I live in an apartment in San Francisco and my wife and I drive a diesel F-250. We admittedly use it mostly to pull our RV (we live a good part of the year travelling in our RV around California and the southwest). It is our family car though and we do use it around the city. I park it in an underground garage. It's actually way more workable than it would seem.
How do you feel about your impact on others on the roads? Driving such a vehicle through populated areas means you're putting pedestrians and cyclists at significantly higher risk due to lessened visibility and hood height[1], blocking other drivers' views, and exposing people nearby to toxic diesel fumes [2]. The majority of the problems with driving a large vehicle in a city are not borne by the owner thereof.
To be clear, my point isn't to try to make you feel bad about your choice, but to demonstrate why it's bad on a societal level to have this profusion of large vehicles. Societal problems need societal solutions.
if its a modern diesel (after about 2010 or so) it uses DEF along with its EGR and SCR systems and does not put out the NOx and particulates that the older diesels do.
It's modern diesel engine (2019). The exhaust that comes out is cleaner than many small 2 stroke motorcycle engines, lawn mower engines,etc. Also way cleaner than that old Mercedes diesel you are running your biodiesel in.
I live right where the interstate dumps into the city, we have soot on our windows. The problem is real, but the diesel trucks, big trucks, are 95% of the problem, not the 5k miles I drive a year in my truck.
> The exhaust that comes out is cleaner than many small 2 stroke motorcycle engines, lawn mower engines,etc.
While true, that's a pretty low bar. I wouldn't bring that up as an argument in defense of it, because it comes off kind of like "at least it's not burning bunker oil!"
The rest of your situation makes perfect sense, though. You need something with that power and size regularly enough to justify owning one, and rather than have 2 vehicles, you just use the one you already have for other things. That's completely reasonable.
Have you ever stopped to ponder how your very existence actually does such damage to everyone else around you, eating up food that could be for someone else, probably by killing an animal, taking up space for your house which could be public parklands, creating waste products and other likewise negative outcomes?
Do you not consider the negative externalities when choosing what to do? Pretty sure that's normal behavior, and disregarding your impact is antisocial.
Not to mention that every breath converts breathable oxygen into the deadly greenhouse gas, CO2! The mere act of existence means that you are, forever and always, contributing to climate change!
I’m so exhausted of the constant online morality policing over such inane, trivial things like this. Hell, it’s even electric rather than a gas-guzzler like the normal F-150, and people are still screeching because “iT’S tOo BiG!”. Yeah bro, because trucks aren’t made to be DoorDash vehicles in NYC, they’re made to haul RVs to the lake and lumber to the build site.
Like I mentioned in my comment, the goal wasn't to morality-police, but to point out how the externalities of truck ownership in a dense area fall on others.
And I disagree that it's inane or trivial. Motor vehicle crashes kill ~45k Americans per year, the leading preventable cause of death for everyone 4-21 years old and the second-leading cause for 22-67 year olds [1], and the numbers are climbing. As my comment pointed out, light trucks are ~50% deadlier in collisions with pedestrians (don't have the data on-hand for other vehicle inhabitants). Anecdotally, I have friends and family members who have been hit by cars and lucky enough to survive, but (knowing the details of the cases) likely would not have were they hit by a 5'-bonnet-height truck.
I agree trucks aren't made for tooling around cities, but for heavier duty activites. What's upsetting is that more and more vehicles like this _are_ being used for city and suburban daily driving where all of their externalities are at their worst and none of their utility is needed.
> Have you ever stopped to ponder how your very existence actually does such damage to everyone else around you
Yes, and you should go out of your way to minimize this as much as possible, as a high priority of life in a shared space with other people. Rather than make it worse, on purpose, because "f150ck you, I got mine" (which is at least honest), or failing that, whatever excuse serves to mask the juvenile selfishness of this attitude.
Lessened visibility is due completely to rollover protection regulations. Vehicles around the 2010's+ require stronger A,B,C...pillars etc. Automakers complied with the regulations by making pillers both larger and shorter. Shorter members are stronger as there is less bending moment. If you look at where the windows start on newer vehicles they are munch higher. Thus body lines to match this brings up the hood.
This is astoundingly obvious when you park an unmodified 80's-90's vehicle next to something new.
The question to me is what overall reduces mortality rates, improved roll-over and side impact protection or driver visibility?
Personally I think blind spots everywhere suck and would much prefer better visibility.
Just because they made a window bigger or a member longer doesn't mean it's weaker. They could have changed the material to something twice as strong, added hidden structures, etc.
The difference is mandated crash testing, and now simulated crash testing. They are required by law to build cars that are safe, and test to make sure they truly are.
I live in condo with a parking garage. A Sierra parked directly across from a RAM and basically blocked all the cars above the 3rd floor in the garage. While I believe it is workable to keep such a large truck in the city I also doubt it is practical.
It's actually extremely convenient because I run my own business. Being able to do things you need for your business without renting a truck is very useful. I do a lot of hardware building, equipment moving, etc.
Walk outside in any city and you will see tradespeoples trucks, vans. That's me.
If it were exactly the same size it could still be silly for city life, depending on the city, the neighborhood, etc. Because it awkwardly sticks out in parking lots? Because you like how it makes you feel, and even better how it makes others feel? That's silly.
Because it's impossible to find parallel street parking (and take up 2-3 spaces when you do) and makes it much easier to hit unseen pedestrians in crowded areas and older layouts with tight corners? Because you need it for work? Not at all silly.
Source? I looked into this earlier[1] and so far as I can tell, while CAFE regulations encourage cars to be large, they're far from being "mandated". Subcompacts on the market in Europe that aren't sold in the US would still comply with CAFE regulations, so the characterization is misleading at best.
The person who stated 90mpg in the linked thread is nuts. The issue isn't the regulation itself but how it's shaped the industry.
Up until very recently it was basically impossible to make a pickup truck style vehicle meet CAFE standards so they stopped making any pickups that were regulated under that standard. Instead they switched to making "trucks", unencumbered by regulations, which had to be over a certain weight (read: huge). Before CAFE, there were tons of tiny pickup trucks like the early gen rangers/tacomas. Once CAFE hit, those same trucks suddenly became huge road tanks.
That was the case for a few years, but its turning back now. It used to be anything over 7500lbs was exempted from mileage standards, plus, they could be depreciated faster on taxes if you owned a small business. that is why so many small business owners had a very, very large SUV. However the high cost of fuel has helped change that, and now the Suburban, and all 1/2 ton pickups are offered with a very small diesel engine (around 3.6L i think) that gets > 27Mpg.
The lead photo shows it next to a Volvo XC40[1], not a Yaris. Yes, pickups are nice at certain times (I have fit dimensional lumber into my Mazda 3, but it wasn't pretty), but modern trucks are just silly. The Maverick is larger than an old Ford Ranger yet has a smaller bed.
Aside from how tall "light duty" pickups are these days (I can't see over the hood of one when in my car, though I think the Silverado is worse than the F-150), I wish they would mount the headlights lower. There's plenty of space between the lights and the bumper, so there is room to do it.
My brother rented a truck from Home Depot this week. $30 + gas, zero hassle. Far better option for most city dwellers than owning their own truck, IMO.
An argument against this is that you will “own nothing”, but I sometimes feel like these tools I’ve acquired are more of a burden than they should be. Yes it’s convenient to have a table saw when I need it, but… I use it very occasionally, and I know well in advance when I’ll be using it.
It would be really nice to own a cleaner, more spacious home rather than a bunch of tools, most days.
The counterpoint there is that it's plain inefficient if everyone had to own everything. It's great that there's the option for the ones who want it I suppose, but as you've pointed out, from my perspective it's really just hoarding to have all these "justincases" hiding in the attic.
Yeah, I own a Honda Fit, and buying a sub-$20k subcompact car for daily use and being willing to do short-term rentals of something when I need to (very rarely, the Fit has a lot of cargo space for its size) has been an excellent trade-off. Particularly since in daily life having decent gas mileage and being able to park in any available spot is far more useful...
The main drawback of owning it, honestly, is that there's always the worry that someone in a behemoth pickup will collide with me, and I'd come off the worse from that.
I'm sure there are people out there who actually need the capacity of a pickup truck... but I don't think that most of the people who own one actually do. Certainly not the people you see driving them in town with an empty bed.
Honda fits are like a bag of holding, I've moved 500lb machine tools in one.
I wouldn't mind the flexibility of having a pickup truck shaped object because I never use the rear seats and always have them folded down for moving around other stuff, but nobody makes tiny pickups like they did in the 80s/90s. I also can't be alone in thinking this because I've seen an explosion in 80s Japanese micro trucks around town recently after some people documented the import process online.
I at one point had a guy with pickup (without a rack) trying to load lumber and remarked at how much easier of a time I was having loading the same lumber into the fit. It was pretty funny and I was surprised at his candor given my usual truck owner interactions.
Yeah! It being at or below waist level makes a huge difference. I usually get at least one skeptical look when I pull up to the local lumber yard with it. I'm always the only non-truck or van there.
My favorite personal anecdote was when I drove ~90 minutes to a friend's house in January so we could use his '98 Tahoe to pick up a king sized bed from Ikea. But we couldn't actually close the back doors with all of the boxes in there. It was quite chilly. When we got back to his house, I said "you know what, let's at least try to fit this in my (2007) Honda Fit. If it works, I'm warm, you don't have to waste 180 minutes on a round trip (with the first half freezing), and I save a bunch in gas." He thought I was crazy and it would never work. But wouldn't you know, with the passenger seat folded back we could get everything in with the hatch closed. I was able to drive the bed straight home and save my friend a lot of hassle!
They're not going to see you driving it at night because they're not going to see anything at all with you blinding them from half a block away with completely hostile stadium intensity headlightd mounted at eye level.
I never understood this, don't the presumably mature adult engineers and product managers who design lighting systems at places like Ford and Chevy not have children of their own, some of which being infants have to sit in rear-facing seats and get their retinas seared by these aggressively attention-seeking manhood cosplay accessories?
One of the few things the Cybertruck gets right is that the headlights are low down between the bumper and the frunk. The light bar at the hood line is decorative.
I can rent cars and vans from the supermarket 200m from me - the problem is the faff of waiting for a member of staff, the pre inspection, the post inspection, the cleaning, refuelling, the scanning of my drivers license, the payment of the deposit and fee - if it was as simple as turning up with my phone, scanning something and driving off I wouldn’t need a personal car and I doubt many would either.
The Lowes and HD near me always have their trucks either in maintenance or rented out. It's always a mistake to rely on their availability here. Rebuilding my deck and making raised beds was basically an exercise in begging friends for their trucks
We've both always just did the "stick it out the trunk with a flag" or "tie it to our roof rack" thing when getting stuff from HD. But his experience was so good that we decided we'd be better off renting a truck in the future. Hopefully our future experience isn't like yours. Renting on a weekday in January is probably easier than a weekend in the summer.
You know they'll deliver. Plus, you can rent a moving van from U-Haul. There's no reason to spend Big Money on a truck you'll be using every now and then.
The delivery solution reminds me of the why-dropbox question. Delivery is fine* if you know exactly the amount you need or are fine with paying for extra materials. There were a few times I needed an extra piece or just needed something else.
And yea, I can still just wait for another piece of wood to be delivered - or I could just ask someone who has a truck to help me.
*Also Home Depot / Lowes lumber is garbage tier. I don't trust them to just send me whatever 2x6s I select online. If you don't go to the store and actually inspect the wood, you're just gonna get curved pieces.
Ford could totally change the game with a 60kwH Maverick EV sold in volume. But those margins are just too fat on the "luxury truck" market that has come to dominate US automaker strategies. I don't see anything even on the horizon from the Japanese (or GM for that matter) that could touch them in that market.
Ford's having a hard time producing the Maverick in general, no way are they going to go to a pure EV Maverick when the existing hybrid is hard to come by.
>Ford's having a hard time producing the Maverick in general, no way are they going to go to a pure EV Maverick when the existing hybrid is hard to come by.
Yeah I guess my point being, if they hadn't misallocated far too many resources to the Lightning (based on how many are sitting on dealer lots now), and instead had hedged their bets between Lightning and a Maverick EV (both in lower volumes), they'd be in a far better place right now. But Bill Ford was all in on the Lightning as a flagship branding push
alongside Mach-E during the peak of initial EV hype, so here we are. No doubt the only reason they offered hybrid for Maverick instead of pure EV was to not cannibalize F-150/Mustang battery supply.
Everyone and their uncle wants to buy a $30/40k EV pickup truck right now, and Ford could easily sell one profitably. Hopefully it catches on. Of all the legacy manufacturers, they're in the best possible position to undercut Rivian/Tesla on one of the largest market segments in the US.
i've heard from a few acquaintances who have sold at Ford dealerships refer to their fircely brand-loyal truck customers as "grapes," and greatly prefer them to car buyers for that reason.
DC isn't really a place for any pickup the size of a F-150. If we're sticking with Ford products, the Maverick and Ranger are much more appropriate pickup.
DC is going to find a way to punish you regardless of what you're driving but I can confirm driving a full sized truck inside the beltway is a special slice of hell.
I agree, I’d rather be driving behind ten F-150s going the speed limit through town rather than 1 bicyclist holding up an entire lane of traffic behind them.
Every class of road users has jerks in it, because all drivers, riders, and walkers are human, and conflicts can be inflamed by local road design and driving culture. Personally, I find it much more productive to focus on the economic and public health impacts of the various available forms of transit, rather than building my view of the Problems with Transit around the things that personally inconvenience me.
Large pickup trucks in particular are a public health catastrophe. They kill occupants of other vehicles in collisions at about 2.5x the rate of other vehicle types (cars and SUVs), and they have abysmal pedestrian safety performance. On top of their high fuel consumption and emissions baseline, there is a nationwide trend called "coal rolling" in which truck owners modify their vehicles to produce thick black exhaust full of NOx, which bystanders are then forced to breathe. Pickup truck drivers also have some of the highest DUI rates around. Even setting aside my personal anecdotal observation that pickup truck drivers are by far the most aggressive and unsafe class of drivers on the road, it's clear that if we actually cared as a society about saving human lives, we would take measures to drastically curtail the use of large pickup trucks on public roads tomorrow.
In comparison, though it does happen, it's vanishingly rare for cyclists to cause serious injury or death to bystanders, and they have zero emissions beyond manufacture and delivery. In my opinion, anybody drawing any kind of equivalence between the harm done by bikes and the harm done by large pickup trucks in the public transit sphere needs to do some serious introspection.
In my city (Seattle) there's an intersection I walk through 4 or so times a day. More than once a week, I see bicyclists vaguely look around around from a slowed pedal, and then just blithely ride right through the red light.
Over and over. Day after day. For a (no-exaggeration) decade that I've been living and walking in this spot.
I haven't owned a car in a very long time, and every single close encounter with getting hit by something has been with a bicycle at a red light in Seattle (at the above spot, or elsewhere). Over and over and over again: not a one-off that has burned me on bicyclists, but over and over for year after year.
So again I will repeat: as a pedestrian, the "self-entitled idiots" that I see on a weekly/daily basis, for more than a decade, are bicyclists. Seattle drivers seems to understand the idea of pedestrians. Seattle bicyclists seem to view traffic laws as a joke.
I live in Seattle too. I've been here for twenty years, driving and biking and walking, and by far the most real close calls I've had have been on foot, from cars. A few on my bike too—in particular, I was hit by a Porsche SUV U-turning out of a parallel parking spot last fall, and received permanent ligament damage in my shoulder.
> Seattle drivers seems to understand the idea of pedestrians.
I used to have to cross a semi-busy road twice a day on my walk to and from work. I crossed at a marked crosswalk, but about 90% of the time cars would not stop unless I forced them to by entering the road myself (essentially playing chicken with them), and more than once they blasted through the crosswalk while I was still in it, speeding past inches from me. Never mind that the law says pedestrians have the right of way. This experience is not unique to the crosswalk in question—in fact, it is essentially universal. I find your assertion that "Seattle drivers seems [sic] to understand the idea of pedestrians" utterly baffling. Perhaps you are posting from a parallel universe, or one of the wealthy outlying neighborhoods that are Seattle in name only.
> the "self-entitled idiots" that I see on a weekly/daily basis, for more than a decade, are bicyclists.
Just today, on my bike ride home on the stretch of the Burke Gilman between Fremont and Ballard, a red Jeep Cherokee blasted through a stop sign right in front of me, without so much as tapping the brakes. The onus was on me to account for his gross negligence, despite having the right of way. This sort of thing is so common I barely notice it anymore.
--
So yes, I'm sure we can both fire off anecdotes about modal conflicts all day. I'm sure everybody who lives in a big city can. But I challenge you to show me with data that bicycles are any meaningful fraction of the public health hazard that large pickup trucks are. And, frankly—based on two decades of commuting throughout the city in all three modes at issue here—I would suggest that you are being intellectually dishonest with yourself regarding proportionalities. I can recall only a single instance where a cyclist put me in any real danger, and I would take being hit by a cyclist any day over meeting the six foot fascia of a modern pickup at the speed limit plus fifteen (since, as I'm sure we both know, nearly every driver exceeds the speed limit on a habitual basis).
It's not bigotry. I live in an area with these idiots. It's a simple fact.
I cannot enumerate the number of times that I was unable to take an adjacent space in a parking lot, because someone couldn't park his penis replacement without taking up multiple spots.
The author is clearly not the target buyer, why would they be the reviewer?
The Lightning is no bigger than a typical F-150.
And the F-150 is the #1 best selling vehicle (on a # of units basis) than any other vehicle in the US (car or truck).
States like Texas, residents in rural areas throughout the US, and Trade's people - love trucks and they love in particular Ford.
For Trade roles, this Lightning truck is super exciting. The Fuel savings is huge for this buyer, and the ability to plug in all of your power tools directly into the truck to be used at the worksite is huge benefit.
Note: I don't even own a truck, but this is a very frustrating article to read due to the author being so uninformed.
Very anecdotal but most F-150 owners where I’m in in the Midwest use them for groceries and school drop offs. To me it seems like buying a $2000 drill to punch one hole in drywall but who am I to judge what people choose to signal with.
People in trades generally seem to use beat up vans or beat up whatever truck is cheap and runs and you don’t mind it getting dinged
I liken it to people with $3000 Macbook Pros to surf the web.
That said, I live in Houston where pickups reign, and the F-150 is probably the most common. When you have a truck at your disposal all the time, you make different choices about what you buy, when you buy it, etc. Traffic jam on the freeway? You regularly see trucks cross the curb, into the grass, and onto the feeder road.
Also it influences your lifestyle. Impromptu camping etc is not a concern. Our company is a software company in the shipping space, but my boss drives a 4x4 because he owns land that he goes to every weekend.
How rough is the terrain you're going over? I've taken a Honda Fit on some pretty terrible dirt roads out in the countryside. Clearance has occasionally been a bit tight, but the Fit is a pretty low to the ground car already and it's made out just fine anyway.
I recently bought a Hyundai Ioniq 5, but I would kill for a 1:1 replica of the Honda Fit but electric. I'm pretty sure it's the ideal car.
People go camping carrying stuff on their backs after all, or by strapping stuff to bicycles.
I'm assuming that because "impromptu camping" is an option we're not talking about someone who has kids in the first place, but even if they did I can't imagine needing a whole truck for that, especially when smaller-but-still-giant vehicles like SUVs exist.
> The author is clearly not the target buyer, why would they be the reviewer?
Outrage gets clicks, and there's a contingent that loves to hate on trucks, roads, conservatives (the assumed drivers of trucks), etc.
IMHO, a more honest headline would be "A week with a Ford F-150 Lightning: This truck cannot fit into a compact-car parking space," since that gets at the absurdity:
> At the same time, I realize I'm not the Lightning's intended audience. I have no need for a pickup truck in my life, as evinced by the fact that I never once used the Lightning's bed.
The petrol-powered F-150 is too big for cities. Cities should be mostly for pedestrians, cyclists, delivery, emergency, and mass transit vehicles.
I grew up in a rural farming area. The people who seemed most reasonable had big trucks and other heavy equipment (and/or work animals) for utility on the farm, and small efficient cars for trips to town.
Insisting on idling one's massive farm machine in front of a preschool smells like posturing and costly romanticism, in resources and health.
IME most tradespeople tend to actually use vans. I'm in the US and a house is being built across the street from my home office window, and there are more pickup trucks (most with 'manly' modifications) parked as vanity items for the employees of the welding supply shop down the street than there have been carpenters, plumbers, concrete layers, roofers, and so on here building something. It's all been Transit/Promasters and larger Ford E-XXX type vans.
Of course, not a massive sample size, but spending time both in a large American metro as well as in the rural, farming hinterlands of my state, I rarely meet people with pickups who could honestly say they need it. One cattle farmer I'm friends with has a Ford F-250 but it's like 20 years old.
63% of American truck buyers never hook anything up to the trailer hitch. It is a costume, or most charitably, a somewhat reasonable consequence of our whacked out emissions laws, our terrible safety regulations and traffic engineering standards (which are imo criminal), and a simple calculus of "what do I buy if I want the most car for the least amount of money". The last point is of no consequence if it that choice doesn't affect anyone else, but that simply isn't the case. The most optimal personal choice is rarely the most optimal societal choice, but the consequences of the bad societal choice are not felt as acutely even if they're far worse. More barely utilized pickups is bad for everyone.
Ya, when I first saw a cybertruck, it was huge. That would definitely not go over well in Seattle. Heck, we had an F-150 (the normal kind) parked on the side of our street, and it made our street virtually impassable (only one narrow lane because street parking on both sides).
I can't even see it being very popular in the trades here, since trades people often have to utilize street parking at work sites.
I’m almost certain that most of those truck buyers barely use them for anything related to their functionality or for job-related stuff. Otherwise, they would get a proper truck that’s far more superior for those blue-collar jobs (1). I drive quite often and I can’t remember the last time I saw one of these trucks actually loaded with anything. In fact, a lot of times they are even covered. I do love trucks myself and cars in general. I used to have one too, but when it comes to the city, they definitely don’t fit in with their current design. This doesn’t account for reckless drivers. The other day I saw an F350 parking, and I passed from the front side. Only my head was visible and I’m not a short guy. The problem is these trucks keep “growing” and getting bigger with every other model. What’s the end game here? Are we going to see bigger trucks in the coming years? (2)
Can't import one unless it's at least 25 years old though. Even if someone wanted to build something similar in the US, they probably wouldn't meet efficiency standards in the US because those are tied to the size of the vehicle (yes if you build a bigger vehicle, the mileage can be worse!). I think that change was made in response to the PT Cruiser[1], which was classified as a "Light Truck" to improve Chrysler's CAFE[2] metric.
Sure they are. The F-150 is the most popular truck in the US. It's a prestige vehicle - most buy it for the looks, and part of that look is the size and aggressiveness, and the vast majority are purchased in cities.
Obviously Ford doesn't make a truck that expensive and market it that heavily just to target the rural market, that would be suicide.
Inside the Beltway is still a pretty huge space compared to the built up parts of DC. There are large swaths of suburban Maryland and almost semi rural bits of Virginia in there that are just fine to drive large vehicles in, although they're still largely unnecessary unless you're an actual commercial contractor or something.
I would rank Virginia's absolutely absurd speed limit enforcement policies as a far greater threat to ones sanity then trying to pickup-friendly street parking in say Fallc Church or College Park.
Now within the stones of DC... I would definitely do whatever it takes to avoid driving anything larger than a Sentra on a regular basis.
> At the same time, I realize I'm not the Lightning's intended audience. I have no need for a pickup truck in my life, as evinced[sic] by the fact that I never once used the Lightning's bed. And I didn't grow up with pictures of trucks on my walls, so they hold little cultural significance for me. But for those for whom trucks do resonate (and as long as you don't care about towing), check out one of the cheaper trims. You might find that once it's in its element, the Lightning is actually quite good.
So, I heard an argument for getting a truck instead of a car, and while I don't necessarily agree with it, I feel it's worth spreading.
1) Safety - you're more likely to survive a major accident in a truck, since you won't be out-sized by every other truck on the road. My take: An annoying argument since it's trucks that created this problem in the first place, but a plethora of trucks are already on the road.
2) Mileage isn't much worse than cars - especially with electric and hybrid options. A hybrid truck can get up to 45 MPG, which is only a bit behind a Prius. The lightning is a bit better than half as efficient as a Model 3, but has a larger battery. My take: This surprised me, especially the hybrid capabilities. But the last truck I drove had a sub-10 MPG, though it was from the 70's.
3) Comfort. There's something to be said for having a larger body vehicle when it comes to providing for basic creature comforts. My take: Can confirm. Especially as I age, getting into a (non-lifted) truck is a lot simpler and less painful than my Prius.
4) Price is on par with cars. The base trim lightning is on par with the base trim of the Hyundai Ionic 6, and less than $10k more than the model 3. My take: Whoa.
5) Raw horsepower. When you need to hit the gas to avoid a problem, you'll get the response. Doubly so with an electric truck. My take: Perhaps a reason the average driver shouldn't get a truck.
Am I going to buy a pickup? Probably not. But... I have a better understanding of why some people will.
The picture shows he knew half of what he needed to.
You back into parking spaces, but you choose one if possible, with a grass verge, so you can back three feet past the end of the pavement. He was up against a fence (still had a foot or two further he could have gotten it backed in).
Or in a big box store, park on one end (with the other pickup trucks) pulling fully into a space and sticking three feet into the next one across. So your tail doesn't get clipped by cars cruising the lot.
I just took a trip around Arizona in my campervan.
The lowest I paid for gas was $1.99 (with a $1 off promotion from Chevron, but all the apps have some sort of discount... and you don't even have to pay cash!).
Gas is absurdly cheap and people there seem to drive with a lead foot. Until that changes, I don't think people will stop buying giant vehicles.
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[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 191 ms ] threadTo be clear, my point isn't to try to make you feel bad about your choice, but to demonstrate why it's bad on a societal level to have this profusion of large vehicles. Societal problems need societal solutions.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/world/us/tall-trucks-suvs-are-45-dea...
[2] https://www.epa.gov/dera/learn-about-impacts-diesel-exhaust-...
My car is the smallest available 4 seat car in the US.
I actually don't use either often to commute, I bike.
As I said, we use the truck for RV travel mostly.
I live right where the interstate dumps into the city, we have soot on our windows. The problem is real, but the diesel trucks, big trucks, are 95% of the problem, not the 5k miles I drive a year in my truck.
While true, that's a pretty low bar. I wouldn't bring that up as an argument in defense of it, because it comes off kind of like "at least it's not burning bunker oil!"
The rest of your situation makes perfect sense, though. You need something with that power and size regularly enough to justify owning one, and rather than have 2 vehicles, you just use the one you already have for other things. That's completely reasonable.
I’m so exhausted of the constant online morality policing over such inane, trivial things like this. Hell, it’s even electric rather than a gas-guzzler like the normal F-150, and people are still screeching because “iT’S tOo BiG!”. Yeah bro, because trucks aren’t made to be DoorDash vehicles in NYC, they’re made to haul RVs to the lake and lumber to the build site.
And I disagree that it's inane or trivial. Motor vehicle crashes kill ~45k Americans per year, the leading preventable cause of death for everyone 4-21 years old and the second-leading cause for 22-67 year olds [1], and the numbers are climbing. As my comment pointed out, light trucks are ~50% deadlier in collisions with pedestrians (don't have the data on-hand for other vehicle inhabitants). Anecdotally, I have friends and family members who have been hit by cars and lucky enough to survive, but (knowing the details of the cases) likely would not have were they hit by a 5'-bonnet-height truck.
I agree trucks aren't made for tooling around cities, but for heavier duty activites. What's upsetting is that more and more vehicles like this _are_ being used for city and suburban daily driving where all of their externalities are at their worst and none of their utility is needed.
[1] https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/all-injuries/deaths-by-demograph...
Yes, and you should go out of your way to minimize this as much as possible, as a high priority of life in a shared space with other people. Rather than make it worse, on purpose, because "f150ck you, I got mine" (which is at least honest), or failing that, whatever excuse serves to mask the juvenile selfishness of this attitude.
This is astoundingly obvious when you park an unmodified 80's-90's vehicle next to something new.
The question to me is what overall reduces mortality rates, improved roll-over and side impact protection or driver visibility?
Personally I think blind spots everywhere suck and would much prefer better visibility.
Just because they made a window bigger or a member longer doesn't mean it's weaker. They could have changed the material to something twice as strong, added hidden structures, etc.
The difference is mandated crash testing, and now simulated crash testing. They are required by law to build cars that are safe, and test to make sure they truly are.
I dont do those things.
It's actually extremely convenient because I run my own business. Being able to do things you need for your business without renting a truck is very useful. I do a lot of hardware building, equipment moving, etc.
Walk outside in any city and you will see tradespeoples trucks, vans. That's me.
Because it's impossible to find parallel street parking (and take up 2-3 spaces when you do) and makes it much easier to hit unseen pedestrians in crowded areas and older layouts with tight corners? Because you need it for work? Not at all silly.
The longest F-150 is 157", which is about 3 feet longer.
An F-150 isn't taking three parking spaces unless they're for Mini Coopers or something.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38799190
Up until very recently it was basically impossible to make a pickup truck style vehicle meet CAFE standards so they stopped making any pickups that were regulated under that standard. Instead they switched to making "trucks", unencumbered by regulations, which had to be over a certain weight (read: huge). Before CAFE, there were tons of tiny pickup trucks like the early gen rangers/tacomas. Once CAFE hit, those same trucks suddenly became huge road tanks.
1: https://www.volvocars.com/us/cars/xc40/
It would be really nice to own a cleaner, more spacious home rather than a bunch of tools, most days.
The main drawback of owning it, honestly, is that there's always the worry that someone in a behemoth pickup will collide with me, and I'd come off the worse from that.
I'm sure there are people out there who actually need the capacity of a pickup truck... but I don't think that most of the people who own one actually do. Certainly not the people you see driving them in town with an empty bed.
I wouldn't mind the flexibility of having a pickup truck shaped object because I never use the rear seats and always have them folded down for moving around other stuff, but nobody makes tiny pickups like they did in the 80s/90s. I also can't be alone in thinking this because I've seen an explosion in 80s Japanese micro trucks around town recently after some people documented the import process online.
The Japanese do!
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kei_truck
:)
100% true. Sadly our Fit was destroyed by a Big Azz Truck that didn't see it.
I never understood this, don't the presumably mature adult engineers and product managers who design lighting systems at places like Ford and Chevy not have children of their own, some of which being infants have to sit in rear-facing seats and get their retinas seared by these aggressively attention-seeking manhood cosplay accessories?
It's only an issue if you make it sound like an issue. Certainly worth it for only needing it once every 2-3 years, as most truck owners actually do.
And yea, I can still just wait for another piece of wood to be delivered - or I could just ask someone who has a truck to help me.
*Also Home Depot / Lowes lumber is garbage tier. I don't trust them to just send me whatever 2x6s I select online. If you don't go to the store and actually inspect the wood, you're just gonna get curved pieces.
Yeah I guess my point being, if they hadn't misallocated far too many resources to the Lightning (based on how many are sitting on dealer lots now), and instead had hedged their bets between Lightning and a Maverick EV (both in lower volumes), they'd be in a far better place right now. But Bill Ford was all in on the Lightning as a flagship branding push alongside Mach-E during the peak of initial EV hype, so here we are. No doubt the only reason they offered hybrid for Maverick instead of pure EV was to not cannibalize F-150/Mustang battery supply.
Everyone and their uncle wants to buy a $30/40k EV pickup truck right now, and Ford could easily sell one profitably. Hopefully it catches on. Of all the legacy manufacturers, they're in the best possible position to undercut Rivian/Tesla on one of the largest market segments in the US.
Or is it their attitude alone that irks you?
Large pickup trucks in particular are a public health catastrophe. They kill occupants of other vehicles in collisions at about 2.5x the rate of other vehicle types (cars and SUVs), and they have abysmal pedestrian safety performance. On top of their high fuel consumption and emissions baseline, there is a nationwide trend called "coal rolling" in which truck owners modify their vehicles to produce thick black exhaust full of NOx, which bystanders are then forced to breathe. Pickup truck drivers also have some of the highest DUI rates around. Even setting aside my personal anecdotal observation that pickup truck drivers are by far the most aggressive and unsafe class of drivers on the road, it's clear that if we actually cared as a society about saving human lives, we would take measures to drastically curtail the use of large pickup trucks on public roads tomorrow.
In comparison, though it does happen, it's vanishingly rare for cyclists to cause serious injury or death to bystanders, and they have zero emissions beyond manufacture and delivery. In my opinion, anybody drawing any kind of equivalence between the harm done by bikes and the harm done by large pickup trucks in the public transit sphere needs to do some serious introspection.
Over and over. Day after day. For a (no-exaggeration) decade that I've been living and walking in this spot.
I haven't owned a car in a very long time, and every single close encounter with getting hit by something has been with a bicycle at a red light in Seattle (at the above spot, or elsewhere). Over and over and over again: not a one-off that has burned me on bicyclists, but over and over for year after year.
So again I will repeat: as a pedestrian, the "self-entitled idiots" that I see on a weekly/daily basis, for more than a decade, are bicyclists. Seattle drivers seems to understand the idea of pedestrians. Seattle bicyclists seem to view traffic laws as a joke.
> Seattle drivers seems to understand the idea of pedestrians.
I used to have to cross a semi-busy road twice a day on my walk to and from work. I crossed at a marked crosswalk, but about 90% of the time cars would not stop unless I forced them to by entering the road myself (essentially playing chicken with them), and more than once they blasted through the crosswalk while I was still in it, speeding past inches from me. Never mind that the law says pedestrians have the right of way. This experience is not unique to the crosswalk in question—in fact, it is essentially universal. I find your assertion that "Seattle drivers seems [sic] to understand the idea of pedestrians" utterly baffling. Perhaps you are posting from a parallel universe, or one of the wealthy outlying neighborhoods that are Seattle in name only.
> the "self-entitled idiots" that I see on a weekly/daily basis, for more than a decade, are bicyclists.
Just today, on my bike ride home on the stretch of the Burke Gilman between Fremont and Ballard, a red Jeep Cherokee blasted through a stop sign right in front of me, without so much as tapping the brakes. The onus was on me to account for his gross negligence, despite having the right of way. This sort of thing is so common I barely notice it anymore.
--
So yes, I'm sure we can both fire off anecdotes about modal conflicts all day. I'm sure everybody who lives in a big city can. But I challenge you to show me with data that bicycles are any meaningful fraction of the public health hazard that large pickup trucks are. And, frankly—based on two decades of commuting throughout the city in all three modes at issue here—I would suggest that you are being intellectually dishonest with yourself regarding proportionalities. I can recall only a single instance where a cyclist put me in any real danger, and I would take being hit by a cyclist any day over meeting the six foot fascia of a modern pickup at the speed limit plus fifteen (since, as I'm sure we both know, nearly every driver exceeds the speed limit on a habitual basis).
I cannot enumerate the number of times that I was unable to take an adjacent space in a parking lot, because someone couldn't park his penis replacement without taking up multiple spots.
The Lightning is no bigger than a typical F-150.
And the F-150 is the #1 best selling vehicle (on a # of units basis) than any other vehicle in the US (car or truck).
States like Texas, residents in rural areas throughout the US, and Trade's people - love trucks and they love in particular Ford.
For Trade roles, this Lightning truck is super exciting. The Fuel savings is huge for this buyer, and the ability to plug in all of your power tools directly into the truck to be used at the worksite is huge benefit.
Note: I don't even own a truck, but this is a very frustrating article to read due to the author being so uninformed.
https://www.caranddriver.com/news/g43553191/bestselling-cars...
People in trades generally seem to use beat up vans or beat up whatever truck is cheap and runs and you don’t mind it getting dinged
That said, I live in Houston where pickups reign, and the F-150 is probably the most common. When you have a truck at your disposal all the time, you make different choices about what you buy, when you buy it, etc. Traffic jam on the freeway? You regularly see trucks cross the curb, into the grass, and onto the feeder road.
Also it influences your lifestyle. Impromptu camping etc is not a concern. Our company is a software company in the shipping space, but my boss drives a 4x4 because he owns land that he goes to every weekend.
My friends and I go improptu camping on a Volvo V60 in Sweden all the time. You don't need a truck to go camping.
I recently bought a Hyundai Ioniq 5, but I would kill for a 1:1 replica of the Honda Fit but electric. I'm pretty sure it's the ideal car.
I don't think I'd trust a F-150 to go places where the V60 XC 4x4 can't access. A G-class yes.
I'm assuming that because "impromptu camping" is an option we're not talking about someone who has kids in the first place, but even if they did I can't imagine needing a whole truck for that, especially when smaller-but-still-giant vehicles like SUVs exist.
If they are signaling, they are literally asking to be judged. I see absolutely nothing wrong with giving them what they wish for
Outrage gets clicks, and there's a contingent that loves to hate on trucks, roads, conservatives (the assumed drivers of trucks), etc.
IMHO, a more honest headline would be "A week with a Ford F-150 Lightning: This truck cannot fit into a compact-car parking space," since that gets at the absurdity:
> At the same time, I realize I'm not the Lightning's intended audience. I have no need for a pickup truck in my life, as evinced by the fact that I never once used the Lightning's bed.
I grew up in a rural farming area. The people who seemed most reasonable had big trucks and other heavy equipment (and/or work animals) for utility on the farm, and small efficient cars for trips to town.
Insisting on idling one's massive farm machine in front of a preschool smells like posturing and costly romanticism, in resources and health.
Of course, not a massive sample size, but spending time both in a large American metro as well as in the rural, farming hinterlands of my state, I rarely meet people with pickups who could honestly say they need it. One cattle farmer I'm friends with has a Ford F-250 but it's like 20 years old.
63% of American truck buyers never hook anything up to the trailer hitch. It is a costume, or most charitably, a somewhat reasonable consequence of our whacked out emissions laws, our terrible safety regulations and traffic engineering standards (which are imo criminal), and a simple calculus of "what do I buy if I want the most car for the least amount of money". The last point is of no consequence if it that choice doesn't affect anyone else, but that simply isn't the case. The most optimal personal choice is rarely the most optimal societal choice, but the consequences of the bad societal choice are not felt as acutely even if they're far worse. More barely utilized pickups is bad for everyone.
And this is what the owners themselves told the survey:
* https://www.axios.com/2023/01/23/pickup-trucks-f150-size-wei...
* https://www.thedrive.com/news/26907/you-dont-need-a-full-siz...
I can't even see it being very popular in the trades here, since trades people often have to utilize street parking at work sites.
(1) https://files.catbox.moe/ijw037.png (2) https://files.catbox.moe/12vmal.jpeg
* https://www.youtube.com/shorts/hh45Lth8iNI
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kei_truck
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrysler_PT_Cruiser
2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_average_fuel_economy
Yeah, this would be like a reviewer of a MOBA game sub-headlining the review "It's not for FPS players."
Obviously Ford doesn't make a truck that expensive and market it that heavily just to target the rural market, that would be suicide.
I would rank Virginia's absolutely absurd speed limit enforcement policies as a far greater threat to ones sanity then trying to pickup-friendly street parking in say Fallc Church or College Park.
Now within the stones of DC... I would definitely do whatever it takes to avoid driving anything larger than a Sentra on a regular basis.
1) Safety - you're more likely to survive a major accident in a truck, since you won't be out-sized by every other truck on the road. My take: An annoying argument since it's trucks that created this problem in the first place, but a plethora of trucks are already on the road.
2) Mileage isn't much worse than cars - especially with electric and hybrid options. A hybrid truck can get up to 45 MPG, which is only a bit behind a Prius. The lightning is a bit better than half as efficient as a Model 3, but has a larger battery. My take: This surprised me, especially the hybrid capabilities. But the last truck I drove had a sub-10 MPG, though it was from the 70's.
3) Comfort. There's something to be said for having a larger body vehicle when it comes to providing for basic creature comforts. My take: Can confirm. Especially as I age, getting into a (non-lifted) truck is a lot simpler and less painful than my Prius.
4) Price is on par with cars. The base trim lightning is on par with the base trim of the Hyundai Ionic 6, and less than $10k more than the model 3. My take: Whoa.
5) Raw horsepower. When you need to hit the gas to avoid a problem, you'll get the response. Doubly so with an electric truck. My take: Perhaps a reason the average driver shouldn't get a truck.
Am I going to buy a pickup? Probably not. But... I have a better understanding of why some people will.
Nowhere near as good as my wife's CRV - she gets between 32 and 40 depending on the route and the temperature.
You back into parking spaces, but you choose one if possible, with a grass verge, so you can back three feet past the end of the pavement. He was up against a fence (still had a foot or two further he could have gotten it backed in).
Or in a big box store, park on one end (with the other pickup trucks) pulling fully into a space and sticking three feet into the next one across. So your tail doesn't get clipped by cars cruising the lot.
The lowest I paid for gas was $1.99 (with a $1 off promotion from Chevron, but all the apps have some sort of discount... and you don't even have to pay cash!).
Gas is absurdly cheap and people there seem to drive with a lead foot. Until that changes, I don't think people will stop buying giant vehicles.