Heās addressing the point that SUVs are a marketing gimmick and are otherwise devoid of real technical merit - versus a hatchback that has the same usable internal volume and overall size, they are inevitably worse in most areas - materials consumption, fuel consumption/pollution, driving dynamics, braking distances, road wear-and-tear, &c.
It may be argued that they are only fractionally worse, but that has to be multiplied by 10s of millions worldwide.
Your points are also true, but they donāt address his.
You can make a (lesser) case about why sports performance cars on public roads etc, what real merit do they have as transport etc.
Its when you get to the so-what bit where it becomes more interesting. As I say, āIfā its about the environment then its a bit more complicated than just pointing at one group of motorists when the real opportunity is surely reducing the total number of cars on the road and how frequently and far they are driven.
But I accept thatās a more nuanced argument to rant about succinctly!
Thereās a ton of ways we can improve matters, though kind of ironic that you mention driving-less on the day that wholesale axing of unprofitable public transport routes is being discussed in the news!
One I donāt hear much about is keeping older cars on the roads longer - and by that, I mean making maintaining, and even perhaps, upgrading them easier and cheaper. For decades manufacturers have made construction ever-more unitary, the units ever-less serviceable, and the servicing ever more difficultā¦
Obviously some of that devolves down to the need to package more stuff in less space, reduce weight, &c, &c, but some of it is profit-driven. E.g. if you were to scratch-build a new car from OEM parts the cost would be many orders of magnitude greater than just buying new. This serves to illustrate the disproportionate levels of profit being leveraged - and making parts unaffordable is one reason why many cars on the road are running badly and thus polluting more while other carsā end-of life is premature.
A longer and easier service-life means less of the energy and materials required for car production are wasted producing new ones.
Not great, of course, for current car-maker business models, but thatās where real change is neededā¦
Yeah Hel has been banging on about this for ages, sheās convinced sheād rather make her current car last as long as possible vs buying a new one.
Unnecessary car journeys are a bigger sin for me that what theyāre being taken in. Arenāt the estimates something like 1 in 5 journeys are unnecessary or something like that.
My issue with SUVs is they are pointless, they do nothing better than any existing style of car and they drive the industry and consumers in the total opposite direction to where they should be going - which is smaller and lighter.
(I didnāt mention anything about the sorts of people that drive themā¦ you brought that up )
I think industry and consumers should be driven in the direction of fewer cars and fewer journeys as the priority, but I accept that is harder to do at scale.
I suppose the smartarse response is ādefine unnecessaryā, but itās true no matter how you sliceānādice it. One reason why mine rarely leaves the drive.
Iām not disagreeing with the principle that smaller and lighter would be better but the fact is that the public donāt want smaller and lighter. The industry is simply responding to demand.
People believe that bigger vehicles better protect their precious offspring which may well be true especially in the event of oneās vehicle being smashed into by a massive SUV driven by an out of control wankstain.
Yep. Itās partly due to the slightly poorer vehicle dynamics, but much more to the false sense of security they engender in their drivers (Karen, Fat Karen, Karen-with-the-limp, Angry Karen, Morbidly-obese-Karen, That-slut-Karen-no-one-speaks-to, and Karen, daughter-of-Karen).
When Hel worked in recovery she was always having to explain to BMW owners who had driven through floods, snow etc and got stuck, that despite them believing that they had bought the āUltimate Driving Machine tmā that in reality they had massively overestimated the capability of the car based on magical marketing (and their own ego).
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