by Telemakhos 5 hours ago
> Americans however like their gas guzzling F150s.
Pickup trucks have always made up between 10% and 20% of vehicles on the road in America; it's the SUV that has picked up from next to nothing in 1980 to almost half of all new vehicles now, while the sedan has plunged from 80% to about 25% of new vehicles today.
A big part of that transition to larger SUVs (which are not F150s) was the CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) Standards, which sought to make cars more fuel efficient. They regulated based on the size of the vehicle, so larger vehicles (including both the SUV and the F150) became cheaper to manufacture, while smaller cars were squeezed out of the market as meeting CAFE became too expensive. Larger cars also perform better on safety tests and have an easier time passing onerous safety regulations. Had environmental and safety regulations been handled differently, or if there weren't any, Americans might well be driving more fuel-efficient smaller coupes and sedans.
That said, the Chevy Bolt and Mustang Mach-E are, in fact, being manufactured—the Bolt was recently brought back, and the Mustang Mach-E was never discontinued. The Ford F150 Lightning has been discontinued. Tesla outsells all of them by far.
> Larger cars also perform better on safety tests
That's only true if we're limiting the discussion to the safety of the people inside said car. Quoting one of the first sources I could find: https://www.unsw.edu.au/newsroom/news/2024/06/big-cars-feel-...
a study found a 500 kilogram increase in vehicle weight, which could mean the difference between an SUV and a sedan, correlated with a 70% higher fatality risk
[after the 2003 bumper height-matching standard] The likelihood of SUVs causing fatalities to drivers in other cars reduced from being 132% more likely for a collision with an SUV in the early 90s, to 28% more likely by 2016
A mere 10 centimetre increase in front-end height can elevate the risk of pedestrian death by 22%, with impacts more likely occurring at critical injury points like the chest or head
Children are eight times more likely to die when struck by an SUV compared to lighter and smaller cars
> Pickup trucks have always made up between 10% and 20% of vehicles on the road in America
This is false. It's true today that sales are in that range. It is not remotely true that actual ownership is 10%-20% today nor that it was in the past