact suvs, full size suvs, a van, and now a truck, and it’s hard to imagine not having an suv because they are so versatile if you recreate. Throw a topper on your roof rack, get a set of snow tires, and you can go almost anywhere in any conditions.
Most cars are bought used. A new car is not very economically sound purchase decision unless you are pretty well off. The buyers of these new cars don't care much about fuel economy or CO2 emissions, and want a lot of car for their splurge investment. So the makeup of the vehicle population is chosen by a relatively irrational and/or affluent minority of car users.
I drive one for the internal space. Used to drive an MPV, now an SUV, which is basically an MPV, but slightly higher on the wheels. Lots of room for the kids, plus 700+ liter of boot for sports gear.
Because it doesn’t matter. Fuel consumption is perhaps 10% or less of my cost per km. If that fuel consumption goes up or down 10% that means my driving cost goes up or down 1%. My 60L tank takes me 1100km. I don’t care if more streamlining or lower height would take it 1200km. 1100km is at least two toilet breaks anyway. So I’ll pick the practical car I want/need and don’t care too much about consumption so long as it’s reasonable. I wanted a bit higher clearance and 4WD (and I use it too - but rarely). Last time around it was a jacked up wagon and I don’t think I’ll buy an SUV because the 4WD wagon is so much better at everything plus it’s cheaper.
With an EV, this equation of cost and range goes out the window. The difference between 300km and 400km range is huge.
This is exactly why we need the negative externality of emissions be properly priced into the fuel price. It's appalling how cheap fuel is, especially in the US.
I pay some of the highest fuel prices in the world but it’s still cheap per km when the car/service/insurance/taxes/etc is so much more expensive. If prices were twice as high it wouldn’t change the equation much.
Safety (larger size and heavier weight), higher up seating position (also means better safety since you can see farther out), better ground clearance in general (good for places with snow for example), good cargo capacity and/or 3 row seating (though the latter are available in mini-vans, but they're not "cool" and are not generally as capable - e.g. most don't come with AWD).
Yes, this is important. As soon as you start counting hybrids the statistics become somewhat meaningless, not all hybrids are created equal. Some almost seem to just amount to greenwashing, but maybe I'm just cynical.
Not so much increasing performance, but what's required for that, e.g. the extra weight of the battery and motors to provide ~10km of electric-only range on the McLaren P1.
> Performance cars are more likely to be driven by people who don’t care about the environment and drive as such.
I think the success of Tesla says otherwise. There are lots of us who enjoy performance cars who care about emissions. Even someone who drives an Audi v8 car is doing less damage than the single person cruising in a huge truck/suv.
That probably holds true in case they have the same usage patterns.
Does your theory still hold if I drive only 2000km/year in an older car versus a Tesla X or e-Hummer? I don't pretend to have the answer to that question, but there is an environmental cost to producing a car too...
Most people buying new vehicles have to (well they don't have to but it's the reasonable thing to do) consult their spouse. This is why certain outlier models are so popular. They facilitate "everyone wins" compromises.
One person wants a practical crossover because that's what is most practical for the situation. The other wants a fun convertible. They buy a 4dr Wrangler because it's both. Everyone goes home happy.
Same thing happens with Tesla.
One person wants to buy a fuel sipping subcompact because that's what makes practical sense for the situation. The other wants a high performance sedan. Tesla checks both boxes so that's what they get. Everyone goes home happy.
Edit: I know you all are recoiling in horror at the thought of having to run your car purchasing decisions by the other decision maker in your household but if you're gonna click the WrongThink(TM) button why don't you at least humor me and tell me why I'm so wrong.
If it’s just a way to gain the ability to consume even more energy per launch from a stop light, it’s bad. And when most ICE setups (including hybrids that use electric to boost ICE peak output) talk about increasing performance, it’s about acceleration, not efficiency.
Because we don’t need to increase performance, if we think if performance as horse powers and speed. Cars are fast enough, even too fast for private vehicles.
Living in Germany it is quite ridiculous that we don’t have speed limits on certain parts of the Autobahn, nobody needs to drive 200 km/h. You won’t get faster from A to B, it’s dangerous, it’s stressful, you need more energy. If you want to race, go on a race track. I assume it even costs us more to maintain roads so that you are able to drive more than 140 km/h.
The great thing isn't freedom, it's that the huge speed differences between cars help a lot with keeping drivers focused. People drive instead of just waiting out the time until their exit pops up on the nav. This effect has quite a bit of inertia so that even the speed-limited parts benefit from it so that a blanket speed limit would likely make the already limited sections less safe, after adapting to the relative ease of blanket speed limits. Chances are that overall safety would still increase, but I'm not sure of that (short term it would definitely increase, but that effect could quickly erode as people get used to it).
Reducing the speed limit saves lives and reduces overall traffic as people switch to alternative modes of transport.
Do you object to seatbelt laws under the premise of "Freedom"? What about car safety standards? Isn't it more "Free" if we can make whatever car I want and sell it to whomever wants to buy it, even if it kills millions every year?
The truth is that we need to look at improving society holistically, which means implementing and designing society in a way that benefits humankind over the long term. Civilization isn't very "Free" but it's a trade off we make to live in a fair and progressive society, and allows us to combat things like covid, natural disasters, growing populations and other challenges that face the human race.
Guess we should all eat the most environmentally friendly food too. No one needs to ever eat meat or almonds or anything of the sort because it’s just not efficient.
While we’re at it, let’s get rid of heating past 60 F. You can always wear a sweater or a thicker blanket. It’s not like it’ll be a great inconvenience like not having any heating would be, you’ll still be able to do all the necessary tasks.
Your argument is “people don’t deserve to enjoy anything.”
Nobody needs to have sex more than a few times in their lives. You wanna limit the sex lives as well?
Basically, your morality is all wrong. The point of life (for humans, at least) isn't to do what we need - that's only the lowest, most basic level of Maslow's pyramid. It's self-actualization, which essentially means fulfilling autonomously chosen goals. You might see no reason to drive 200km/h, but others might - why limit them? The only potential reason is safety, but hey, people enjoy plenty of extreme(-ly dangerous) sports, so clearly there are reasons to trade off safety as well.
In addition, an appeal to safety doesn't actually make sense in this instance - why would 120km/h be better than 200km/h? I mean, it's slightly safer but still incredibly unsafe! If we prioritized safety over all else, we'd all be driving at most 30km/h! So clearly "safety" isn't a good, objective reason - at best, it's a subjective, arbitrary threshold, but then we ought to recognize that diifferent people will make different tradeoffs regarding safety.
If it's your hobby and like driving 200 km/h, sure please do, on a separate track where it is as safe as possible.
But driving it on _public_ roads is inherently dangerous to others. Our society has all kind of rules around protection of others. There are laws and rules around food safety, gun safety, distribution of drugs, hunting, using heavy equipment, operating boats and planes. Often you need a license to do these things.
Noone trains for driving at high speeds in driving school. Also a lot of folks do not understand the relationship between velocity and the time you need to come to a stop. So 120km/h is way better than 200km/h. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3D7XYQExt0
This is just so wrong. Have you actually ever done that? For example between Jena and Chemnitz, when traffic is light it is so incredibly safe and relaxing.
Don’t confuse fast driving with reckless driving. No speed limits will stop reckless drivers. Even so, it’s totally possible to drive recklessly at 140 kph. Just go figure around Leverkusen literally every day.
“Because we don’t need to increase performance, if we think if performance as horse powers and speed. Cars are fast enough, even too fast for private vehicles.”
This is like trying to sell people on veganism by arguing that food doesn’t need to taste good.
i naively support the argument for speed limits concerning safety and emissions.
at the same time i know that the freedom to drive fast does not really impact crash or efficiancy metrics very much and having been to countries with universal speed limits i can confirm that it is an agonizing drive if everybody is going slow (120kph) to the point that i wonder if the resulting boredom is causing a lot more accidents.
The usual argument basically boils down to "gluttony and pride are deadly sins". You shall only consume/have/want the necessary minimum, any more is morally suspect, even absent objectively apparent problems.
It's kind of funny how comments like this get downvoted into oblivion. Too many ideologically-motivated HN users have access to the downvote button and they use it to suppress anything that threatens certain sacred narratives. This place is a lot less open to intellectual curiosity than it says on the tin.
There was a fun segment on this in an old Top Gear. A race to see how far you can get on a single tank of gas.
Clarkson thought the challenge was dumb and picked a big comfy car with a massive engine. He might not win but at least he’s gonna enjoy himself.
Ended up winning. The massively overpowered engine was chilling at highway speeds so much it barely used any gas.
Another fun comparison was when they took a Prius and a M5. When the M5 was chilling at a slightly fun speed, the Prius was struggling so hard that it had double the fuel consumption of the M5.
The original poster is slightly mis-remembering the episodes in question. In the first scenario much of it was down to the big car having a really big gas tank and thus going further on a single tank of gas than the smaller, more economical, cars.
In the second case they where driving the Prius around a race track as fast as they could make it go (ie nothing like cruising on normal roads) while with the M5 following at the same pace. And in those conditions the M5 did use less gas, but I don't recall it being half as much.
This kind of test is mostly for showmanship. There's even a chance that an M5 will get better fuel consumption than a Prius due to the way the test was designed: making the Prius run at the absolute limit in circumstances that cannot be replicated in any reasonably legal setup on a public road, like racing. Even when "cruising" at top speed the Prius should be more efficient than the M5 at the same speed.
An M5 won't have better fuel consumption than a "normal" small car in any situation that you could reasonably see on the road.
While cruising speed matters, the reason manufacturers of "economical" cars, like the Prius in your example, optimise for lower speeds is because that's where the vast majority of your time will be spent.
Top Gear's challenges were very entertaining, but they were very far from being scientifically meaningful in any way.
My Ford Expedition is perfect for hauling a trailer, my family and our dogs. It has third row seating so my three kids aren’t all squished on one bench while the second heater/blower in the back is an absolute godsend when it’s -25F, as is the 4x4 when (not if) I get stuck
A single tank of gas: isn't that then mostly a matter of the size of the tank? My friend with his Jeep can go very far, no issues, but filling the tank costs an arm, a leg and a kidney. Gas consumption is horrible, it just has a huge tank.
That said hybrid systems are basically KERS: they matter when slowing down (charging the battery instead of warming up brakes), and at very low to low speeds (better efficiency of the electric engine compared to a gasoline engine). I would not expect a trip on the highway without traffic to be better at all with a hybrid car than with a gasoline car.
> I would not expect a trip on the highway without traffic to be better at all with a hybrid car than with a gasoline car.
Hybrid systems allow the gas engine to (essentially) always run at its ideal speed if it is running at all, storing extra energy when less is needed and drawing power from the battery when more is needed. On an idealized highway drive, with cruising speed at exactly the pure gas car engine’s ideal speed, with no variations due to turns, hills, traffic, etc., this is no benefit, but real highway driving tends to differ from this ideal enough that hybrid cars have benefits even in freeway driving.
This is true of a second-generation hybrid, like the BMW i3 (with range extender). A first-gen hybrid, which is most hybrids (including the Infiniti QX60, the BMW 3-series (not i), the Mercedes E-class) still power the wheels primarily with the gas engine, and only use the electric engine in certain reduced circumstances. With the gas engine directly driving the wheels, you don't get a lot of benefit from the hybrid except in start-stop conditions.
The first-gen/second-gen language is a bit odd. More common would be “mild” vs. “full” hybrid, but most hybrid cars sold, in the US at least, are full hybrids (what you call “second-generation” hybrids); Toyota Prius nameplates alone account for almost half of all hybrids that have been sold in the US, and all of those are full hybrids.) It may be that mild hybrids dominate if you are counting individual models, but certainly not if you are counting vehicles.
But, within Europe, most of the driving is done under 50km/h and within the cities, where hybrids shine.
I agree that hybrids are a stupid solution, a full EV is way to go, but, for example, there are only two superchargers for Tesla in whole Berlin, which has almost 4 million population. The infrastructure has to be improved and the batteries needs to get larger or more efficient, because I find stopping every 2hrs to charge your car for 30 minutes stupid.
Hybrids are just a band-aid solution until we have proper (and cheap) EVs.
Fast charging is not really needed in cities where daily driving distances comfortably fit into almost all EV-s ranges. What is needed is parking space in residential areas with access to Type2 charging.
Access to a parking space with charging, any kind of charging, is the reason I don't own an EV yet. Japan is really lagging behind here: the building I live in was finished in March 2020, it's not even one year old, and there's no way to charge an EV car in the parking spots!
People buying that (kind of) car don't care, and I doubt there's so many of them that it would significantly skew the numbers (GLE class is not even in the list - assuming GLC and GLE are similar enough for this particular list, even GLC are modest numbers and they're plug-in hybrid, which is better than a mild hybrid).
However I do agree with you that many of the cars - essentially the entire milid-hybrid (MHEV) segment, IMO - is there just to get the numbers (electric motor kicks in just enough to lower the max CO2 in special cases). Locally (Croatia, HR), virtually all new cars have at least a MHEV option and some have no non-e option at all. They're really pushing it hard.
Even though MHEV could be considered "lipstick on a pig", it still has two useful effects:
- If it does lower CO2 emission in worst cases (start, overtake, etc), it still means it lowers the overall CO2 at least somewhat - every little bit helps.
- It normalizes electric vehicles. There are a people here who have extremely negative (subjective) opinions on them, and I'm talking general public, not petrolheads. Once you get a Slav to understand his (it's always his) beloved Golf running on batteries is not an abomination, the floodgates are open
Due to high gas prices, main impediment to switching to fully electric cars is not cost but infrastructure. In Croatia there's very little of it and it's often vandalized or gas-powered cars are parked in charging spots, etc. Thus a pleasant road-trip to the country or the coast turns into a logistical nightmare.
Similarly, for plug-hybrids, a lot of people that would have the means to buy such a car usually live in apartment buildings, often without dedicated parking spots so you have to hunt for a space around the block and you can't just plug in your car overnight.
Btw, expect huge taxes to hit electric cars in Europe. The European governments have a significant part of their budget coming from gas tax and they are not happy with that revenue stream going away. For those not from Europe: It is pretty common for us to have to pay $4-5 tax per gallon of fuel.
The UK government is doing the complete opposite in fact. They’ll give you a grant towards the cost of a new EV, a grant for a wall box to be installed at you home, 0% tax on company car benefits if it’s an EV, 0% road tax, etc. They’ve even just moved The ban on new petrol and diesel sales forward to 2030.
Fuel duties help to offset the negative externalities to society of driving, namely CO2 emissions, pollution and congestion. With EVs tou don’t have emissions and pollutions and the health problems they bring so there’s no negatives to offset (ie fuel duty revenue will go down, but so will spending on health and environmental related issues)
There’s still the congestion any vehicle can cause and I think we’ll move to a much different form of vehicle taxation over the next 20 years, perhaps with more toll roads or even surge pricing style taxation for usage of roads.
Of course you have! Emissions from tires and brake pads are very significant. CO2 and pollution from driving is just externalized - where do you think all that electricity for charging EVs is coming from? Also, pollution from manufacturing EVs is still there.
> If everyone went to smart charging infrastructure your vehicle could easily stay topped up during excess generation
...and yet from today's headlines:
British coal plants fired up to meet temporary electricity shortfall. Remaining UK coal plants, including Drax, supply 6% of grid’s electricity to cover power supply drop and colder weather
"renewable electricity was in relatively short supply in western Europe too, meaning the UK would need to keep running its coal plants while exporting power to France and to the Netherlands via cable interconnectors"
Even if the energy source would still be purely fossile-based (which it isn't), it would still be a net win, since large power plants are more efficient than ICE vehicles and are better set up to reduce emissions other than CO2.
1). Every year the percentage of renewable electricity is increasing on the grids worldwide so over time electric cars will pollute less.
2). Looking at the parts of an electric car vehicle compared to petrol/diesel cars electric car production has less pollution.
3) Electric cars have regenerative braking so even the brake pads pollution is less in electric cars
Don't forget the UK is FAR ahead of the US when it comes to renewables, which of course is easier when you have a single national grid (and can buy spare French nuclear when you have a dip in capacity)
Correct, the potential CO2 emissions are externalised but the electricity can come from wind, sun, nuclear, or even fossil fuel power stations that run more efficiently and cleanly than an ICE.
Also, I'll take the emissions from tires and brake pads over those from an engine for sure.
Fair enough, it exists in some regard... let's change that to pollution caused by the powerplant of the vehicle.
I'm not wholly informed here, but just by using common sense, I can only imagine we're talking fractions of a percent for brake pad and tyre pollution, so I wouldn't pick that hill to die on personally.
Emissions from brake pads on EVs are almost non existent (regen braking). This is a vast departure from combustion powered vehicles where PM from braking systems, from exhaust catalytic converters etc. etc. contribute a lot of the grime you see at the edge of a motorway. EVs do make this better.
Tire emissions are NOT a factor we need to be concerned with however :-) Tire manufacture, sure. From waste - most definitely. But emissions from driving are not something to worry about even with the billions of miles driven annually on tires.
Last time I looked at PM2.5 I found the source below[1]. Which lists PM2.5 from tire wear at 0.001 gm per miles. Which is less than brake wear at 0.003. Notable that as you said EV's have much less brake wear.
[1] Was a lot harder to find it again because someones running an SEO agitprop campaign to blame PM2.5 on tires instead of diesel exhaust. I had wade through GIS pages of trash websites to find it again.
Yeah that looks about right. Brake pad PM2.5 is 3x that of tires but both pale into insignificance next to exhaust PM2.5 at almost 10x that of brake pad and tire emissions added together.
The nice thing about EVs is those exhaust emissions are moved away from the tailpipe in populated areas to power generation facilities.
The efficiency of electric vehicles is almost 3x that of the gasoline cycle of drilling, transporting, distilling, transporting again, combusting then achieving almost 30% motion from the chemical energy of gas.
So because of this efficiency there’s just less emissions overall even though the emissions are away from population centres.
Then lastly, the emissions are consolidated in one place so capture and cleaning becomes viable.
EVs are not perfect but they are so much better than gasoline powered vehicles that if you can at all accomodate the switch, then it would be great to consider it.
> The UK government is doing the complete opposite in fact. They’ll give you a grant towards the cost of a new EV, a grant for a wall box to be installed at you home, 0% tax on company car benefits if it’s an EV, 0% road tax, etc.
Taxing will have to change and evolve either way.
Today it makes sense to incentivize the move to EVs. But this says nothing about what will happen when everyone is there and people no longer have the option of buying or using an ICE. Some years from now taxing EVs with some form of "road tax" (today included in the price of fuel) will be the low hanging fruit and the technological means may already be there. Your car will likely be able or even required to log and report the distance driven for taxing purposes.
If truly autonomous vehicles do catch on and incentivize moving away from private ownership, it will also have a huge impact on the way cars are taxed or how the taxes are passed on to the user.
The easiest way to replace petrol tax would be to simply charge with the MOT. Road taxes in general raise about 10p per mile driven (including petrol, VAT on petrol, and VED, but excluding VAT on new cars, which is a significant amount - about £10b a year based on 3 million cars a year at £20k a year)
It would work as "You've done 10,000 miles since your last MOT, you have to pay your £1k tax bill". Travel abroad and you could register the mileage when you leave and when you get back easily enough. Final bill on scrapping or on SORN.
That wouldn't allow the differential road pricing that tracking fans want, and wouldn't work in Ireland, but would work in GB right now.
>> With EVs tou don’t have emissions and pollutions
You don't have them at the tailpipe, which I guess is really the key thing because it means a reduction in asthma and deaths due to PM in habited areas.
You do still have emissions, they're just emitted away from where humans live. It's a great improvement but not a complete solution.
We pay similar gas tax in the US, but we don't pay it at the pump. There are direct subsidies around $20 B/yr [1] and indirect ones, such as $2 T for a couple of gulf wars which were clearly about oil. Then there's spills, climate FUD from the oil companies [2] which will cost us for centuries in floods, fires, and other climate exacerbated disasters.
If anything we need to tax the hell out of fossil fuel to break even with its actual costs.
I wonder why people aren’t excited about hybrids, they seem like a genuine next step of automotive engineering to me. Petrolheads of all people hate it the most, and that feels wrong. If you think twin turbo is superior to single, then THS II should be vastly more so.
I personally blame it to Toyota’s horrible packaging. The thorough objective horrendousness of Prius is inexcusable, especially the latest ones. But that shouldn’t decide on the technology!
It adds a lot of weight for not a lot of benefit, on either side. A pure-electric drive gives amazing benefits in torque and latency reduction, but the motors on MHEVs and even PHEVs don't give enough "oomph" to justify the complexity, the cost, or the added weight.
The Koeingsegg One:1 is exciting. The BMW i3 is exciting. The Jaguar I-Pace is exciting. Heck, the Tesla is exciting. The BMW 3-series hybrid is $15,000 more for not a whole lot.
(Full disclosure: two working parents, three young kids, not a lot of spare time and even less spare money...)
We own two (ICE) cars, a seven-seater that's diesel-powered and a four-seater that's petrol. Neither of them are even remotely "exciting" (both have the smallest, most economical engines that the manufacturer offers for that model). We would not be looking for "exciting" in a replacement for either of them, either.
What I am looking for is a like-for-like replacement that isn't hugely more expensive.
With electric, I'm struggling.
We [very briefly] sat in the battery version of the four-seater in the showroom when we bought the petrol, it cost more than twice as much, range was dire, and the sales guy pointed out that it wouldn't hold its purchase value as battery technology is changing so rapidly. So that was that :(
I would love to switch to electric, but right now we don't have the spare cash to throw around.
"Exciting" might be great for persuading petrolheads and/or the wealthy and/or the virtue-signallers to switch, but for everyone else, what can pure-electric offer?
I feel the same, I sold my car 8 years ago and never bought a new one since, I'm planning to get a new one (hopefully kids, old parents, I'm gonna need it sooner or later) but I am struggling too.
I usually use the Renault Zoe as an example, the EV model costs 40% more (~26,000 euros VS ~37,000 euros) for no - obvious - added benefit, it's the same exact car.
I've been researching and thanks to state bonuses I could buy a Renault Twingo EV for ~17,000 euros, it's a very good deal but it's a smaller car, not that it's a problem now, I still mainly drive inside the city, but it makes me think of the economy of the operation: I need it for a future larger family, I should settle down on a smaller car.
I'm probably getting it anyway and I am also excited about it, but really it shouldn't be about excitement, it should be about being a better deal overall.
Because it drives like crap compared to an all petrol vehicle, that's why. Toyotas feel like they're all made for grannies - you step on the acceleration and it's just sluggish. My mom test drived one and bought a Seat instead. Another guy told me he drove a company Toyota hybrid and he'll be getting a petrol BMW. There you have it.
It’s Toyota dragging down the technology by making horrible cars, clearly, themselves conscious or not.
Like, Fisker Karma was basically as fast and quick as a Tesla. Lots of hybrid hypercars are faster than petrol counterparts. It’s Toyota Prius that’s smearing hybrids.
MHEV like Audi or MB do not help in overtaking or in the city. It's only for coasting, there is a small electric motor that will only help to re-start the engine. It's basically a better start-stop for driving on highways - you don't notice that the car is in "neutral" gear with the motor turned off. It helps a bit, but I would definitely not call this a hybrid, not even a mild hybrid. But - I saved 50% of the registration tax, so I don't complain.
> It's only for coasting, there is a small electric motor that will only help to re-start the engine [but not really pull the vehicle].
Classifying a car as a mild hybrid electric vehicle on the basis of nothing but a glorified starter motor doesn't sound entirely unlike something Volkswagen Group might try to get away with, but this doesn't seem like a fair assessment. Doesn't conventional coasting mean that the ICE still is driving the wheels — at idle RPM? So if instead the clutch decouples, the electric motor has to make up the difference, right? That's not nothing when you consider that diesels (such as your Audi) output significantly more power at idle RPM (and also use more fuel, I'd guess?) than petrol engines (relative to max power).
The engine decouples and either shuts down completely (if you don't have Start-Stop switched off) or it just idles on low RPM. Before the Audi I had a BMW that wasn't classified as MHEV and it still would decouple the engine during coasting (in Eco mode), but it would not turn it off because this would add a delay of 1-2 seconds until the engine is ready again (and it didn't have the additional battery + electric motor to start it in these conditions). The small electric motor helps to quickly start the motor in this decoupled mode (which again is not something that only hybrids have) and so it can be turned off for up to 40 seconds of coasting. All of this can be disabled in the Settings menu and the engine will never go into "coasting" mode and this coasting mode will almost never be triggered in the city anyway (you can see that it will shift from a specific gear like 6 to just "D" - and then you know that the engine is decoupled).
Anyway, I and many others (most?) turn off the start-stop right when you start the vehicle. I just don't like that the engine turns off on every intersection and then you have a second of delay and slow response + more wear on engine for so many starts and stops. In this case it will still coast with the decoupled - but idling - engine.
Also by coasting I mean condition where the car has enough momentum and either goes downhill or there is a slower speed limit ahead (this is detected automatically from map data) and the car knows that it can just decouple the engine. This is evaluated by the car based on some conditions, it's not controlled by the driver.
"The 48-volt-based MHEV technology is particularly more comfortable and efficient. If the driver takes his foot off the accelerator at a speed between 55 and 160 km/h (34.2 to 99.4 mph), the car can coast for up to 40 seconds with the engine off completely. During slow coasting, the start-stop phase already begins at 22 km/h (13.7 mph).
Once the driver accelerates again – whether from a stop or while driving – the vehicle restarts quickly and very comfortably: the BAS revs up the internal combustion engine to the target speed, then injection occurs again and, in the case of a gasoline engine, ignition. While the conventional pinion starter remains on board, it practically comes into play only at the initial starting, if the engine oil is still cold and viscous. In such a situation, the belt of the BAS could slip through. "
Thank you! I just quickly looked up some terminology and it turns out the mode I'd been thinking of is more properly called ‘coasting in gear’, which is indeed not at all implied by the more general term ‘coasting‘. Now that I know what's what, I agree that Audi's quarter-assed implementation shouldn't qualify as ‘MHEV‘.
Can you elaborate on "nothing environmentally friendly about that vehicle"?
I thought hybrid is the only sane approach as you can cover 90% of your trips electric with a small battery. Or is the fuel motor always on in this car?
This includes mild hybrid. Example engine from popular Volvo XC60 is B4P 145+10 kW (197+14 KS).
Soo, yeah, huge number of those vehicles included are actually diesel powered cars.
The fact it adds a bit of torque from electric motor doesn’t change a thing.
I don't care if the car is propelled by organic ethical cow methane.
I will never buy a new car, even with subsidies. It's just a bad investment overall.
To make matters worse, there is no incentive to buy a certified used EV (at least for Europe).
For the cynical amongst us, this is the best time to buy a luxury used Diesel car e.g. (Audi A6, BMW 5 series etc.)
Diesels sometimes command a 30-40% price difference to petrol engines in Germany thanks to the bans and the stigma - perfect if you're living in Eastern Europe and willing to import.
I honestly don't think I could sleep at night, having bought a new car, knowing how much its depreciating just sat there. An acquaintance bought his dream audi TT a few years ago, and after a couple of years of ownership we calculated that every time he drove it to the shop to get lunch it cost him $35 in depreciation on top of whatever he bought.
I bike everywhere, but have been considering buying a car for some trips where it's impractical: Visiting family far away, go to the mountains to ski etc. I could always rent, but I have ended up only doing it sporadically. Spending ~$50 on a city car to have it for a day out of the city has made the barrier so high.
But having calculated cost of owning a car (parking, insurance, repairs, deprecation, gas etc) I have realized I could do that every weekend all year, and still probably come out ahead. Even if comparing to buying a used car. So here's to hoping I will be better at doing it this winter.
I don't buy new cars either. The initial drop of in value is just insane. You can buy a really nice used car with electric windows(!) for the same price as new low end crap cars like Dacia. I never understood who buys those new if they already are looking for something cheap.
Sure a Dacia Sandero (two door) works and is nice but so is a 8 y.o. BMW or Volvo in the wagon class for about the same price.
What I don't understand is why by a cheap new car, when you can buy a cheap old car of higher class for the same price, or a cheap old car of the smaller classes for way less.
This is not a reason why its cheap, all cars are expensive to maintain over time
The reason luxury used cars are cheap is because the people who can afford them new, generally can afford a newer one in 3 years. So they are quite abundant
odds are that diesel x5 2l engine might pollute less than a 3l “hybrid”. the engines are usually larger on so called brids so they can carry all that dead weight.
How are fully one quarter of new, NEW, sales diesel in EU? In the US, diesel is rather uncommon, whereas with BEV, it's mostly tesla and the leaf, I haven't seen many BEVs from other makers.
Diesels are much more economical than petrol. Whether it is cost efficient depends on yearly mileage and how good a deal you get, but it’s a fact. My diesel E Class with 4 wheel drive burns considerably less fuel than my previous petrol Golf, while having better performance, more mass and greatly increased size. I would buy an electric, but they are just too damn expensive right now.
Electrified are counted as pure electric, plug-in hybrids, full hybrids and mild hybrids. "Mild hybrids" is just a petrol car with bigger starter motor.
I calculated fuel savings if I owned an EV. I did it for Germany. The fuel savings are basically negligible (it was about 200 Euros per year). This is due to high electricity prices.
In the US at least you can say, I will pay $15k more upfront, but then I will get it back in fuel savings.
But in Europe people drive far less and electricity is significantly more expensive.
That's what they got for stopping almost all nuclear power plants and replacing them with dirty coal and gas power plants (+ much more pollution). And now the power grid will be under even much more strain with EVs...
I bought a car this year. I was thinking about Tesla or Porsche Taycan, but unfortunately in Poland there is no infrastructure to charge them. I live in the flat so I had to go with gasoline car. Maybe in the next 5 years.
I dont know but perhaps selling the flat and buying a house with the money you would have spent on either of the two cars would have been wiser? Or showing status is more important around that part of europe?
You really think that the difference between EV and gazoline is big enough that you could upgrade from an apartment to a house?
And let's not forget that a whole society living in single housing is a lot less eco-friendly than someone living in an apartment in a dense city and being able to do a lot of errands walking. Transportation emissions is not the only eco-impact, there's a lot that goes into housing and non efficient use of land.
the cars s/he mentioned are estimated at 100k euros, and in poland thats a lot. dont be fooled by european hybrids - they pollute more because the electric engine runs for short distances, and when it doesnt carrying it actually takes more fuel. i am all for evs and proper hybrids but this is not the case.
Thank you! I don't want to live in a single housing period. Atm EV isn't an option for people living in the flats without access to the public infrastructure. If I bought a house I would have to commute 5x longer distance every day.
First of all I feel judged here - you don't know how much money and properties I own. I am earning my money outside Poland and I understand these car might be expensive for polish standards, but not in e.g. US. I try to avoid showing status, I wear normal clothes and avoid buying expensive stuff, but Porsche was my childhood dream - I love the design. Going back to the topic, I live in the flat as it's close to central, I don't want to live in the house.
> I am earning my money outside Poland and I understand these car might be expensive for polish standards, but not in e.g. US.
They're expensive by US standards too. They'd only not be expensive by Silicon Valley standards. A Porsche Taycan is a $100k+ car. Very few people own that in the US. Most of the Teslas sold are also expensive cars by US standards too (very few are buying at base price).
It sounds like, besides promoting EVs, the governments need to promote charging in apartment buildings. Requiring minimum number of charging stations in new construction and providing subsidies to add charging stations to existing apartments. This would remove an adoption roadblock for many.
dont be fooled - these are mainly german hybrid cars which are in fact guzzlers. the new german carmaker scam is to slap a low quality electric engine on an otherwise highly polluting car, so buyers avoid paying taxes (there are many incentives for buying evs and hybrids, sadly exploited by such carmakers).
Let's not forget vehicle manufacturers have been whipsawed over the last decade, first instructed and legislated over to focus on clean diesel over short timeframes, requiring massive investment. Then scientific opinions changed and the massive subsidies and legislative pressure switched to electric vehicles, with diesel being effectively outlawed in passenger vehicles
Not surprised. At least here in Austria there were very good offers for electric cars this year where (especially small businesses) received big government bonuses for corona, electric cars in general and other tax cuts.
If that also includes MHEV then the statistics tell nothing. I bought a new Audi A6, it's a quite massive 3.0 diesel (210kW / 282 hp), I was actually surprised it's a hybrid when I went to register it and pay the "tax" - I got 50% off because it's a hybrid. I had to actually look it up on Google. It turns out most new Audi cars are MHEV, which is basically only used when the car is "coasting", the motor is decoupled from the rest and if you don't disable Start-Stop then it will also be turned off. Now in this special circumstance there is an additional battery + small electric motor that will only help to start the engine again. That's it. The motor doesn't really pull the vehicle. It does save some fuel especially on the highway, but not in the city. Audi mentions up to 0.7 liters / 100 kilometers for Audi Q8. I see it mainly as a benefit for the driver, in most EU countries you pay a lot money for bigger (more kW) cars.
For me, mpg doesn't tell anything :-). You get used to it, I guess they are both the same thing in the end. In EU the distance in this case is always 100 km. So when someone says that the fuel consumption of his car is 6 liters, everyone knows it's 6 liters / 100 kilometers. So you can always just compare the amount of fuel (e.g. most cars consume about 6-7 liters).
This is very good news for air quality in cities. Dirty diesel has for a long while polluted city air, while car makers claimed they where "clean". The only clean part about diesels where lower co2 emissions, diesels pollute a lot of small particles which are bad for humans to breathe. Modern hybrid cars has as low fuel consumption as diesels but pollutes a lot less particles in cities.
326 comments
[ 3.9 ms ] story [ 279 ms ] threadSo there may have been more electric cars in 1900 but not more electric car registrations
But in the grand scheme of things, we've never had more horseless cars in circulation than today, in 2020. The electric ratios of 1900 we're talking about are rounding errors by comparison to today.
But what I find fascinating most of all that it's been a hundred years and we're having similar conversations, again. Hundred years ago there were massive arguments about traffic pollution in the cities. However, it revolved around horseshit in the streets. People welcomed the newfangled gas belching cars and hailed them as the clean wave of the future.
Most electric car companies were bankrupt before 1920, however I would be surprised if not some application survived, making your statement technically correct.
Diesels gained popularity as the more eco-friendly, efficient car, justifying their higher price tag. Then it turned out to be a lie. Now they are replaced by the more eco-friendly, efficient electric cars.
I hope it doesn't end the same way this time!
Diesel still is more efficient than electro taking the whole supply chain into account. The lack of efficiency of e-vehicles is only justified if you have a "I do not care about efficiency" power source = the sun. And even in that case its questionable if the required ressources to produce, distribute and refurbish batteries will ever outcompete the production ressource requirements of carbon fuel.
Not to speak about that you can pour every diesel in every car, this is not true for car batteries.
However the efficiency of converting sun into electricity is around 35%. While driving your car carries a heavy battery of 100es of kilogramms which can only store 1/3 of energy per volume compared to eg. Diesel.
So in my calculation the net efficiency of diesel is higher.
Plus the ICE vehicle is the cleanest it will ever be on delivery day. Even with modern catalytic converters and engine management ICE vehicles will start to use more fuel and emit more particulates over its lifespan. EVs get cleaner as the green decarbonizes.
Then take into account that ICE worst case scenario for carbon emissions is around town, stop and go traffic, which is what most passenger cars spend their lives doing. It also happens to be the EV best case, since region braking makes the most out of the available energy.
In environmental discussions that measure is usually something of grams-of-CO2-equivalent emitted per km. One oddity is that the usually communicated figure is only that emittted 'at the tailpipe', which is obviously zero for full electrics. Often people try to compensate by taking the kWh-per-km figure and multiplying by the CO2-per-kWh figure for their environment. This is however still misleading if compared with the tailpipe CO2 for an ICE, because the production of gasoline or diesel are also fairly CO2-intensive.
The official term of use is well-to-wheel efficiency or emissions; there is no doubt at all that electric vehicles beat ICE vehicles easily, basically on account of the ICE being relatively inefficient because of size/performance constraints.
Obviously the actually interesting figure of merit is the lifetime emissions (and the 'useful work' gained from those emissions) and while methods and tools to compute this exist computing this in a reasonable way means making a lot of assumptions (such as the miles-per-lifetime), assumptions that will be easily attacked on internet fora, and assumptions that can easily be tweaked to show what you want to show.
The reality is that (full) electric vehicles are practical and efficient for most of the population today, if not in the very near future, and that it's hard to imagine that the current dependency on oil will last very long. Ten years is a long time.
It's more that last time we had the eco-friendly saviour of Diesel Cars given to us, it was also rosy, until it wasn't. For example, British cities have way-too-high levels of NO2 pollution, and this is usually attributed to diesels. And not nice to live through, truth be told.
Look at the map [1] where many mid-sized German, Dutch and some Italian towns restrict old/polluting cars from being used.
Meanwhile, British cities talk a lot, but delay any implementation until the following year. Fuel duty has stayed the same for 10 years, but public transport fares have risen every year.
[1] https://urbanaccessregulations.eu/userhome/map
Diesel engines are usually significantly louder too.
They exhaust high amounts of nitrous oxides (high-temperature lean combustion - same thing that makes them efficient!), and particulates (hard to evaporate and burn the fuel in the few milliseconds where power is made), which are bad for anything living by a major road, but don't hang around in the atmosphere for more than a few weeks. I've seen limited evidence of regional effects, but certainly not the global, centuries-long effects of CO2.
However, it did that at the cost of increased local air pollution. That doesn't matter much in the countryside, or for long distance goods transport, but it does matter in cities.
See https://doi.org/10.1016/j.atmosenv.2016.03.017
https://www.bts.gov/content/estimated-national-average-vehic...
It wasn't a total lie, it turned out some diesel vehicles were much worse than others. I seem to remember Renault and Nissan were particularly bad but BMW and Land Rover were very good. We threw the baby out with the bath water.
Having said that I have little doubt EV's are a better option for the majority of uses.
[1] https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1362163/france-electric...
The reason France faces power cuts could be because they recently shut down a nuclear powerplant (which is a non-sense considering nuclear doesn't emit any CO2 and we'll have to buy coal electricity from Germany instead...)
And the rise in EV sales is because they're being subsidized left and right, including installation of wall boxes with 900 EUR. It's antisocial, though, because you've got to own a house in the first place. And so is the ongoing exodus of producing small cars in most of EU's car industry because of draconian Euro 7 emission requirements impossible to meet at a reasonable price point; ie. the enormous cost of maintaining roads being financed via taxes are only benefitting those who'll be able to afford long-distance EVs and undesired (from CO2 PoV) e-commerce/road logistics.
Their readership loves stories about issues in the EU regardless of truth.
A quick look at their Wikipedia entry will give anyone that doesn’t know them an idea of their institutional xenophobia[1].
Disclaimer: obviously I’m an EU “Remainer/Rejoiner” so you judge my opinion of the Express by that.
1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daily_Express
Many of the negative, highly polarising affects of social media that people complain about today have been visible in certain segments of the UK press since the Westminster Gazette invented the term in 1901...IMHO. :(
which state? this article is about europe as a whole?
>No taxes on EVs. Subsidies to the tune of 10000€. Per private purchase. There are certain types of lower end EV (like Renault Zoe) that can be purchased effectively for nearly free right now.
big if true, please point me towards this subsidy because I would like a free car
[1] https://www.afm.ro/vehicule_electrice.php
nitpick. there are two programs. "rabla plus", the 9300 euro one, applies regardless. you can receive an additional 1300 euros through the "rabla" program if you trade in a car (which will be discarded to the junk yard). this second subsidy applies to any new car purchase.
If enough jurisdictions enact a hard deadline ban, automakers will have no choice but to rapidly retool for EV only manufacturing. We’re right at the precipice of the inflection point. Pushing for these deadlines in a few more large markets will push us over the edge.
Obligatory ask: If this is important to you, contact your government representatives and demand a timetable for combustion vehicle phaseout in your jurisdiction.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase-out_of_fossil_fuel_vehic...
Therefore a new, way more inneficient industry is required, which will become very efficient of course over time. Otherwise there would be no growth, measured in GDP. There is no profit in commodity unless you are a monopolist. Which the car industry given the large-scalre mergers of the past is increasingly becoming.
It’s going to be beautiful for the planet and humanity, but devastating to entrenched interests.
Diesel was getting phased out anyway, you can see that in the chart by the bump in gasoline vehicles.
edit to clarify, seeing the comments regarding hard to reach areas etc, where an SUV does something useful: I'm talking standard Western European countries here with mild climate, hardly any snow, i.e. no use for 4WD or so.
Of course I speak from my point of view as someone who was raised in The Netherlands. In The Netherlands I never saw many SUVs on the road.
Elon Musk is actually contemplating [0] to produce smaller EVs for the European market and I think those could become very popular indeed. Smaller cars are generally just nicer to use in compact crowded cities.
---
[0] https://electrek.co/2020/11/24/elon-musk-tesla-hatchback-ele...
Oh I think you're wrong, there's definitely a significant market for people who prefer SUVs, electric or not. This is not new. After all most of these European urban SUV are really neither S or U, they're just SUV shaped.
I remember watching a French TV show about cars maybe 15 years ago where they were talking about the growing popularity of SUVs, and back then diesel was the norm.
They probably can make it cheap enough, especially if it's made in EU to skirt tariffs, but by then there will 100s of competitors.
Right now you can already buy 35k euro SUV when Model Y is something like 60k.
I was also remembered of an HN thread years ago where people were commenting on the failure of Smart cars in the US. Many Americans were basically arguing that the car was too small to feel safe in traffic, which sounded a bit silly to me, but now that I know that every other car in the US is closer in size to a tank it makes a lot of sense.
Then I bought a SUV. It's a 4WD with and ample trunk. Now I can use my property to my liking according to my job time constraints rather then weather conditions.
But I sense your sub-sonic tone. I think the vast majority of SUV owners lives in a city with perfect snow removal in winter (if there even is snow at all) which hardly justifies owning such an ineffective car.
second or first or gazilionth home doesnt even matter.
Let's try scaling that to everyone on the planet, shall we?
"Why even enjoy anything? Why even drive? Why even go on vacations? Why even eat meat? Why even have kids? Why even socialize? Why even live outside of the matrix instead of having all your entertainment & nutrients delivered directly to your brain/veins? Why even live?"
inb4 "no arguments": parent post isn't very heavy on arguments either, it's basically just passive-aggressive moralizing.
I didn't get it until recently, and this is exactly it.
So, generalizing your moral outrage with a passive aggressive personal attack? You win.
Just leaving this here. It needs no further explanation.
If someone wants to drive an inefficient car, let them enjoy it, or push for legislations that tax those cars, you are being judgmental without affecting real change.
I don't believe I've stopped them. (If only it were that easy!)
No, it's a fair response to the the laiz a fair comment "in order to consume more than is morally acceptable (a second home, especially when others have none, but regardless), I need to drive an environmentally unfriendly car".
One of the places we went more often is called Campo Felice, which is famous for its extreme weather conditions. Sudden snowfalls are pretty common and they can be very heavy.
But the main danger are temperature drops, sometimes temperature can go as low as -33 C, forming thick layers of ice on the roads.
We got stuck there a few times because either the car doors were completely frozen and would not open or it was too cold and the engine refused to start, not mentioning the suboptimal traction of our 2WD cars.
To solve the problem we put some money together and bought a used Fiat Panda 4x4 (https://i.pinimg.com/564x/b4/d6/dd/b4d6dd1544d24d3c8d73dadda...), it's an affordable 4WD with many features that rival with much more expensive cars (excluding of course the luxury stuff).
We never had a problem after.
The new model costs only ~16 thousand euros and it improves a lot over the old one which was admitedly quite spartan, but for me it was a feature not a bug.
> Then I bought a SUV. It's a 4WD <...>
SUV doesn't imply 4WD. Most 4WD are SUVs, but lets not pretend that most SUVs are 4WD, or anything close to it. Most people buying Qashqai's or RR Evoque's aren't buying the 4WD models.
- Smoother ride over worse roads, especially under-maintained roads
- An extension of that point: more travel options. Dirt road? Sure, and the SUV probably won't get as dirty. Gravel? I can probably take it without worrying. Need to clear a curb? Doable.
- Better visibility, and that's even after factoring in everyone buying an SUV
- Marginal efficiency hit (like 10-15%), which most people ignore with electric SUVs anyway, but even with gas or diesel it's just not enough to stop people from buying anymore compared to when SUVs truly guzzled gas. As an example, I had a BMW from a number of years ago that my SUV today outpaces in average gas mileage despite unchanged driving habits and better engine output as well as increased weight for the SUV. People are essentially offsetting engine efficiency gains by buying more car.
- More car to absorb impact in the event of a crash.
I can see why people buy them even before egos start to get involved around just how big the cars can be.
Always keep in mind that accidents may involve a person on the other side.
> Always keep in mind that accidents may involve a person on the other side.
This is self-negated with moves by the broader population towards SUVs. The end result is that SUV on SUV crashes will simply include more mass (structured to crumple more effectively as well) protecting occupants in all cars involved.
Your car buying decision should be strictly around your own safety. Your driving habits must factor in both your safety as well as the safety of others; if someone else drives inappropriately and causes a crash and their wellbeing is impaired or concluded as a result of both their driving habits as well as their use of a less safe car, the fault shouldn't be on you for having a car that's safer for you to drive. Perhaps that's what you meant to convey when you edited my quote.
I would also argue that centering your car buying decisions around your own safety is selfish and or egotistical; other people are just as valid as you and you should consider their safety just as much as your own, especially the traffic participants that are less able to defend themselves against bigger vehicles like pedestrians or cyclists.
> I would also argue that centering your car buying decisions around your own safety is selfish and or egotistical; other people are just as valid as you and you should consider their safety just as much as your own, especially the traffic participants that are less able to defend themselves against bigger vehicles like pedestrians or cyclists.
If you're willing to buy a car based on the safety of others over your own, that's your right. But if we're being honest, everything you just mentioned is exactly why your active participation in defensive driving techniques is essential. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defensive_driving
Since crashes always have fault, defensive driving and proper maintenance of your car are paramount safety requirements both for myself and to pay respect to other people. However, beyond that, I'm buying my car based on an assumption that other people will not pay me that respect (e.g. by texting and driving), which is also precisely the point of defensive driving in the first place.
It seems like you're here mostly to force a debate. I made my point; I hope you're at peace with it.
That is a horrible, selfish attitude.
A car driver is absolutely responsible for their choice of vehicle, their choice to drive any particular journey, their choice to exceed the speed limit, text, phone, chat, and everything else.
I would ban the sale of any car/SUV not in the current top 75% by pedestrian safety. Set that as a baseline, and increase the minimum standard every 5 years.
Just their choices not to drive defensively (the portion I italicized in your statement). The car you choose may be based on specific requirements for life. And the journey you take may be all the same. Would you fault someone for not being able to afford a newer car? I picked a car that exceeds the latest pedestrian safety regulations; would you still grief me just because it's an SUV?
100% of the fault comes from how a person chooses to drive and keep their car safe (lighting, brakes, capabilities that allow them to drive defensively). I wouldn't rob someone of their choice of car because I don't know what circumstance necessitated it; it would be selfish of me to tell someone they can't drive a pickup when all of their work revolves around it.
That's called stack ranking and everyone knows it's a crap system with perverse incentives.
SUV has much higher rolling danger in case of crash so better stretch your necks before driving...
It's weird that I'm here defending SUVs when my favorite car to drive is a low-riding, low-mass dart of a sports car that's far more likely to kill me than the party on the other side, but here I am.
You've constrained the conditions of a crash to:
- One specific make and model of car
- One specific make and model of SUV
- One specific type of crash (head-on, which are exceptionally rare. https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/...)
This feels like a strawman (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man)
You are definitely safer hitting the fearless ton of meat that is moose with a SUV.
"Area" may mean 50x50 km of mostly wooded and sparsely inhibited territory. It is unrealistic to expect the locals to drive 40 kph all the time there.
It's not unrealistic to expect locals to drive safely. Either drive safely or hand in your drivers license, what's even the point of having one then?
Any data on this? Bigger==safer doesn't always hold with these things. Lots of other car design features play a role there, e.g. a smaller car with a strong roof will likely beat a SUV with a weak roof structure.
(and while lots has happened with safety technology, the classic counter point is that if you have a chance to avoid the crash you're way more likely to roll an SUV while attempting to do so)
The latter circumstance feels extremely unlikely considering SUVs are generally engineered to support the higher likelihood of more weight ending up on the roof of the car in the event of a roll-over. I'd be surprised if SUVs had weaker structural reinforcement than equivalent-classed sedans.
But I could be very, very wrong here and wouldn't be surprised if I am.
Taller cars are better in this regard.
But like you said, you also run the risk of flipping the car. It would be interesting to see some actual data on this. It's the sort of thing that has been repeated so much that it's easy to make bad assumptions.
Anecdotally, I've almost hit a moose two times. Both times I just completely froze up and slammed the breaks. They jumped out of nowhere, the only reason I didn't hit any of them was just pure luck and timing, and had nothing to do with my ability to react or steer away.
In my case, my decision was made by the thousands of poorly calibrated aftermarket LED headlights I regularly see in the US. They blind me all the time in a sedan, but in an SUV I'm just high enough up that I usually don't get totally blinded.
Cars around you on the road get bigger so you feel more uncomfortable in your small car (just like some feel uncomfortable driving close to big trucks) so your next car will be a bigger one. I think this kind of anxiety is the reason for most people.
One good reason to drive SUVs in cities are the bad roads, sometimes worsened by speed bumps by the way.
Let’s talk about some difficulties. It’s a temperamental beast at times. I live in the South, so I don’t have the “cold start” problem, but I don’t have an engine block heater either. So whenever I travel north, I have to take care. Haven’t had any real issues yet - the truck’s remote starter seems to fend for itself - but I’m wary of it. Repairs can be expensive, since all components are commercial-grade and are priced accordingly. Maintenance is more expensive, but it’s a much more rare event than in a gasser. Parking in an urban environment can be a pain. Parallel parking requires skill, and there are some multistory parking structures in which I will not fit. A little bit of upfront planning seems to alleviate these problems. The truck is loud, but you only really hear it when driving slowly between two large buildings. My neighbors don’t complain, especially since they benefit from it so much.
Oh, and I can smoke most other vehicles when doing a little Saturday night racing off a stop light.
SUVs and crossovers have more tire sidewall and offer a much better ride around cities filled with pot holes and crumbing roads. The higher H-point (hip placement) means climbing up and in rather than having to lower yourself down, a much easier operation. The belt line is still high, but your seat is also higher, so greenhouse and visibility is better. Being father off the ground reduces the sensation of speed, so more timid drivers feel more confident.
Car markers also get much higher margins from SUV/crossovers, so they are pushing them hard. All the deals are for these big vehicles, so that's what people are buying.
Modern vehicles are so much more aerodynamic, so there isn't that much penalty for a crossover. They also share platforms with their sedan and traditional hatchback cousins, so there isn't even that much of a weight penalty. Tesla Model 3 and Y are the same vehicle underneath, and while Y pays a range penalty, it's pretty small at ~7% EPA.
The sad thing is it's the SUVs that make the roads crumble. It's extremely noticeable in the UK. The roads don't last anywhere near as long as they used to because of everyone driving these heavy things around.
That being said, driving a small "urban" car in many european cities can be challenging (and parking even more so), I can't imagine that having a big SUV would be more pleasant overall if you live in a city.
This is why Teslas won so many safety awards at the start: they were pretty much unrollable in the tests as they existed at the time.
I don't think for transitioning to EV the form factor will be the problem. BMW will start delivering the first EV versions of my current car (X3) next year. For me, charging it where I live (city center) is the problem. Every time I see my neighbour roll his extension cord across the sidewalk I think 'no way I'm going to do that'.
The only reason I drive it is because it's so comfortable to sit higher up, and to have a better view of the road that way.
And thereby blocking the view of 'regular' cars.
For some reason, all of the traffic lights installed in my city now don't have a set of lights at the far side of the junction visible, so there is a fairly large window where you can be stuck with no visibility of the traffic lights in 2 lanes of traffic if you might have a filter light.
There's also rear view mirrors (big vehicle takes up more of my window, so I can't see if there's a bike coming)
Not to speak of opposing(?) traffic on smaller roads. I almost died several times ;)
Very happy to no longer have a car.
If the person in front of you isn't driving like such an jerk that you need to be looking around them to predict their moves or to find a passing opportunity it's not really a big deal.
Or even how tall the windscreen is can be a significant factor, in my car it is so short that the rearview mirror covers a significant part of the street.
And small children.
My only suggestion is irrespective of the environmental aspect is, do check the performance of your next SUV with regards to "Pedestrian Safety" crash tests (Also standardized by Euro NCAP).
Specially when you mentioned city center, and The Netherlands. The difference between a regular sedan and an SUV could be the difference between a kid with fractured legs or the weight of forever taking someone's life.
For example, I am going to buy a new car in the next 2 years, so looking a bit, and two cars I might be choosing behind would be the:
Peugeot 3008/5008, seen as a SUV in the Netherlands: 67% Pedestrian Euro NCAP score: https://www.euroncap.com/en/results/peugeot/3008/5008/26581
Peugeot 208, smaller car, same brand, same year: 56% https://www.euroncap.com/en/results/peugeot/208/38543
Or the original posters BMW X3: 70% https://www.euroncap.com/en/results/bmw/x3-/-x4/33285
Otoh, the BMW 3 series: 87% https://www.euroncap.com/en/results/bmw/3-series/38531
Full electric BMW i3: 57% https://www.euroncap.com/en/results/bmw/i3/8863
So what I am trying to say is: yes, "SUV" in general are likely to be worse for pedestrians, but there is so much variability, that "picking a SUV" doesn't mean much about safety.
A few things to take into account:
- The 67℅ in the test in 2016 for the Peugeot 3008 is based on a Pedestrian Impact performance.
- The 56% of the test in 2019 for Peugeot 208 is based on a Pedestrian Impact Performance _and_ ADAS pedestrian detection +Automatic Emergency Braking (AEB) performance
An important point with Euro NCAP is that typically the tests are always getting harder year on year to account for the expected technological development. Such that the same car would progressively score less if it were to repeat the Euro NCAP test year on year.
I hope this helps your concern.
In 'standard height' cars the first impact is usually on lower limbs or torso and secondary trauma to the head will happen on the bonnet or windshield.
In SUV's, pedestrian and cyclists are much likely to suffer head trauma on first impact.
My point is, in the horrific scenario that this should happens the survival rate will always be higher for non-SUV vehicles (ideally with longer bonnets and pedestrian friendly deformable structures).
"The GHSA reported that the number of pedestrian deaths involving SUVs increased by 50 percent from 2013 through 2017, while the number of pedestrian deaths caused by passenger cars increased by 30 percent over that same period. That reflects booming sales of SUVs and the fact that pedestrians are much less likely to survive the impact of an SUV."[1]
[0] https://brandonlegalgroup.com/iihs-study-suvs-present-a-high...
[1] https://eu.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2019/02/28/pedestri...
I hope a Cochrane meta-analysis meets your evidence based statistical standards.[0][1]
It's physics, a higher front-end means primary blunt force trauma to the chest and head (specially for children and cyclists), were by primary we mean the first and highest force trauma, and by chest and head we mean trauma to vital organs.
I am not judging if this type of vehicle is your preference but demanding scientific rigor without accepting the physics involved just feels like a cognitive dissonance. I am not arguing that higher front-end vehicles cause accidents, I am arguing that pedestrian are less likely to survive upon impact compared to other vehicles.
The only reason these vehicles are not banned from city centres is purely because they are a marketing and economical success not because of lack of evidence on their dangers.
[0] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20146143/
[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33147075/
All that said there is little doubt that lower car would be safer for peds. But all I asked is some evidence and you provided some garbage.
I don't think we ought to ban trigger-vehicle-of-the-year just because you feel like it. First I totally think we should discourage driving in cities, no matter the car. Pedestrian only streets, public transport, bike lanes is 100% my vibe. If you really want smaller cars in cities - make smaller parking spots. Make it inconvenient to use them (which is already case in European cities).
So answer me - what is your fetish with SUVs in particular and why you dance around fact that there are ton of other more dangerous vehicles on the road?
p.s. again your second links are irrelevant again - one is tiny sample size, other is about trucks.
There we have common ground.
That said, it doesn't explain why MPVs all but disappeared (have been almost completely replaced by SUVs).
The reasons pro SUV often boil down to:
Disadvantages are numerous: Yeah, I am definitely not a fan of SUV. Between some Audi Q7 and Audi A6 combi allroad, A6 wins in all possible aspects. Its also much more fun and safer car to drive.https://imgur.com/f1yksSW
So that together with the higher ride height, which makes getting kids in and out easier and almost no extra cost makes the SUV more likely to win than a similarly specced estate.
(and please keep in mind a "SUV" in Europe is not really the same as "SUV" in the states).
SUVs are a comfortable ride. You see everything, you sit comfortable, they feel spacious (not always are...), it's the design between normal cars and pickup trucks or vans.
Still people buy more and more SUVs
If you consider that, low sedans that make it harder to easily get in and out of the car for many people, are the abnormality, and the classical adult man high shape will keep increasing in popularity as cost and gas becomes less of an issue for more people.
Now imagine getting into a Honda Accord sedan. You have to bend down to get into the car, so your back is going to lean over and your knees are going to bend down...naturally causing your ankles to have to bend forward. Except ski boots and thumbtacks; Ow!! To get in you have to more or less turn your back to the car, splay your legs out and kinda fall back with your arms holding the sides of the frame of the car. Not a big deal but now imagine doing this times a day, every day, for the next 5 to 8 years. And I haven't even talked about trying to get out.
In an SUV at the right height, you turn your back, brace your butt atop the seat, lift your legs up and pivot into the car. No fuss. Barely any bending needed.
There's plenty of older people out there with chronic issues in their backs, spines, hips, knees, and/or ankles. Thing is, older people that are later in their careers tend to be the ones with the most purchasing power, and don't mind trading a slightly higher operating cost for more comfort.
Also if you travel a lot outside of city, they make much more sense.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/678464/distribution-of-n...
Kids, stuff.
1) the US has experienced a massive boom in outdoor recreation over last five years. All west coast campgrounds booked out months in advance (if they accept reservations), ski destinations never been busier, etc. west coast culture has a large outdoor recreation aspect, even if most people only do one or two outdoorsy things a year, their self perception is they are “outdoorsy”. Multiple neighbors have suvs so they can occasionally go camping. Could easily do it in a car but then you’d have to have a self perception that’s a closer match to lazy city dweller 2) external image. Related to above, I have observed coworkers purchase new cars and the perception of the car was important. One particular example was a coworker who got a minivan for family. Wife was miserable for six months because she was worried about being perceived as a boring mom. Finally took a 5k hit and traded it in on a new Subaru. They drive 4K miles a year, never go camping, but wanted to fit that west coast image of active family. 3) they are just more comfortable and can fit more stuff. You can get by without a truck and still haul bags of soil etc. there are some small hatchbacks that can work for this (loved my old Honda Fit, amazing storage for tiny car), but a hatchback suv makes this much easier 4) actually use it as intended. I consider this the least common reason, but some people load up their AWD suv with four people and snow shoe or cross country ski gear and get out every weekend. You can do this in a car (I’ve done it in all sorts of vehicles) but you are more likely to run into issues with a car.
I’ve had tiny cars, compact suvs, full size suvs, a van, and now a truck, and it’s hard to imagine not having an suv because they are so versatile if you recreate. Throw a topper on your roof rack, get a set of snow tires, and you can go almost anywhere in any conditions.
With an EV, this equation of cost and range goes out the window. The difference between 300km and 400km range is huge.
[1] https://www.motortrend.com/cars/mercedes-benz/gle-class/2020...
The faster you accelerate the more you’re going to braking to slow back down again (unless you’re accelerating onto open roads)
Performance cars are more likely to be driven by people who don’t care about the environment and drive as such.
Tires wear out faster
...
I think the success of Tesla says otherwise. There are lots of us who enjoy performance cars who care about emissions. Even someone who drives an Audi v8 car is doing less damage than the single person cruising in a huge truck/suv.
EVs are a different category to ICE cars so comparing across them is strange
Does your theory still hold if I drive only 2000km/year in an older car versus a Tesla X or e-Hummer? I don't pretend to have the answer to that question, but there is an environmental cost to producing a car too...
One person wants a practical crossover because that's what is most practical for the situation. The other wants a fun convertible. They buy a 4dr Wrangler because it's both. Everyone goes home happy.
Same thing happens with Tesla.
One person wants to buy a fuel sipping subcompact because that's what makes practical sense for the situation. The other wants a high performance sedan. Tesla checks both boxes so that's what they get. Everyone goes home happy.
Edit: I know you all are recoiling in horror at the thought of having to run your car purchasing decisions by the other decision maker in your household but if you're gonna click the WrongThink(TM) button why don't you at least humor me and tell me why I'm so wrong.
Living in Germany it is quite ridiculous that we don’t have speed limits on certain parts of the Autobahn, nobody needs to drive 200 km/h. You won’t get faster from A to B, it’s dangerous, it’s stressful, you need more energy. If you want to race, go on a race track. I assume it even costs us more to maintain roads so that you are able to drive more than 140 km/h.
If I travel in Spain, the speed limit is 120km/h. Now they have removed the 20 kms/h extra you could do for overtaking other cars. It is ludicrous.
Everybody goes over the limit, and hence everybody goes against the law, and everybody could be fined with 300 euros, like my father 1 month ago.
In cities, they are putting limits under 30km/h.
Politicians love the fines because it is an extra tax of an extra billion euros nobody controls.
Do you object to seatbelt laws under the premise of "Freedom"? What about car safety standards? Isn't it more "Free" if we can make whatever car I want and sell it to whomever wants to buy it, even if it kills millions every year?
The truth is that we need to look at improving society holistically, which means implementing and designing society in a way that benefits humankind over the long term. Civilization isn't very "Free" but it's a trade off we make to live in a fair and progressive society, and allows us to combat things like covid, natural disasters, growing populations and other challenges that face the human race.
While we’re at it, let’s get rid of heating past 60 F. You can always wear a sweater or a thicker blanket. It’s not like it’ll be a great inconvenience like not having any heating would be, you’ll still be able to do all the necessary tasks.
Your argument is “people don’t deserve to enjoy anything.”
Basically, your morality is all wrong. The point of life (for humans, at least) isn't to do what we need - that's only the lowest, most basic level of Maslow's pyramid. It's self-actualization, which essentially means fulfilling autonomously chosen goals. You might see no reason to drive 200km/h, but others might - why limit them? The only potential reason is safety, but hey, people enjoy plenty of extreme(-ly dangerous) sports, so clearly there are reasons to trade off safety as well.
In addition, an appeal to safety doesn't actually make sense in this instance - why would 120km/h be better than 200km/h? I mean, it's slightly safer but still incredibly unsafe! If we prioritized safety over all else, we'd all be driving at most 30km/h! So clearly "safety" isn't a good, objective reason - at best, it's a subjective, arbitrary threshold, but then we ought to recognize that diifferent people will make different tradeoffs regarding safety.
Noone trains for driving at high speeds in driving school. Also a lot of folks do not understand the relationship between velocity and the time you need to come to a stop. So 120km/h is way better than 200km/h. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3D7XYQExt0
This is just so wrong. Have you actually ever done that? For example between Jena and Chemnitz, when traffic is light it is so incredibly safe and relaxing.
Don’t confuse fast driving with reckless driving. No speed limits will stop reckless drivers. Even so, it’s totally possible to drive recklessly at 140 kph. Just go figure around Leverkusen literally every day.
This is like trying to sell people on veganism by arguing that food doesn’t need to taste good.
at the same time i know that the freedom to drive fast does not really impact crash or efficiancy metrics very much and having been to countries with universal speed limits i can confirm that it is an agonizing drive if everybody is going slow (120kph) to the point that i wonder if the resulting boredom is causing a lot more accidents.
Why? Did you ever have to drive 1000 km for work in one day?
Clarkson thought the challenge was dumb and picked a big comfy car with a massive engine. He might not win but at least he’s gonna enjoy himself.
Ended up winning. The massively overpowered engine was chilling at highway speeds so much it barely used any gas.
Another fun comparison was when they took a Prius and a M5. When the M5 was chilling at a slightly fun speed, the Prius was struggling so hard that it had double the fuel consumption of the M5.
Cruising speed matters.
But you're among an online community that thinks the Hilux episode was a scientifically controlled experiment so that's gonna be an uphill battle.
In the second case they where driving the Prius around a race track as fast as they could make it go (ie nothing like cruising on normal roads) while with the M5 following at the same pace. And in those conditions the M5 did use less gas, but I don't recall it being half as much.
An M5 won't have better fuel consumption than a "normal" small car in any situation that you could reasonably see on the road.
Top Gear's challenges were very entertaining, but they were very far from being scientifically meaningful in any way.
I’ve driven both types on their home turf and in the wrong environment and it makes a huge difference.
The only truly bad type of car is an SUV. Bad everywhere.
vs. how often are you driving alone in that monster truck?
That said hybrid systems are basically KERS: they matter when slowing down (charging the battery instead of warming up brakes), and at very low to low speeds (better efficiency of the electric engine compared to a gasoline engine). I would not expect a trip on the highway without traffic to be better at all with a hybrid car than with a gasoline car.
Hybrid systems allow the gas engine to (essentially) always run at its ideal speed if it is running at all, storing extra energy when less is needed and drawing power from the battery when more is needed. On an idealized highway drive, with cruising speed at exactly the pure gas car engine’s ideal speed, with no variations due to turns, hills, traffic, etc., this is no benefit, but real highway driving tends to differ from this ideal enough that hybrid cars have benefits even in freeway driving.
I agree that hybrids are a stupid solution, a full EV is way to go, but, for example, there are only two superchargers for Tesla in whole Berlin, which has almost 4 million population. The infrastructure has to be improved and the batteries needs to get larger or more efficient, because I find stopping every 2hrs to charge your car for 30 minutes stupid.
Hybrids are just a band-aid solution until we have proper (and cheap) EVs.
Q: Would any of us consider "range" as a performance characteristic? If not, why not?
Overall good, even if hybrids are terrible.
However I do agree with you that many of the cars - essentially the entire milid-hybrid (MHEV) segment, IMO - is there just to get the numbers (electric motor kicks in just enough to lower the max CO2 in special cases). Locally (Croatia, HR), virtually all new cars have at least a MHEV option and some have no non-e option at all. They're really pushing it hard.
Even though MHEV could be considered "lipstick on a pig", it still has two useful effects:
- If it does lower CO2 emission in worst cases (start, overtake, etc), it still means it lowers the overall CO2 at least somewhat - every little bit helps.
- It normalizes electric vehicles. There are a people here who have extremely negative (subjective) opinions on them, and I'm talking general public, not petrolheads. Once you get a Slav to understand his (it's always his) beloved Golf running on batteries is not an abomination, the floodgates are open
Due to high gas prices, main impediment to switching to fully electric cars is not cost but infrastructure. In Croatia there's very little of it and it's often vandalized or gas-powered cars are parked in charging spots, etc. Thus a pleasant road-trip to the country or the coast turns into a logistical nightmare.
Similarly, for plug-hybrids, a lot of people that would have the means to buy such a car usually live in apartment buildings, often without dedicated parking spots so you have to hunt for a space around the block and you can't just plug in your car overnight.
Fuel duties help to offset the negative externalities to society of driving, namely CO2 emissions, pollution and congestion. With EVs tou don’t have emissions and pollutions and the health problems they bring so there’s no negatives to offset (ie fuel duty revenue will go down, but so will spending on health and environmental related issues)
There’s still the congestion any vehicle can cause and I think we’ll move to a much different form of vehicle taxation over the next 20 years, perhaps with more toll roads or even surge pricing style taxation for usage of roads.
...and yet from today's headlines:
British coal plants fired up to meet temporary electricity shortfall. Remaining UK coal plants, including Drax, supply 6% of grid’s electricity to cover power supply drop and colder weather
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/nov/26/british-coa...
Also note:
"renewable electricity was in relatively short supply in western Europe too, meaning the UK would need to keep running its coal plants while exporting power to France and to the Netherlands via cable interconnectors"
Also, I'll take the emissions from tires and brake pads over those from an engine for sure.
https://www.motorbiscuit.com/are-electric-cars-worse-for-the...
Spoiler alert: EV pollutes less than ICE
I'm not wholly informed here, but just by using common sense, I can only imagine we're talking fractions of a percent for brake pad and tyre pollution, so I wouldn't pick that hill to die on personally.
Tire emissions are NOT a factor we need to be concerned with however :-) Tire manufacture, sure. From waste - most definitely. But emissions from driving are not something to worry about even with the billions of miles driven annually on tires.
https://www.bts.gov/content/estimated-national-average-vehic...
[1] Was a lot harder to find it again because someones running an SEO agitprop campaign to blame PM2.5 on tires instead of diesel exhaust. I had wade through GIS pages of trash websites to find it again.
The nice thing about EVs is those exhaust emissions are moved away from the tailpipe in populated areas to power generation facilities.
The efficiency of electric vehicles is almost 3x that of the gasoline cycle of drilling, transporting, distilling, transporting again, combusting then achieving almost 30% motion from the chemical energy of gas.
So because of this efficiency there’s just less emissions overall even though the emissions are away from population centres.
Then lastly, the emissions are consolidated in one place so capture and cleaning becomes viable.
EVs are not perfect but they are so much better than gasoline powered vehicles that if you can at all accomodate the switch, then it would be great to consider it.
Taxing will have to change and evolve either way.
Today it makes sense to incentivize the move to EVs. But this says nothing about what will happen when everyone is there and people no longer have the option of buying or using an ICE. Some years from now taxing EVs with some form of "road tax" (today included in the price of fuel) will be the low hanging fruit and the technological means may already be there. Your car will likely be able or even required to log and report the distance driven for taxing purposes.
If truly autonomous vehicles do catch on and incentivize moving away from private ownership, it will also have a huge impact on the way cars are taxed or how the taxes are passed on to the user.
It would work as "You've done 10,000 miles since your last MOT, you have to pay your £1k tax bill". Travel abroad and you could register the mileage when you leave and when you get back easily enough. Final bill on scrapping or on SORN.
That wouldn't allow the differential road pricing that tracking fans want, and wouldn't work in Ireland, but would work in GB right now.
You don't have them at the tailpipe, which I guess is really the key thing because it means a reduction in asthma and deaths due to PM in habited areas.
You do still have emissions, they're just emitted away from where humans live. It's a great improvement but not a complete solution.
If anything we need to tax the hell out of fossil fuel to break even with its actual costs.
1. https://www.eesi.org/papers/view/fact-sheet-fossil-fuel-subs...
2. https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2019-10-21/oil-com...
Shifting non-essential travel to an hour earlier or later in the day will have a hugely beneficial impact in unclogging many cities.
I personally blame it to Toyota’s horrible packaging. The thorough objective horrendousness of Prius is inexcusable, especially the latest ones. But that shouldn’t decide on the technology!
The Koeingsegg One:1 is exciting. The BMW i3 is exciting. The Jaguar I-Pace is exciting. Heck, the Tesla is exciting. The BMW 3-series hybrid is $15,000 more for not a whole lot.
(Full disclosure: two working parents, three young kids, not a lot of spare time and even less spare money...)
We own two (ICE) cars, a seven-seater that's diesel-powered and a four-seater that's petrol. Neither of them are even remotely "exciting" (both have the smallest, most economical engines that the manufacturer offers for that model). We would not be looking for "exciting" in a replacement for either of them, either.
What I am looking for is a like-for-like replacement that isn't hugely more expensive.
With electric, I'm struggling.
We [very briefly] sat in the battery version of the four-seater in the showroom when we bought the petrol, it cost more than twice as much, range was dire, and the sales guy pointed out that it wouldn't hold its purchase value as battery technology is changing so rapidly. So that was that :(
I would love to switch to electric, but right now we don't have the spare cash to throw around.
"Exciting" might be great for persuading petrolheads and/or the wealthy and/or the virtue-signallers to switch, but for everyone else, what can pure-electric offer?
I feel the same, I sold my car 8 years ago and never bought a new one since, I'm planning to get a new one (hopefully kids, old parents, I'm gonna need it sooner or later) but I am struggling too.
I usually use the Renault Zoe as an example, the EV model costs 40% more (~26,000 euros VS ~37,000 euros) for no - obvious - added benefit, it's the same exact car.
I've been researching and thanks to state bonuses I could buy a Renault Twingo EV for ~17,000 euros, it's a very good deal but it's a smaller car, not that it's a problem now, I still mainly drive inside the city, but it makes me think of the economy of the operation: I need it for a future larger family, I should settle down on a smaller car.
I'm probably getting it anyway and I am also excited about it, but really it shouldn't be about excitement, it should be about being a better deal overall.
Like, Fisker Karma was basically as fast and quick as a Tesla. Lots of hybrid hypercars are faster than petrol counterparts. It’s Toyota Prius that’s smearing hybrids.
Classifying a car as a mild hybrid electric vehicle on the basis of nothing but a glorified starter motor doesn't sound entirely unlike something Volkswagen Group might try to get away with, but this doesn't seem like a fair assessment. Doesn't conventional coasting mean that the ICE still is driving the wheels — at idle RPM? So if instead the clutch decouples, the electric motor has to make up the difference, right? That's not nothing when you consider that diesels (such as your Audi) output significantly more power at idle RPM (and also use more fuel, I'd guess?) than petrol engines (relative to max power).
Also by coasting I mean condition where the car has enough momentum and either goes downhill or there is a slower speed limit ahead (this is detected automatically from map data) and the car knows that it can just decouple the engine. This is evaluated by the car based on some conditions, it's not controlled by the driver.
"The 48-volt-based MHEV technology is particularly more comfortable and efficient. If the driver takes his foot off the accelerator at a speed between 55 and 160 km/h (34.2 to 99.4 mph), the car can coast for up to 40 seconds with the engine off completely. During slow coasting, the start-stop phase already begins at 22 km/h (13.7 mph).
Once the driver accelerates again – whether from a stop or while driving – the vehicle restarts quickly and very comfortably: the BAS revs up the internal combustion engine to the target speed, then injection occurs again and, in the case of a gasoline engine, ignition. While the conventional pinion starter remains on board, it practically comes into play only at the initial starting, if the engine oil is still cold and viscous. In such a situation, the belt of the BAS could slip through. "
I thought hybrid is the only sane approach as you can cover 90% of your trips electric with a small battery. Or is the fuel motor always on in this car?
Soo, yeah, huge number of those vehicles included are actually diesel powered cars. The fact it adds a bit of torque from electric motor doesn’t change a thing.
To make matters worse, there is no incentive to buy a certified used EV (at least for Europe).
For the cynical amongst us, this is the best time to buy a luxury used Diesel car e.g. (Audi A6, BMW 5 series etc.)
But having calculated cost of owning a car (parking, insurance, repairs, deprecation, gas etc) I have realized I could do that every weekend all year, and still probably come out ahead. Even if comparing to buying a used car. So here's to hoping I will be better at doing it this winter.
Might be my own bias speaking, but... I think it's rash calling it a crap car.
Sure a Dacia Sandero (two door) works and is nice but so is a 8 y.o. BMW or Volvo in the wagon class for about the same price.
What I don't understand is why by a cheap new car, when you can buy a cheap old car of higher class for the same price, or a cheap old car of the smaller classes for way less.
The reason luxury used cars are cheap is because the people who can afford them new, generally can afford a newer one in 3 years. So they are quite abundant
Electrified are counted as pure electric, plug-in hybrids, full hybrids and mild hybrids. "Mild hybrids" is just a petrol car with bigger starter motor.
It's still not financially wise to own an EV.
Take France, which is just next door to Germany. Electricity cost is easily half of Germany's, and CO₂ emissions are about one fifth.
I've gone from 50 €/month on diesel fuel to 10 €/month on very low CO₂ electricity.
I have 0.12€/kWh here in Finland.
Conclusion: free market sucks
And let's not forget that a whole society living in single housing is a lot less eco-friendly than someone living in an apartment in a dense city and being able to do a lot of errands walking. Transportation emissions is not the only eco-impact, there's a lot that goes into housing and non efficient use of land.
They're expensive by US standards too. They'd only not be expensive by Silicon Valley standards. A Porsche Taycan is a $100k+ car. Very few people own that in the US. Most of the Teslas sold are also expensive cars by US standards too (very few are buying at base price).
2016 example https://www.jaguarlandrover.com/2016/cleaner-safer-smarter-m...
That saving is like going from 35mpg to 39mpg, or 50 to 58, or 27 to 29.
It's the swapping round that confuses me. I know it's "how much fuel will I need to go X distance", I just don't grok it intuitively that way round
The "per 100km" seems arbitrary to me too, why not 60ml/km.