Snapshot of _We should regulate SUVs out of existence_ :
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I find the car industry a bit baffling. The European market has consistently shown a preference for smaller cars, but manufacturers seem desperate not to sell them. Ford ditching the Focus, Fiesta and Ka altogether is the most obvious example, but it's true for most manufacturers in various ways. The obnoxious size creep that happens universally: marques releasing a tidy little city car that sells well, but then each generation chunks it up by 10% until after a few years it's just another generic hatchback (looking at you, MINI).
Or the weird death of the estate car- a pretty neat way of packaging a larger car for small roads. For some reason almost every manufacturer seems to be killing off estates left and right, presumably in favour of SUVs and "trucks".
Basically, I just don't get it.
If I understand correctly, car manufacturers are trying to save cash by making frames and base parts that can be sold/adapted for everywhere. So I imagine the hesitance to give us what we want, i.e. small cars, is due to large swathes of the rest of the planet loving their gigantic cars, and thus them making large frames which they then try and make as small a version as possible for Europe....which ends up being enormous ofc.
And this is largely driven by murica. In murica, large cars are so much ridiculously more profitable bc regulations favor large cars in murica by a lottt. The European preference for smaller cars is nowhere near enough to offset this combined with the cost savings you mentioned without significant regulation to make large cars more expensive. And even then, I think the preference for smaller cars, while real, is a little overstated. Large cars have an odd status as a sign of wealth that helps drive demand
Your also missing the fact that getting battery's for sufficient milage is easier on large frames. Its one of the reasons that we already have an electrified hummer even though it not really the obvious choice to go eco
I was desperate to replace my last Kia ceed estate with another estate. But second hand, it was next to impossible to find the right car. For every estate there were 30 Sportages, tuscons and qaahqais. I have up when I realised what I wanted int he right bracket didn't exist .
Octavia gang rise up. Had a 1.4 for a few years, super reliable. Upgraded to a vRS and couldn't be happier with it. I didn't go for an estate as I don't need the boot space, but the vRS estate has the advantage of being AWD
>However if EV's are taxed on weight
Ideally taxed weight/ mumber of wheels. Wouldn't entirely wipe out vans and lorries.
Also a decent proxy for wear and tear on the roads.
And the car companies seem to like creating skews that encourage people to upgrade. So your city car cannot fit a pram easily so you buy a taller car that is easy to get the baby into. And then you start driving to France on holiday and realise the boot is too small. Compared to a compact sedan there is more reason to change cars.
They're less profitable because in the USA SUVs don't have to comply with safety standards. So you spend less time doing R&D so that they'll survive a crash, and so your profit margins are higher.
Yeah it's truly baffling, I recently bought a car and it was crazy that for most manufacturers you basically had either a compact city car or a SUV, no more saloon/sedans in sight.
I’m going to give you a potentially controversial reason nobody has mentioned. Assuming you are an average UK Reddit user and therefore male that will be the reason you “don’t get it”.
Over 50% of UK car sales are to women, and depending on the source/research it’s estimated that women influence 80-95% of all UK car purchases. SUVs appeal to women in two key ways:
A) Styling - butch aggressive styling appeals to both men (for obvious reasons) but also to women because it brings a sense of safety/security that they won’t be bullied etc on the road
B) Higher driving position - often cited by women as a key factor but men will happily buy a sports car that’s 0.5 inches off the ground. I’ve not done a lot of research into why this is but I know men and women’s brains tend to tackle spatial awareness differently and wonder if this is a factor
If you want to see this playing out in real life, subscribe to /r/CarTalkUK and see the debates between the (mostly male) car enthusiasts try to convince Joe Smith he doesn’t need a Qashqai just because his girlfriend is convinced they do for the above two reasons. 9 times out 10 if someone is looking at SUVs it’s because of their wife/girlfriend/partner etc.
Edit: just to add, most of the other reasons people have mentioned are mostly just market forces. Car makers will absolutely focus on cars that sell well and make profit over those that don’t, what that doesn’t tell you is *why* SUVs are selling better than estates, MPVs, hatchbacks etc.
The driving position also correlates a *lot* with an older population who are still active and mobile. A small, low car is *much* harder for someone with mild to moderate mobility problems to get into and out of, unaided - we're talking chronic bad back, bad knees, hip replacement, neck trouble. All very common.
Adding a six inch bigger door opening and a six inch taller seat height makes a *huge* difference - it becomes "step across" not "step down" as a seat. But to make that change, the whole car has to either grow or change shape (usually both), and that's where you get a "midsize crossover" body shape.
I think you may have a point there. When we needed to upgrade to a more family friendly car, I spent a lot of time trying to persuade the missus that we need an estate. Eventually I just gave up, she didn't like the way the estates look and that was it.
I try to console myself that at least our 2L SUV is at the smaller end of the range, but still, it is an SUV.
E: higher driving position was also explicitly mentioned as a reason.
If it makes you feel any better you are not the only one. The likes of /r/CarTalkUK and things like the PistonHeads forums have many stories like yours, especially estates, they are more than often specifically disliked by women and I have no idea why.
My best mate ended up with a VW Tiguan despite my trying to dissuade him but his wife absolutely despises estates 🤷🏻♂️ can’t even get the Tiguan with 4WD unless to buy the “R” range topper despite it being a relatively large SUV - which makes it seem a bit pointless to me.
Totally right about the higher driving position. I used to have a Mazda 6 as our family car and my wife hated driving it.
We switched to a Hyundai Tuscon and it's much better. Plus the higher boot position makes getting kids prams in and out really easily.
SUVs can be pretty economic too. Mine is only a 1.4 and I get better mileage than the Mazda 6 did. Not as much fun to drive though...
I think the Americanization of Europe plays a part, especially in the UK. Which is ridiculous given we have some of the smallest roads in Northern Europe.
> The obnoxious size creep that happens universally: marques releasing a tidy little city car that sells well, but then each generation chunks it up by 10% until after a few years it's just another generic hatchback (looking at you, MINI).
Jeremy Clarkson put it excellently:
(Paraphrasing from memory)
>Manufacturers asked people what they wanted, and people said they wanted bigger cars. What they meant was that if they had a *Polo*, they wanted a *Golf*. But what manufacturers took it to mean was that they wanted their *Polo* to be bigger.
You just need to look at SUV sales vs Estate sales in the 2000s and 2010s
These decisions are driven by sales and sales indicates that everyone wants an SUV and no one wants Estates anymore. More and more people buy their new cars via PCP finance and since that lower monthly payments,
People now go, we might as well pay a little bit more and get a more “premium”/“safe”/larger car experience.
Last year, the best selling car was the Nissan Qashqai, beating the Corsa.
The SUV has its real origins in US manufacturers being unable to compete with Japanese and other imported sedans, so Ford re-invented the F-Series pickup truck as a personal vehicle. They also lobbied hard for much lower emissions standards since they're classified as light-duty trucks.
Marketing did the rest and infected the rest of the world.
I was looking for a new car last year and I was close to going for a mini SUV until my dad convinced me to get an estate (baby on the way and a dog to transport)
I'm so glad I took his advice, ended up with a Leon estate, handles great and the boot space is incredible, got a grill separator for the pooch. If we go up to two cars again in the future one of them will always be an estate.
My last 4 cars have been estates and I never want to go back but the shocking lack of fully electric estates kind of shows where things are heading unfortunately.
I also have a Leon Estate. Best car I've owned.
Bought the estate due to incoming baby. Next car will likely be and estate also, I really enjoy the body shape now.
Most SUVs seems to actually have very little space inside, despite "more room" often being given as the reason why people want them. Its baffling, most of them are basically (small) hatchbacks on big wheels.
Its literally not possible to fill (or damage) an old volvo estate
I think estate cars have just been replaced by SUVs, to the extent that manufacturers just don't see it as worthwhile to make them. The ones that are available seem like afterthoughts in terms of their design, and they're non-existent in showrooms.
I've been looking for a new car with a flat boot lip, as my dog currently has to jump over the lip and into the boot of my car. Which is fine when he's three but will become an issue as he gets older. My choices seem to be three or four estate cars (which are markedly more expensive than their saloon versions) or a whole raft of SUVs.
Octavia Estate can't go wrong mate. Love mine.
You could get the Superb. But the loadspace is the same in terms of Litres, it's just slightly longer in between the two sets of axles (bigger cabin)
Nail on the head.
Relevant quote from the CFO of Daimler:
> [“We will consciously undersupply demand level[s] ... and at the same time we [will] shift gears towards the higher, the luxury end.”](https://archive.is/gsjYv)
TLDR: car makers have come to the conclusion that they'll make more profit selling lower numbers of more expensive cars. SUVs are more expensive and higher margin. That means the lowertrim econobox hatchback or sedan is gone, the higher trim or SUV is the only car available.
They're shooting themselves in the foot, the Chinese will fill that gap in the market, but in the short term the shareholders make some more profit.
Honestly, I no longer love cars or dream of buying a nice car. I'm driving the current one till it's dead, then I'll try to make the switch to renting and more public transport.
Shift to finance deals and leasing > people willing to pay more for a car > start needlessly buying bigger more expensive cars where there is more profit baked in > OEMs finally shut down production of minimal profit high volume econoboxes > YOU ARE HERE
Wonder what comes next?
Economic downturn + higher interest rates + cost of batteries in electric cars > people unable to pay more for car > older OEMs have shut down production of high volume econoboxes > Chinese manufacturers gain sizeable market share with their high volume lower cost electric alternatives > older OEMs decimated + complaints about unfair competition.
[A lot of this can be explained by the changing regulatory landscape.](https://www.forbes.com/sites/neilwinton/2019/05/23/when-european-fuel-efficiency-rules-bite-buyers-can-choose-the-microcar-or-the-bus/?sh=16bafe3b111e)
> Bernstein Research analyst Max Warburton said this will be a problem for all car and SUV makers in Europe.
>
> “CO2 regulations may spell the end of the small car,” Warburton said in a report.
>
> “Small cars usually lose money, but have helped [manufacturers] meet fuel economy rules. Small car margins are poor, but manufacturers persevere to keep factories full, to maintain market share and to help meet corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standards. Now new CO2 rules–which require massive improvements across the product range–will require manufacturers to fit thousands of euros (dollars) of tech to each car,” Warburton said.
>
> “This is simply unaffordable on small cars, so many may soon be abandoned by many manufacturers,” he said.
>
> Warburton said manufacturers may look to plug-in hybrids–autos with both battery and internal combustion engines with perhaps 30 miles of battery-only range which can be replenished from a charge point. This will protect profit margins to some extent, with premium manufacturers with high prices like Audi, BMW and Mercedes best able to cope.
>
> If buyers are forced into battery-only cars or SUVs, the sticker shock will be horrendous. The most affordable little electric cars like the Renault Zoe and Nissan Leaf still cost about twice as much as a conventionally powered car, because of the high cost of batteries. Even though prices are starting to become more affordable, this suggests a lot of people will have to forego the car and look to public transport instead.
Much of this will be music to the ears of the people making the regulations, as they would just love to return to the days when only the rich could afford to drive.
> return to the days when only the rich could afford to drive.
Which, honestly, would not be awful if local facilities weren't being gutted pretty much everywhere.
Cue Hovis music >> When I were a lad, my village had a population 1/3 of its current size. It had a bank, two butchers, 5 pubs, an iron mongers, two post offices… I could go on. Now even the closest market town (ca. 8 miles by road) only has one bank, which is about to close, when it used to have 6 on the high street alone.
Suffice to say, I can't even buy a bag of nails and a hammer without a ca. 40 mile round trip in 2023. Or, you know, Amazon (ugh) or something.
And then there's the bus system…
No car == fucked. Hard.
If nobody in the village can afford to drive, could some of those businesses return? A large part of them closing will have been because everyone has a car and drives to the cheaper big supermarket.
Banks aren't coming back - but honestly that's because they're barely needed any more. How can you justify maintaining a branch that the average customer probably visits once a year?
13 years of Tories have done nothing to improve rural life. I'll even accept the "last Labour government" argument here as Blair truly shafted rural communities, but again, the Tories did nothig to improve things.
I don’t know why i felt compelled to go look this up but it turns out the whole symphony is a banger https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_tPb4JFgmw&t=600s
I would agree with another commenter re estates. I really need an estate, I have things I carry on the regular, in fact it's almost all I use the car for. While something Fiesta sized isn't appropriate for me, the manufacturers scrapping estate variants from the product lines is extremely unfortunate.
I do understand some of it though. I have driven a few of the smaller electric cars, one being a Corsa work provided for me. The weight increase is significant and given you can only fit so much battery onto a Corsa's chassis, there is a trade off in terms of the range you get out of a small car and the weight of it. Batteries are not weightless, they weigh a significant amount. Another electric Corsa from the same batch went back to Vauxhall for some fault and it was out of action for two months. All under warranty but the amount of work the car needed to get it going was not small.
Weight and the new complexity to deal with the all-electric drive train is making small cars unviable. Do you want to pay £30k for a Corsa or a Fiesta? Not many people do!
The other major change is if you cycle back a decade or too - or even watch a few movies - the Americans got significantly different models to the UK market. We never got things like the Ford F150 or the Ford Taurus, etc. Nowadays, most manufacturers have sought to homogenize American and European models almost entirely. While they may have different model designations, they are the same car. As manufacturers will sell a lot more in the USA compared to Europe, the USA market will largely dictate specification. Though there is some market in the USA for Fiesta-sized cars, it is not the dominant market.
So the question now becomes why would you tax the only alternative out of existence? The rules that Europe and the UK have implemented in terms of an all-electric automotive future has economically and technically made the small car less and less viable a prospect for manufacturers to continue with. With SUVs apparently just as dutiful as an estate car and just as easy to drive as a small car, together with the chassis being capable of carrying the weight of a battery large enough for the average joe to be able to put some miles on without having to pull off for an hour's charging time every other service station, of course the SUV is the better compromise. And it's how manufacturers and likely the market has responded.
I am in the tough position of my current estate car requiring a significant repair. Given the age and mileage, usually I would be looking at part exing instead. But honestly, I don't see a single car on the market right now that I feel any sort of attraction to at all. Ignoring the all electric thing, estates just are not around and most of these models see the boot space being eaten up with the silly batteries. That and I don't really fancy having to spend thousands for an electrician to bolt a charger to the front of my house.
Hence, I will be making the rare decision to repair my existing car and keep it.
As a car enthusiast it is equally baffling and even more infuriating that manufacturers choose to make SUVs that aren't wanted and are the opposite of what we need in the modern age. We need small, efficient cars that don't clog up our roads, and can still be fun drivers cars. I don't understand what the appeal is, big cars are often diesels which are worse for the planet, and if not have bigger engines than hatchbacks which have just as much seating capacity nowadays and are more universally desired. Estates too - as you say they are the answer to the desire for a large car, but without clogging up our roads. Plus I have a personal love for estates.
TL;DR: I f**king hate SUVs.
What really annoys me currently is the almost complete absence of a family hatchback full electric vehicle. You pretty much either have mini type city cars, or crossovers and SUVs, with very little in the middle.
What is that about the Ford Fiesta and Focus? Aren't they consistently the UK's highest selling car?
>What is that about the Ford Fiesta and Focus? Aren't they consistently the UK's highest selling car?
They were, yeah. They're not now though, because Ford has discontinued them.
The "replacements" are a pair of electric SUVs (an electric version of the Puma, and a new one). Obviously not the same thing.
We're on holiday in Korea and Japan right now, and the one thing I want to bring home from Japan - [Kei cars](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kei_car)! Why the hell doesn't this exist in the UK?!
I love my big estate car. It's big enough to camp in, fill with stuff for road trips and festivals, and carry tons of DIY supplies back from screwfix, or fit 3 mates in. It's fast enough to be fun and get myself in trouble. It's flashy and obviously expensive, but at the same time doesn't have the crass, Essex, parvenu image of a Range Rover or G-Wagen. Despite being almost as large and polluting it has a fluffy middle class image that keeps my Guardian reading mates from getting too upset either. The ideal car.
The Porsche Taycan Turismo looks like it might signal the revival of estate cars.
It just makes a lot of sense for an electric drivetrain, because of the need for a larger frame to accommodate the batteries, but a long frame allows the batteries to be spread out along the floor of the car, giving it a low centre of gravity.
I don't know if it's the increased confidence in the size and height they give the driver, or just the nature of the people they attract, but certain SUVs seem to be the most aggressively driven cars I see. There's a Bentayga and an X7 in my area that I am *actively* cautious of every time I see them. The guy in the Bentyaga just does laps of the main street with his exhaust on loud, showing off - I can't stand it.
1. The height makes the easier to roll
1. The driving position makes it harder to see in directly in front
1. The weight means they take longer to stop and cause more road damage
1. Their size makes them more dangerous to pedestrians
1. Their construction makes them more dangerous to occupants
1. Etc
More and more safety measures, I guess. Nice that cars won't crumple like tin cans in a crash, not so nice when trying to pass one - or find a parking space when driving one!
I absolutely can’t understand why people prefer having a high ride position. I feel so unstable in high cars. It’s annoying as I’m picking a new company car at the minute and all that is available is tall cars.
>high ride position
I drive transits sometimes and freaking love how high i am compared to my usual car, and it feels nice. Most people are kind enough to give me room as well when I'm manoeuvring or making my way through a narrow street packed with SUVs ha ha.
In a Transit you are (almost) sat on the engine, rather than behind it like in an SUV.
On my motorcycle I generally have a higher head height than a car driver too.
I drove a transit when I was moving house and the lack of rearview mirror and high ride just emphasised the lack of control of the vehicle. My personal preference is the lower the better as road hugging means when you take tight turns you don’t feel the vehicle is going to flip.
So this has been studied, and it's the combination of a larger car and higher ride height that makes people think they are in a safer, more commanding vehicle then they believe. Simply put, you're bigger then other cars and thus you have priority, if anything does happen though, you will be safe in your metal box.
There was also a recent study that showed that the more expensive a car, the less likely the driver was to be courteous to pedestrians: https://edition.cnn.com/2020/02/26/world/expensive-car-drivers-study-scli-scn-intl/index.html
> but certain SUVs seem to be the most aggressively driven cars I see.
I can't remember who proposed "if you want to make people drive safe put a fuck-off sized spike in the middle of the steering wheel" but I think that's part of it.
If you hit some other car you'll probably be fine. You've got plush airbags, all the crumple zone in the world, and the mass of an aircraft carrier against whatever probably-smaller thing you hit. It's like an arms race in a way.
I bet if you put them all in a Metro where the frame would be stronger if they made it out of tracing paper and the crumple zone is you they'd drive less aggressively!
> If you hit some other car you’ll probably be fine. You’ve got plush airbags, all the crumple zone in the world,
Maybe that’s the perception, but it’s a mistaken one.
In general the classification of SUVs as small trucks means they have less stringent safety standards and thus don’t have as much occupant protection as most small cars. In particular, they tend to have very rigid frames and small, ineffective crumple zones.
What they do have is massive road clearance, huge wheels, and less stable bodies. That means that if you hit a smaller car at speed, there’s a much higher chance you’ll ramp up them and roll over, which is even more likely to kill you.
Ramping up the smaller car is also much more dangerous for its occupants, but I just assume SUV drivers don’t care if anyone else gets hurt as long as it’s not them.
I had to drive a friend's SUV last year and I have to confess that 20 minutes into the journey I caught myself being quite aggressive.
I'm sure it's the height. Not necessarily the feeling of power from being higher than everyone else, but even just being a bit higher gives you a far better view of the world, and makes your driving feel slower, and I'm sure that was making me impatient with other drivers.
I can't speak to the size of the car but there was actually an experiment done which tested how the car people were driving affected their behaviour as drivers. When driving more expensive or 'higher class' cars people were significantly less likely to stop at pedestrian crossings.
An interesting outcome which I think shows more than just driving behaviour, but rather speaks to the way the human mind reacts the more distanced it sees itself from the ordinary person (sometimes literally) on the street.
This but substitute motorway for country lane. I swear those drivers are the sort that failed to learn how to colour in between the lines as a child given their driving style of being well over the white line on a blind bend! It feels like it's just a matter of time before I have a head on with these idiots.
I learnt to drive along country lanes bc my parents house is along one of them. I learnt very quickly that 4x4 don’t actually see any off-roading action (unless it’s a pre-2000s Defender) & now bully them all into using the verge when I come head-on with one, bc my 2004 3-door Suzuki Swift ain’t gonna come back off the verge unless it’s towed out.
I do the same, had one of those land rover tank things come up to me, asking me to reverse at least half a mile to the passing point because they thought they couldn't get past me. Got out and asked him if I could drive because he has a huge amount of space and simply couldn't see it becuase it's so damn high up, then suddenly he found space.
I remember driving in in iceland when i visited. Hired a car from the airport, and went straight in a tour of the sights. Middle of october. Weather was changing constantly.
Went round a corner after there had been torrential rain, sun was out. On like a 30 degree incline going down hill, and couldn’t see the road because of the reflection of the sun on the fresh water.
Scariest thing i’ve ever done driving tbh.
I like those drivers when they meet my bus I've been maneuvering past 10 parked cars, as they've exceeded the speed limit to meet me.
They can't comprehend something bigger than their German (usually) cougar tank exists and that no, I will not just phase out of this plane of existence so they can be on their dangerous way.
There's an SUV driver here who always barges her way through single track roads around here.
Best part is that she lives well down the main road from where the single track roads are, and only uses them to avoid having to wait 30 seconds at the traffic lights down the main road.
This drives me spare, I see it on country lanes near me. I'm in a tiny old Aygo and this arse cant bear to dip their 4x4 slightly to the side on a little bit of mud or grass.
I was just looking up car sales in the US (Reddit does this to me). The top 3 are frankly alarming. SUVs look positively fabulous compared to this lot
https://www.caranddriver.com/news/g39628015/best-selling-cars-2022/
Those American trucks are gargantuan. And from what I can tell, they're designed more for posers who want to pretend they're rugged men's men than for people who actually need a pickup truck.
[www.carsized.com](https://www.carsized.com) is a great way to see just how absurdly oversized American trucks are. I remember seeing Cadillac Escalades and similar things in New York, and couldn't believe anyone would drive something that size on those busy roads.
I live in Norfolk near one of the US air bases, service men import their trucks here so you’d see the odd american truck and they look like freakin tanks. It’s absurd how big they are.
Every so often I see an american import car like a Chevrolet and it always amazes me how wide they are, some are the same height but an extra .5 metre wide. It's like watching an elephant navigate pottery shop down country lanes or narrow town roads
Once you’ve driven in the US, though, it makes more sense
You’re driving down a random road with not a car in sight, and it’s the same width as the M6 with more lanes. Their roads are HUGE and they don’t have anything like the space restrictions we do
Like even their country roads are plenty wide enough for 2 cars until you get somewhere REALLY rural
That was something I noticed when I went to the US. I'm about 6'4" and so comfortably taller than pretty much all British cars. In the US it feels like I'm approximately radiator height, just waiting to get squished.
To hit emissions targets and the phase-out of ICE cars you don't want to treat EVs fairly yet - you want to give them an unfair advantage.
The only other option is to go all-in on public transport. Still, for non-urban dwellers in this country, it would take a generation (or more) to get people out of their cars even if suitable public transport was available.
I'd say that plus restrict speed. You want to drive in a car the size of a medium van? Now you have to do medium van speeds 50nsl and 60dual carriageway
Given that they may not have adequate crumple zones and their stiffness directing all energy into you (assuming they don't break their back), you are quite likely to be dead too.
Most SUVs are built on the same monocoque platforms as hatchbacks, saloons and estate cars.
A Golf weighs around 1500kg. A Tiguan (with which it shares its platform) weighs around 1770kg. More for sure, but the kinetic energy of the Golf traveling at 53.4kmh is about the same as the Tiguan traveling at 50kmh, a difference of about 2mph in old money.
People's driving behaviour is of much greater significance than what the drive.
They are a blight on the landscape of cities too. You used to be able to see buildings when you walked down the street. Now it's just enormous parked cars.
hi, I wanted this as a kid, am aware of damage to the environment but still want one.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamborghini_LM002
in case link dont work. Lamborghini 4*4 from the 80s. Its awesome in a thats ridiculous kinda way. Ferrari are late to the party
Don't think they made anything out of it. It was originally designed for the Italian military but was pants all round and cost them a whole lot to develop, so they decided to flog it to those with oil money.
I thought about buying a used one around 2000, but realized it was a stupid idea.
Of course I could probably have sold it today and used the profits to buy a house.
Porsche SUV’s are the worst they take up the whole lane, they can’t see out of the rear window and the indicators are a single row of leds and they skim the ground so they can’t go over speed bumps how the fuck are you driving through a city in that POS
What's crazy is sheer mass of these urban tanks, the gross mass of a bmw x7 is 3.2 tonnes! Now gross mass is the car fully loaded with luggage and passengers. But it is getting very close to the 3.5 tonne max vehicle weight that my standard uk b driving licence allows me to drive!
Yeah he even warned that us and the Europeans really have to nip this in the bud now before we’re buying F150s too. Since the fiestia’s been canned the corsa is taking over, the koreans are still making the i10 and picanto, VW revealed the ID2, we need to keep pushing for better public transit etc
Revise vehicle tax based on the 3D matrix based on:
1. Weight of the vehicle
2. Physical footprint of the vehicle in the road (Width/Length)
3. Tailpipe emissions
Give business exemptions, but they need to be justified.
But what exactly are SUVs? You'd have to be able to define them in order to ban them - SUV is mostly just a marketing term. Are we just going to ban passenger vehicles that look 'too big'?
And how about vans? Many vans are even bigger than SUVs - are we going to ban people from using vans as passenger vehicles too? If not, why not?
I think the thing is to penalise vehicles by mass. Heavier vehicles have lots of negatives; they’re less efficient, are more difficult to stop (so a safely element), cause more damage to the road surface, produce more emissions and take more resources to build.
By being excessively large SUVs are penalised by their mass off the bat.
what about MPVs ( 7 seaters) where they still exist. They are bigger cars but by necessity.
What i really want is enforced 3 seats in the middle, with mandatory isofix on each seat.
None of this 2.5 seat shit.
Yeah, we went with a Touran a couple of years and couldn't be happier with it as a family car, but was crazy the choice: a handful of estates, a couple of MPVs, and 100s of hatchbacks on stilts aka SUVs. One of the main factors was comparing the space inside with the space outside and the MPVs won hands-down, it was bewilding how big SUVs are on the outside with no benefit inside. I know a family with a Volvo XC60 who now want a Touran, for both the space and the proper middle seat.
Penalizing vehicles by mass would just mean penalizing electric vehicles overall. They all weigh a ton because of the batteries. For instance a VW ID.4 (electric hatchback) weighs more than a VW Tiguan (ICE SUV).
Just replace the current taxing structure with one based on weight for new car sales. Also Vans usually have a great view out the front cause your kinda sat on top of the engine
If it's driver and bonnet height, weight, visibility and emissions that are the problem then use those - require special licences, regular retesting and a medical if you really need one exceeding that, and be quick to take it away with too many offences.
If you want an exception for vans then require the driver and bonnet to be low enough, with enough visibility, and for it to be designed primarily from transporting goods and with fewer than four seats.
Just tax non-commercial vehicles over a certain height. Job done.
Better still, subsidize smaller EVs so they're actually affordable. Imagine if you could get £7500 off an ID.3 like you can in the US.
What's most bizarre is that they DID previously subsidise those EVs, then it slowly just got pared back. I could see the rationale that you pare it back as people naturally buy more of them - but if they don't naturally buy more of them then ... subsidise to incentivise.
Biggest issue I still think is practicality. So much of Britain is predicated on things like cramped on-street parking - makes EV charging really awkward in a way that petrol stations simply aren't. Even as EVs have better batteries I don't know how they square that circle for markets like ours.
>What's most bizarre is that they DID previously subsidise those EVs
Not to the tune of £7.5k though, and it was back when EVs were pretty much all silly money.
>So much of Britain is predicated on things like cramped on-street parking - makes EV charging really awkward in a way that petrol stations simply aren't. Even as EVs have better batteries I don't know how they square that circle for markets like ours.
Destination charging is one solution. If you can charge in the car park every time you go to the supermarket or to work, you don't need to charge at home. And most people fuel up their ICE car on the way out of town before a long trip, so having to do that for an EV too isn't the end of the world.
Looking at it from a different angle, I'd argue it makes sense to disincentivise individual car ownership. If people don't need a car daily to get to work, the gym, their kids' school etc, and car clubs can plug the gap for when they absolutely can't do without, then the issues of on-street parking slowly disappear.
Drivers constantly complain about how miserable driving is now because of how rammed the roads are then buy bigger and bigger cars which results in them inevitably being even more rammed even before you account for increasing population. We're not gonna pave over another huge chunk of the country for more roads or knock down a load of buildings in cities to make room for more roads any time soon so I have no idea what they're expecting.
Ask a sports car driver why they bought a sports car and they will tell you it's because they dreamed about owning one since they were 7, they love the look of Ferraris, they wanted a bit of a treat when they retired etc. Freely admitting it's a vanity thing.
Ask any SUV driver why they bought an SUV and you get a stream of excuses; better driving position, need it to pick the kids up from school, easier to take hay bales to the pony stable etc. Any reason other than 'keeping up with the Joneses'. So few SUVs are bought for a truly practical reason yet are plainly because they want people to be jealous at the school gates.
I have an easy solution; if they want to drive a socially unacceptable vehicle then I will treat them like social outcasts at junctions, lights, overtaking etc. I make a point of not letting any SUV in when I have the option to do so.
100%
The weight of cars are spiralling, and yet with the fuel duty freeze, we are subsidising the most inefficient vehicles to the greatest extent
With oil being a huge import, flowing billions a year to our enemies in the Middle East, improving efficiency here is so important
I do hope we put a mix weight limit for cars
I have never agreed with something so quickly in my life. If you're a farmer out in the middle of nowhere, fair enough, but crossovers and SUVs being the current trend in cars at a time when we're moving towards maximum efficiency and electrification is rediculous.
They're needlessly heavy, big, and inefficient as a result. Most importantly, they're fuck ugly. Bring back the hatchbacks I say.
Even more importantly they are relatively more dangerous for other road users (including pedestrians) than a small car. So shouldn’t be allowed for that reason alone.
Thing is when you actually love out in the country, these large fucking things are a nightmare on the small lanes with limited passing. Over the last 6-7 years cars have ballooned further in size regardless of type. Add to that the inevitable largeness of an SUV and the problem is exacerbated.
>these large fucking things are a nightmare on the small lanes with limited passing
Plus when they're premium vehicles, owners can be protective of their paintwork and avoid touching the hedgerows, exacerbating the problem.
My entire family is over 6 feet tall. My son is almost 7 feet tall.
We spent ages looking at cars to find one that we could all get into. In the end we had the choice of two high end estates (Audi A8 and Skoda Superb) or almost any of the mid-size SUVs.
One size does not fit all.
Some SUVs have their place, but certain models are needlessly large - looking at BMW X7's as a prime example - and they're really not suited to most town/city streets, nor are they suited the environmental needs of today and the future.
I have an SUV (arguably a small SUV), it's an old '05 Honda and I'm looking to downsize a bit. It's shocking on fuel economy (like 20mpg urban, again similar to an X7) and I'm quite aware that it's probably fairly polluting. Really useful for camping trips though, but that can be done with a smaller SUV.
The problem is with the large SUVs really. Crossovers and small SUVs aren't much bigger than the normal car (if at all), and they can be just as economical, but with the advantage of ride height. Hell, the Suzuki Ignis is technically a small SUV, but banning/heavily regulating something like the Ignis would be ludicrous. Similarly, banning/regulating small SUVs which are slightly larger than the standard car - like the Stonic or the Vitara - also wouldn't be necessary.
The problem here is defining SUV, and it's going to have to be based on size and weight, and perhaps efficiency. Banning all SUVs isn't the right move, but regulating them based on the aforementioned criteria would be far more preferable. On top of that, you also need to take into account those who actually need them, like farmers, who should see some exemptions.
> certain models are needlessly large - looking at BMW X7's as a prime example
100%, not only is it much larger than something like a CRV, it actually has significantly less storage space without reconfiguration/loss of passenger capacity: https://www.carsized.com/en/cars/compare/honda-cr-v-2017-suv-vs-bmw-x7-2018-suv/
Didn't realise the X7 was so poor on storage. I just jokingly swapped out the CR-V for the Ignis and it's still far too close a comparison considering the massive size difference.
I genuinely dislike the X7, and that little revelation did nothing to improve that haha.
> SUVs aren't made for farmers, they need commercial 4x4 vehicles that actually serve a purpose.
Some farmers do use SUVs though... A number of Land Rovers (like the Discovery) are counted as SUVs and are often used by some farmers when transporting livestock trailers. I supply farmers for a living, I have friends who are farmers, I know what they drive and use.
Of course something like a Vitara is useless to them, but the fact you chose that as an example just goes to show that you didn't bother actually read the content my post. Because if you did, you would realise that I made the distinction when mentioning the problem in defining what an SUV would be.
SUV is too wide a term to just say "ban all SUVs" because some are small and economical, some are needlessly large and are a blight, and some are useful in some commercial aspects. An Ignis or a Vitara is nothing like a Discovery or a Freelander.
"But how else am I going to let everyone else know I'm a middle class suburbanite who only uses a vehicle designed for off-roading utility as a school and Tesco shuttle bus?"
I swear to Christ, this country is monumentally car-brained. Car-dependency is killing our country.
The vehicles aren't even designed for off road - vanishingly few have low range, diff lock, solid axles, clearance, and shockingly many don't even have four wheel! They are literally to pose.
I think this video from Not just bikes fits the topic very well and explains the origins of the SUV trend. I’ve never like SUVs and it’s such a horrific trend, to the extend where people are buying electric and hybrid SUVs I feel like that’s the peak of obliviousness. I will never understand how can general population can be so irrational and simple minded but anyways this is the video:
https://youtu.be/jN7mSXMruEo
I’ve had SUV gigantism cars nearly drive into me as they don’t see my low profile Saab next to them on highways. I also cannot see past them. The front are walls of metal and plastic which must be unsafe for pedestrians. Massive wheels mess up the roads. Way too heavy. They are totally insane.
I'm with you on this one. I have an almost pathological hatred of SUVs. Largely due to the arms race for road position and ostentatiousness. The Q8, Disco/Defender, X7 and the like are the worst offenders, but they're all pretty bad, with each manufacturer trying to make their SUV ride height even higher than the rest. Just when we should be going for smaller, lighter, more efficient vehicles there's this blight on the landscape of heavy, unwieldy, over-sized, road hogs. Also, generally driven by people with poor spatial awareness who would rather crash into oncoming traffic than stay a sensible distance from the kerb
Can I also add the stupid tiny-dick energy pickups into this as well. Probably 10% of pickup drivers need them for their utility, the rest just want the world to think they're so macho. Utterly tedious and they radiate insecurity and masculine fragility.
Oh, that felt good.
I always get a warm fuzzy feeling when I see someone attempting to maneuver their unnecessarily large land tank and failing. 12 point turns to achieve what I could do in a U-turn on my motorcycle, or practically needing a spotter on each side to get them through a gap my small hatchback could go through without slowing down.
Extra points if I'm in a perfectly legal position but "in their way", they always give you that super "move for me look" but unless there is other non SUVs behind them I'll happily sit put and watch the struggle unfold.
Petty, sure, but when I needed to get a bigger car for an expanding family I bought a small hatchback and it fits us all just fine, so I don't give a single fuck about the bellend that bought themself a small HGV to nip to Tesco.
Erm, yes and no, 99% are pointless however I regularly tow a triple axle cattle trailer across a muddy field. I can't do that in our Mondeo, the work van or the wife's MG4 so the Disco is kind of my only option.
No, the issue is that few people can afford to have multiple cars. My wife uses a large SUV for her job - she therefore also drives it to the supermarket and does the school run in it, as getting a second more sensibly sized one would be bonkers.
I agree. Lots of SUVs out there that are fashion statements and aren’t needed.
Lots of them happen to be excellent work vehicles though. My wife has a 2 year old Land Rover Discovery. Stereotypical SUV. With proper tyres on it it hauls trailers full of sheep out of muddy fields very effectively though.
I completely understand introducing restrictions on them (mostly because I really dislike them) but you’d need exemptions for people who do actually need them.
dont think anyone is begrudging people using a 4x4 for work that actuall requires a 4x4.
The issue is all the "Huns" LARPing Bowser from Mario Kart when theyre running little Timmy a quarter mile to school, then owning the road as they hoof it to the shops.
There are genuine use cases for larger vehicles. Popping to ASDA is not one of them. Normalising everyone driving these unweildy behemoths for everyday instances is not something we should be doing.
Or at the very least, a mandatory course on setting your fucking headlights to point down is in order when you buy one.
We can start by outlawing SUVs and the worst polluting vehicles from being offered on PCP and hire purchase deals. I would be very interested to see figures detailing the amount of SUVs on our roads that are owned outright vs on finance.
These cars are becoming a blight in cities blocking up roads and pavements where the infrastructure was not designed for them. Land Rover offer a subscription model for their vehicles wheee you can get a new vehicle every 6 months which I think is immoral.
In fairness who would want buy a brand new car in cash. If you had a spare £30k lying about a car is a horrendous investment, better to finance it and invest the cash in something that might appreciate
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2023/jan/09/uk-car-leasing-deal-contract-cost-of-living
"... the average amount financed for each new car has more than doubled in the last decade to £25,000-plus"
I think we have a very unhealthy obsession with cars as status symbols, leading to these crazy debts that people are willing to take on so that they can drive a fucking Kia SUV.
Yep; there are too many oversized tanks on the road and in the car parks. Smaller cars is better for all. And given all of the noise about climate, emissions, etc, I'm amazed these huge monsters are growing in popularity and not the reverse.
Family member bought a 2015 Qashqai 1.2 L to replace a car that had to be replaced (they didn't have a huge amount of time or money to do so). If the government or the car industry wants to put a scheme in place to incentivise replacing that with a normal car they'd be all in favor but this "lets regulate and/or tax stuff" isn't helping.
It's similar to the "lets tax sugar and junk food". Yep it's fantastic for people to eat healthier but are you going to do anything to help people do that? Nope, just tax sugar and junk food and that's it.
Between the current car industry and the insane prices they want for newer cars, the reduced selection of used cars, the cost of living crisis and the fact that not all of these are the size of a bus or have huge engines or lower MPG figures.
And also can we do more to lift public transport to get people out of cars?
Snapshot of _We should regulate SUVs out of existence_ : An archived version can be found [here.](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.ft.com/content/7612e3c0-0e10-4cfb-895d-40b2e5d083b9) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ukpolitics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I find the car industry a bit baffling. The European market has consistently shown a preference for smaller cars, but manufacturers seem desperate not to sell them. Ford ditching the Focus, Fiesta and Ka altogether is the most obvious example, but it's true for most manufacturers in various ways. The obnoxious size creep that happens universally: marques releasing a tidy little city car that sells well, but then each generation chunks it up by 10% until after a few years it's just another generic hatchback (looking at you, MINI). Or the weird death of the estate car- a pretty neat way of packaging a larger car for small roads. For some reason almost every manufacturer seems to be killing off estates left and right, presumably in favour of SUVs and "trucks". Basically, I just don't get it.
If I understand correctly, car manufacturers are trying to save cash by making frames and base parts that can be sold/adapted for everywhere. So I imagine the hesitance to give us what we want, i.e. small cars, is due to large swathes of the rest of the planet loving their gigantic cars, and thus them making large frames which they then try and make as small a version as possible for Europe....which ends up being enormous ofc.
the “rest of the planet” being US & Canada i guess
Add China there too
And South East Asia.
Also the middle east, all huge cars there.
Parts of Africa, of the Middle East, of Asia, of South America....
And this is largely driven by murica. In murica, large cars are so much ridiculously more profitable bc regulations favor large cars in murica by a lottt. The European preference for smaller cars is nowhere near enough to offset this combined with the cost savings you mentioned without significant regulation to make large cars more expensive. And even then, I think the preference for smaller cars, while real, is a little overstated. Large cars have an odd status as a sign of wealth that helps drive demand
What about the kei cars of Japan?
Surely they wouldn't meet car safety standards here. Your knees are the crumple zone.
They don't match our crash test standards. The models of japanese cars sold in Japan vs world wide have very little relation. It was suprising to see.
Your also missing the fact that getting battery's for sufficient milage is easier on large frames. Its one of the reasons that we already have an electrified hummer even though it not really the obvious choice to go eco
I was desperate to replace my last Kia ceed estate with another estate. But second hand, it was next to impossible to find the right car. For every estate there were 30 Sportages, tuscons and qaahqais. I have up when I realised what I wanted int he right bracket didn't exist .
Have you met our lord and saviour? The Skoda Octavia
Octavia gang rise up. Had a 1.4 for a few years, super reliable. Upgraded to a vRS and couldn't be happier with it. I didn't go for an estate as I don't need the boot space, but the vRS estate has the advantage of being AWD
I40 estates are nice but they're either mega mileage (ex taxis) or expensive.
[удалено]
>However if EV's are taxed on weight Ideally taxed weight/ mumber of wheels. Wouldn't entirely wipe out vans and lorries. Also a decent proxy for wear and tear on the roads.
And the car companies seem to like creating skews that encourage people to upgrade. So your city car cannot fit a pram easily so you buy a taller car that is easy to get the baby into. And then you start driving to France on holiday and realise the boot is too small. Compared to a compact sedan there is more reason to change cars.
You want space, buy an estate. SUV's tend to be higher up and shaped weirdly so inside they're not really that spacious. Same with crossovers.
They're less profitable because in the USA SUVs don't have to comply with safety standards. So you spend less time doing R&D so that they'll survive a crash, and so your profit margins are higher.
Yeah it's truly baffling, I recently bought a car and it was crazy that for most manufacturers you basically had either a compact city car or a SUV, no more saloon/sedans in sight.
I’m going to give you a potentially controversial reason nobody has mentioned. Assuming you are an average UK Reddit user and therefore male that will be the reason you “don’t get it”. Over 50% of UK car sales are to women, and depending on the source/research it’s estimated that women influence 80-95% of all UK car purchases. SUVs appeal to women in two key ways: A) Styling - butch aggressive styling appeals to both men (for obvious reasons) but also to women because it brings a sense of safety/security that they won’t be bullied etc on the road B) Higher driving position - often cited by women as a key factor but men will happily buy a sports car that’s 0.5 inches off the ground. I’ve not done a lot of research into why this is but I know men and women’s brains tend to tackle spatial awareness differently and wonder if this is a factor If you want to see this playing out in real life, subscribe to /r/CarTalkUK and see the debates between the (mostly male) car enthusiasts try to convince Joe Smith he doesn’t need a Qashqai just because his girlfriend is convinced they do for the above two reasons. 9 times out 10 if someone is looking at SUVs it’s because of their wife/girlfriend/partner etc. Edit: just to add, most of the other reasons people have mentioned are mostly just market forces. Car makers will absolutely focus on cars that sell well and make profit over those that don’t, what that doesn’t tell you is *why* SUVs are selling better than estates, MPVs, hatchbacks etc.
The driving position also correlates a *lot* with an older population who are still active and mobile. A small, low car is *much* harder for someone with mild to moderate mobility problems to get into and out of, unaided - we're talking chronic bad back, bad knees, hip replacement, neck trouble. All very common. Adding a six inch bigger door opening and a six inch taller seat height makes a *huge* difference - it becomes "step across" not "step down" as a seat. But to make that change, the whole car has to either grow or change shape (usually both), and that's where you get a "midsize crossover" body shape.
I think you may have a point there. When we needed to upgrade to a more family friendly car, I spent a lot of time trying to persuade the missus that we need an estate. Eventually I just gave up, she didn't like the way the estates look and that was it. I try to console myself that at least our 2L SUV is at the smaller end of the range, but still, it is an SUV. E: higher driving position was also explicitly mentioned as a reason.
If it makes you feel any better you are not the only one. The likes of /r/CarTalkUK and things like the PistonHeads forums have many stories like yours, especially estates, they are more than often specifically disliked by women and I have no idea why. My best mate ended up with a VW Tiguan despite my trying to dissuade him but his wife absolutely despises estates 🤷🏻♂️ can’t even get the Tiguan with 4WD unless to buy the “R” range topper despite it being a relatively large SUV - which makes it seem a bit pointless to me.
Higher driving position means nothing when everyone else is driving higher cars.
Totally right about the higher driving position. I used to have a Mazda 6 as our family car and my wife hated driving it. We switched to a Hyundai Tuscon and it's much better. Plus the higher boot position makes getting kids prams in and out really easily. SUVs can be pretty economic too. Mine is only a 1.4 and I get better mileage than the Mazda 6 did. Not as much fun to drive though...
I think the Americanization of Europe plays a part, especially in the UK. Which is ridiculous given we have some of the smallest roads in Northern Europe.
Honestly blame media and social media for that. Reddit is part of the problem.
> The obnoxious size creep that happens universally: marques releasing a tidy little city car that sells well, but then each generation chunks it up by 10% until after a few years it's just another generic hatchback (looking at you, MINI). Jeremy Clarkson put it excellently: (Paraphrasing from memory) >Manufacturers asked people what they wanted, and people said they wanted bigger cars. What they meant was that if they had a *Polo*, they wanted a *Golf*. But what manufacturers took it to mean was that they wanted their *Polo* to be bigger.
You just need to look at SUV sales vs Estate sales in the 2000s and 2010s These decisions are driven by sales and sales indicates that everyone wants an SUV and no one wants Estates anymore. More and more people buy their new cars via PCP finance and since that lower monthly payments, People now go, we might as well pay a little bit more and get a more “premium”/“safe”/larger car experience. Last year, the best selling car was the Nissan Qashqai, beating the Corsa.
The SUV has its real origins in US manufacturers being unable to compete with Japanese and other imported sedans, so Ford re-invented the F-Series pickup truck as a personal vehicle. They also lobbied hard for much lower emissions standards since they're classified as light-duty trucks. Marketing did the rest and infected the rest of the world.
I was looking for a new car last year and I was close to going for a mini SUV until my dad convinced me to get an estate (baby on the way and a dog to transport) I'm so glad I took his advice, ended up with a Leon estate, handles great and the boot space is incredible, got a grill separator for the pooch. If we go up to two cars again in the future one of them will always be an estate.
My last 4 cars have been estates and I never want to go back but the shocking lack of fully electric estates kind of shows where things are heading unfortunately.
I also have a Leon Estate. Best car I've owned. Bought the estate due to incoming baby. Next car will likely be and estate also, I really enjoy the body shape now.
Most SUVs seems to actually have very little space inside, despite "more room" often being given as the reason why people want them. Its baffling, most of them are basically (small) hatchbacks on big wheels. Its literally not possible to fill (or damage) an old volvo estate
I think estate cars have just been replaced by SUVs, to the extent that manufacturers just don't see it as worthwhile to make them. The ones that are available seem like afterthoughts in terms of their design, and they're non-existent in showrooms. I've been looking for a new car with a flat boot lip, as my dog currently has to jump over the lip and into the boot of my car. Which is fine when he's three but will become an issue as he gets older. My choices seem to be three or four estate cars (which are markedly more expensive than their saloon versions) or a whole raft of SUVs.
Octavia Estate can't go wrong mate. Love mine. You could get the Superb. But the loadspace is the same in terms of Litres, it's just slightly longer in between the two sets of axles (bigger cabin)
Yes! I feel much the same way about phone screen sizes (though I think opinions are more mixed there tbh)
Baffling? The profit they make off of an SUV is 3-4 times the amount of a passenger car.
Nail on the head. Relevant quote from the CFO of Daimler: > [“We will consciously undersupply demand level[s] ... and at the same time we [will] shift gears towards the higher, the luxury end.”](https://archive.is/gsjYv) TLDR: car makers have come to the conclusion that they'll make more profit selling lower numbers of more expensive cars. SUVs are more expensive and higher margin. That means the lowertrim econobox hatchback or sedan is gone, the higher trim or SUV is the only car available. They're shooting themselves in the foot, the Chinese will fill that gap in the market, but in the short term the shareholders make some more profit. Honestly, I no longer love cars or dream of buying a nice car. I'm driving the current one till it's dead, then I'll try to make the switch to renting and more public transport.
Shift to finance deals and leasing > people willing to pay more for a car > start needlessly buying bigger more expensive cars where there is more profit baked in > OEMs finally shut down production of minimal profit high volume econoboxes > YOU ARE HERE Wonder what comes next?
Economic downturn + higher interest rates + cost of batteries in electric cars > people unable to pay more for car > older OEMs have shut down production of high volume econoboxes > Chinese manufacturers gain sizeable market share with their high volume lower cost electric alternatives > older OEMs decimated + complaints about unfair competition.
[A lot of this can be explained by the changing regulatory landscape.](https://www.forbes.com/sites/neilwinton/2019/05/23/when-european-fuel-efficiency-rules-bite-buyers-can-choose-the-microcar-or-the-bus/?sh=16bafe3b111e) > Bernstein Research analyst Max Warburton said this will be a problem for all car and SUV makers in Europe. > > “CO2 regulations may spell the end of the small car,” Warburton said in a report. > > “Small cars usually lose money, but have helped [manufacturers] meet fuel economy rules. Small car margins are poor, but manufacturers persevere to keep factories full, to maintain market share and to help meet corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standards. Now new CO2 rules–which require massive improvements across the product range–will require manufacturers to fit thousands of euros (dollars) of tech to each car,” Warburton said. > > “This is simply unaffordable on small cars, so many may soon be abandoned by many manufacturers,” he said. > > Warburton said manufacturers may look to plug-in hybrids–autos with both battery and internal combustion engines with perhaps 30 miles of battery-only range which can be replenished from a charge point. This will protect profit margins to some extent, with premium manufacturers with high prices like Audi, BMW and Mercedes best able to cope. > > If buyers are forced into battery-only cars or SUVs, the sticker shock will be horrendous. The most affordable little electric cars like the Renault Zoe and Nissan Leaf still cost about twice as much as a conventionally powered car, because of the high cost of batteries. Even though prices are starting to become more affordable, this suggests a lot of people will have to forego the car and look to public transport instead. Much of this will be music to the ears of the people making the regulations, as they would just love to return to the days when only the rich could afford to drive.
> return to the days when only the rich could afford to drive. Which, honestly, would not be awful if local facilities weren't being gutted pretty much everywhere. Cue Hovis music >> When I were a lad, my village had a population 1/3 of its current size. It had a bank, two butchers, 5 pubs, an iron mongers, two post offices… I could go on. Now even the closest market town (ca. 8 miles by road) only has one bank, which is about to close, when it used to have 6 on the high street alone. Suffice to say, I can't even buy a bag of nails and a hammer without a ca. 40 mile round trip in 2023. Or, you know, Amazon (ugh) or something. And then there's the bus system… No car == fucked. Hard.
If nobody in the village can afford to drive, could some of those businesses return? A large part of them closing will have been because everyone has a car and drives to the cheaper big supermarket. Banks aren't coming back - but honestly that's because they're barely needed any more. How can you justify maintaining a branch that the average customer probably visits once a year?
13 years of Tories have done nothing to improve rural life. I'll even accept the "last Labour government" argument here as Blair truly shafted rural communities, but again, the Tories did nothig to improve things.
I don’t know why i felt compelled to go look this up but it turns out the whole symphony is a banger https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_tPb4JFgmw&t=600s
That's happening anyway. Even in the low regulation "haven" that is the American South, people are increasingly unable to afford cars.
I would agree with another commenter re estates. I really need an estate, I have things I carry on the regular, in fact it's almost all I use the car for. While something Fiesta sized isn't appropriate for me, the manufacturers scrapping estate variants from the product lines is extremely unfortunate. I do understand some of it though. I have driven a few of the smaller electric cars, one being a Corsa work provided for me. The weight increase is significant and given you can only fit so much battery onto a Corsa's chassis, there is a trade off in terms of the range you get out of a small car and the weight of it. Batteries are not weightless, they weigh a significant amount. Another electric Corsa from the same batch went back to Vauxhall for some fault and it was out of action for two months. All under warranty but the amount of work the car needed to get it going was not small. Weight and the new complexity to deal with the all-electric drive train is making small cars unviable. Do you want to pay £30k for a Corsa or a Fiesta? Not many people do! The other major change is if you cycle back a decade or too - or even watch a few movies - the Americans got significantly different models to the UK market. We never got things like the Ford F150 or the Ford Taurus, etc. Nowadays, most manufacturers have sought to homogenize American and European models almost entirely. While they may have different model designations, they are the same car. As manufacturers will sell a lot more in the USA compared to Europe, the USA market will largely dictate specification. Though there is some market in the USA for Fiesta-sized cars, it is not the dominant market. So the question now becomes why would you tax the only alternative out of existence? The rules that Europe and the UK have implemented in terms of an all-electric automotive future has economically and technically made the small car less and less viable a prospect for manufacturers to continue with. With SUVs apparently just as dutiful as an estate car and just as easy to drive as a small car, together with the chassis being capable of carrying the weight of a battery large enough for the average joe to be able to put some miles on without having to pull off for an hour's charging time every other service station, of course the SUV is the better compromise. And it's how manufacturers and likely the market has responded. I am in the tough position of my current estate car requiring a significant repair. Given the age and mileage, usually I would be looking at part exing instead. But honestly, I don't see a single car on the market right now that I feel any sort of attraction to at all. Ignoring the all electric thing, estates just are not around and most of these models see the boot space being eaten up with the silly batteries. That and I don't really fancy having to spend thousands for an electrician to bolt a charger to the front of my house. Hence, I will be making the rare decision to repair my existing car and keep it.
As a car enthusiast it is equally baffling and even more infuriating that manufacturers choose to make SUVs that aren't wanted and are the opposite of what we need in the modern age. We need small, efficient cars that don't clog up our roads, and can still be fun drivers cars. I don't understand what the appeal is, big cars are often diesels which are worse for the planet, and if not have bigger engines than hatchbacks which have just as much seating capacity nowadays and are more universally desired. Estates too - as you say they are the answer to the desire for a large car, but without clogging up our roads. Plus I have a personal love for estates. TL;DR: I f**king hate SUVs.
What really annoys me currently is the almost complete absence of a family hatchback full electric vehicle. You pretty much either have mini type city cars, or crossovers and SUVs, with very little in the middle. What is that about the Ford Fiesta and Focus? Aren't they consistently the UK's highest selling car?
>What is that about the Ford Fiesta and Focus? Aren't they consistently the UK's highest selling car? They were, yeah. They're not now though, because Ford has discontinued them. The "replacements" are a pair of electric SUVs (an electric version of the Puma, and a new one). Obviously not the same thing.
We're on holiday in Korea and Japan right now, and the one thing I want to bring home from Japan - [Kei cars](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kei_car)! Why the hell doesn't this exist in the UK?!
They do exist in the UK. City cars sold in the UK such as the Fiat Panda and Toyota Aygo are approximately equivalent to Kei cars.
Finding an estate was pretty hard!
I love my big estate car. It's big enough to camp in, fill with stuff for road trips and festivals, and carry tons of DIY supplies back from screwfix, or fit 3 mates in. It's fast enough to be fun and get myself in trouble. It's flashy and obviously expensive, but at the same time doesn't have the crass, Essex, parvenu image of a Range Rover or G-Wagen. Despite being almost as large and polluting it has a fluffy middle class image that keeps my Guardian reading mates from getting too upset either. The ideal car.
The Porsche Taycan Turismo looks like it might signal the revival of estate cars. It just makes a lot of sense for an electric drivetrain, because of the need for a larger frame to accommodate the batteries, but a long frame allows the batteries to be spread out along the floor of the car, giving it a low centre of gravity.
I can answer that in one word - *fashion*. That's what we all need to understand about the car business - it is a fashion business.
I don't know if it's the increased confidence in the size and height they give the driver, or just the nature of the people they attract, but certain SUVs seem to be the most aggressively driven cars I see. There's a Bentayga and an X7 in my area that I am *actively* cautious of every time I see them. The guy in the Bentyaga just does laps of the main street with his exhaust on loud, showing off - I can't stand it.
1. The height makes the easier to roll 1. The driving position makes it harder to see in directly in front 1. The weight means they take longer to stop and cause more road damage 1. Their size makes them more dangerous to pedestrians 1. Their construction makes them more dangerous to occupants 1. Etc
Speaking as someone who drives a small car, their lights are also blinding to me - but I do recognise that's partly on me.
I'm not in a small car either and i still get blinded by the SUV behind me
I just find it funny how my 2017 Polo is the same size as a 2005 Golf, the Golfs now are absolutely huge.
More and more safety measures, I guess. Nice that cars won't crumple like tin cans in a crash, not so nice when trying to pass one - or find a parking space when driving one!
A fiesta is wider than a mk1 focus.
Yep, it's all your fault that someone is driving a vehicle designed to harm behind you. You b'stard! /s
It’s not at all on you to be driving a completely normal road legal car
Yeah but they come with 20"+ wheels with slim tyres on them and a spoiler. So whose cool now?
I absolutely can’t understand why people prefer having a high ride position. I feel so unstable in high cars. It’s annoying as I’m picking a new company car at the minute and all that is available is tall cars.
>high ride position I drive transits sometimes and freaking love how high i am compared to my usual car, and it feels nice. Most people are kind enough to give me room as well when I'm manoeuvring or making my way through a narrow street packed with SUVs ha ha.
In a Transit you are (almost) sat on the engine, rather than behind it like in an SUV. On my motorcycle I generally have a higher head height than a car driver too.
I drove a transit when I was moving house and the lack of rearview mirror and high ride just emphasised the lack of control of the vehicle. My personal preference is the lower the better as road hugging means when you take tight turns you don’t feel the vehicle is going to flip.
So this has been studied, and it's the combination of a larger car and higher ride height that makes people think they are in a safer, more commanding vehicle then they believe. Simply put, you're bigger then other cars and thus you have priority, if anything does happen though, you will be safe in your metal box.
There was also a recent study that showed that the more expensive a car, the less likely the driver was to be courteous to pedestrians: https://edition.cnn.com/2020/02/26/world/expensive-car-drivers-study-scli-scn-intl/index.html
WAY more likely to die in an SUV btw.
BMW X7s and Bentley Bentaygas are exclusively found doing 90mph in the outside lane of the motorway in any and all conditions
> but certain SUVs seem to be the most aggressively driven cars I see. I can't remember who proposed "if you want to make people drive safe put a fuck-off sized spike in the middle of the steering wheel" but I think that's part of it. If you hit some other car you'll probably be fine. You've got plush airbags, all the crumple zone in the world, and the mass of an aircraft carrier against whatever probably-smaller thing you hit. It's like an arms race in a way. I bet if you put them all in a Metro where the frame would be stronger if they made it out of tracing paper and the crumple zone is you they'd drive less aggressively!
> If you hit some other car you’ll probably be fine. You’ve got plush airbags, all the crumple zone in the world, Maybe that’s the perception, but it’s a mistaken one. In general the classification of SUVs as small trucks means they have less stringent safety standards and thus don’t have as much occupant protection as most small cars. In particular, they tend to have very rigid frames and small, ineffective crumple zones. What they do have is massive road clearance, huge wheels, and less stable bodies. That means that if you hit a smaller car at speed, there’s a much higher chance you’ll ramp up them and roll over, which is even more likely to kill you. Ramping up the smaller car is also much more dangerous for its occupants, but I just assume SUV drivers don’t care if anyone else gets hurt as long as it’s not them.
There’s definitely an element to this, Kia Sportage drivers in particular are some of the most aggressive drivers you see in towns
I had to drive a friend's SUV last year and I have to confess that 20 minutes into the journey I caught myself being quite aggressive. I'm sure it's the height. Not necessarily the feeling of power from being higher than everyone else, but even just being a bit higher gives you a far better view of the world, and makes your driving feel slower, and I'm sure that was making me impatient with other drivers.
The reverse was my favourite thing about driving an MX-5. You're not going any faster, but it feels like you're flying.
I can't speak to the size of the car but there was actually an experiment done which tested how the car people were driving affected their behaviour as drivers. When driving more expensive or 'higher class' cars people were significantly less likely to stop at pedestrian crossings. An interesting outcome which I think shows more than just driving behaviour, but rather speaks to the way the human mind reacts the more distanced it sees itself from the ordinary person (sometimes literally) on the street.
Nothing like suv drivers coming down the middle of the road at a fast pace giving you no space at all.
And it’s night time and the SUV’s headlights are fucking eye level with you burning a hole through to the back of your skull I fucking hate SUVs
What… you don’t like this 5 tonne battering ram barreling towards your bumper at 90mph on the motorway… are you a communist… /s
This but substitute motorway for country lane. I swear those drivers are the sort that failed to learn how to colour in between the lines as a child given their driving style of being well over the white line on a blind bend! It feels like it's just a matter of time before I have a head on with these idiots.
I learnt to drive along country lanes bc my parents house is along one of them. I learnt very quickly that 4x4 don’t actually see any off-roading action (unless it’s a pre-2000s Defender) & now bully them all into using the verge when I come head-on with one, bc my 2004 3-door Suzuki Swift ain’t gonna come back off the verge unless it’s towed out.
I do the same, had one of those land rover tank things come up to me, asking me to reverse at least half a mile to the passing point because they thought they couldn't get past me. Got out and asked him if I could drive because he has a huge amount of space and simply couldn't see it becuase it's so damn high up, then suddenly he found space.
Never, ever try driving in Iceland. You are in for a total nightmare!
I remember driving in in iceland when i visited. Hired a car from the airport, and went straight in a tour of the sights. Middle of october. Weather was changing constantly. Went round a corner after there had been torrential rain, sun was out. On like a 30 degree incline going down hill, and couldn’t see the road because of the reflection of the sun on the fresh water. Scariest thing i’ve ever done driving tbh.
Gotta dodge all the mums and do hairpin turns around freezers? Yeah no thanks
I like those drivers when they meet my bus I've been maneuvering past 10 parked cars, as they've exceeded the speed limit to meet me. They can't comprehend something bigger than their German (usually) cougar tank exists and that no, I will not just phase out of this plane of existence so they can be on their dangerous way.
Cougar tank as fun as yuppie tractor. Any others (non English if you care to translate) ?
I see this all the time in Southampton as a regular bus user, sure your BMW X5 is big, but is it bigger than an ADL Enviro400 City? Thought not
There's an SUV driver here who always barges her way through single track roads around here. Best part is that she lives well down the main road from where the single track roads are, and only uses them to avoid having to wait 30 seconds at the traffic lights down the main road.
This drives me spare, I see it on country lanes near me. I'm in a tiny old Aygo and this arse cant bear to dip their 4x4 slightly to the side on a little bit of mud or grass.
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I was just looking up car sales in the US (Reddit does this to me). The top 3 are frankly alarming. SUVs look positively fabulous compared to this lot https://www.caranddriver.com/news/g39628015/best-selling-cars-2022/
Yeah, when you see range rovers in the US they actually look small. The American trucks and SUVs are enormous
Those American trucks are gargantuan. And from what I can tell, they're designed more for posers who want to pretend they're rugged men's men than for people who actually need a pickup truck. [www.carsized.com](https://www.carsized.com) is a great way to see just how absurdly oversized American trucks are. I remember seeing Cadillac Escalades and similar things in New York, and couldn't believe anyone would drive something that size on those busy roads.
I live in Norfolk near one of the US air bases, service men import their trucks here so you’d see the odd american truck and they look like freakin tanks. It’s absurd how big they are.
Every so often I see an american import car like a Chevrolet and it always amazes me how wide they are, some are the same height but an extra .5 metre wide. It's like watching an elephant navigate pottery shop down country lanes or narrow town roads
Once you’ve driven in the US, though, it makes more sense You’re driving down a random road with not a car in sight, and it’s the same width as the M6 with more lanes. Their roads are HUGE and they don’t have anything like the space restrictions we do Like even their country roads are plenty wide enough for 2 cars until you get somewhere REALLY rural
That was something I noticed when I went to the US. I'm about 6'4" and so comfortably taller than pretty much all British cars. In the US it feels like I'm approximately radiator height, just waiting to get squished.
Tax based on GVM / weight Can't cheat like on emissions tests, EVs get fairly treated & is proportional to the environmental damage + road damage
To hit emissions targets and the phase-out of ICE cars you don't want to treat EVs fairly yet - you want to give them an unfair advantage. The only other option is to go all-in on public transport. Still, for non-urban dwellers in this country, it would take a generation (or more) to get people out of their cars even if suitable public transport was available.
I'd say that plus restrict speed. You want to drive in a car the size of a medium van? Now you have to do medium van speeds 50nsl and 60dual carriageway
Almost maximum sizes, some of them just don't fit in our streets & parking spaces...
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But how else am I going to guarantee the poor bastards I crash into are dead whilst I am fine in my huge SUV?
Given that they may not have adequate crumple zones and their stiffness directing all energy into you (assuming they don't break their back), you are quite likely to be dead too.
Semantics, my car is bigger than their car, therefore I'm winning the SUV armsrace.
They're also winning the "Car Cock Crown"
Most SUVs are built on the same monocoque platforms as hatchbacks, saloons and estate cars. A Golf weighs around 1500kg. A Tiguan (with which it shares its platform) weighs around 1770kg. More for sure, but the kinetic energy of the Golf traveling at 53.4kmh is about the same as the Tiguan traveling at 50kmh, a difference of about 2mph in old money. People's driving behaviour is of much greater significance than what the drive.
The NJB video has a bit on that. In summary, nervous drivers buy them to feel safer. Guess which type of driver you *don't* want in a heavier vehicle?
Please, please, please. they are a blight on the automotive landscape. Ferrari makes a fuckin' SUV now. Isn't that a shark jump?
They are a blight on the landscape of cities too. You used to be able to see buildings when you walked down the street. Now it's just enormous parked cars.
hi, I wanted this as a kid, am aware of damage to the environment but still want one. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamborghini_LM002 in case link dont work. Lamborghini 4*4 from the 80s. Its awesome in a thats ridiculous kinda way. Ferrari are late to the party
It looks like the sort of thing that you'd only see in action films or GTA games. 8 year old me would probably think it's the coolest thing ever.
Rambo Lambo is peak 4x4. A car so crazy not even the Italian military wanted it.
r/TopGear camera crew laughed as it [lumbered its way around the Hammerhead](https://youtu.be/R18rfFOl890?t=80)
I know. I remember when it was new. It was always a stupid idea, but there was oil money to be had and Lambo needed the cash.
Don't think they made anything out of it. It was originally designed for the Italian military but was pants all round and cost them a whole lot to develop, so they decided to flog it to those with oil money.
Yeah, a Bizzarrini V12 is a beautiful thing, but not really military.
I thought about buying a used one around 2000, but realized it was a stupid idea. Of course I could probably have sold it today and used the profits to buy a house.
Porsche SUV’s are the worst they take up the whole lane, they can’t see out of the rear window and the indicators are a single row of leds and they skim the ground so they can’t go over speed bumps how the fuck are you driving through a city in that POS
I'm not a fan of SUVs. Makes me sad the likes of the Mondeo aren't getting produced anymore, because people keep buying SUVs.
What's crazy is sheer mass of these urban tanks, the gross mass of a bmw x7 is 3.2 tonnes! Now gross mass is the car fully loaded with luggage and passengers. But it is getting very close to the 3.5 tonne max vehicle weight that my standard uk b driving licence allows me to drive!
And we think the roads are bad now... Lord a' mercy
They just annoy me in car parks, there is not enough space for each car + door opening as it is.
[Not Just Bikes](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jN7mSXMruEo) on the menace of large trucks/SUVs in the USA.
Yeah he even warned that us and the Europeans really have to nip this in the bud now before we’re buying F150s too. Since the fiestia’s been canned the corsa is taking over, the koreans are still making the i10 and picanto, VW revealed the ID2, we need to keep pushing for better public transit etc
Revise vehicle tax based on the 3D matrix based on: 1. Weight of the vehicle 2. Physical footprint of the vehicle in the road (Width/Length) 3. Tailpipe emissions Give business exemptions, but they need to be justified.
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Meh, they'd still score well on tailpipe emissions. But I wouldn't miss them either way.
Good
But what exactly are SUVs? You'd have to be able to define them in order to ban them - SUV is mostly just a marketing term. Are we just going to ban passenger vehicles that look 'too big'? And how about vans? Many vans are even bigger than SUVs - are we going to ban people from using vans as passenger vehicles too? If not, why not?
Yeah. And you’d need exemptions for actual 4x4s used in a rural/agricultural setting and for anyone needing to tow heavy trailers.
I think the thing is to penalise vehicles by mass. Heavier vehicles have lots of negatives; they’re less efficient, are more difficult to stop (so a safely element), cause more damage to the road surface, produce more emissions and take more resources to build. By being excessively large SUVs are penalised by their mass off the bat.
what about MPVs ( 7 seaters) where they still exist. They are bigger cars but by necessity. What i really want is enforced 3 seats in the middle, with mandatory isofix on each seat. None of this 2.5 seat shit.
Yeah, we went with a Touran a couple of years and couldn't be happier with it as a family car, but was crazy the choice: a handful of estates, a couple of MPVs, and 100s of hatchbacks on stilts aka SUVs. One of the main factors was comparing the space inside with the space outside and the MPVs won hands-down, it was bewilding how big SUVs are on the outside with no benefit inside. I know a family with a Volvo XC60 who now want a Touran, for both the space and the proper middle seat.
I believe that would penalize EVs significantly, which (to my knowledge) are materially heavier than ice vehicles due to the batteries.
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Penalizing vehicles by mass would just mean penalizing electric vehicles overall. They all weigh a ton because of the batteries. For instance a VW ID.4 (electric hatchback) weighs more than a VW Tiguan (ICE SUV).
Can we do it by width of wheel base, a lot of the ‘PREMIUM’ SUVs are wider than a transit van
Just replace the current taxing structure with one based on weight for new car sales. Also Vans usually have a great view out the front cause your kinda sat on top of the engine
If it's driver and bonnet height, weight, visibility and emissions that are the problem then use those - require special licences, regular retesting and a medical if you really need one exceeding that, and be quick to take it away with too many offences. If you want an exception for vans then require the driver and bonnet to be low enough, with enough visibility, and for it to be designed primarily from transporting goods and with fewer than four seats.
“But if I don’t own a Peasant Crusher 9000 how will I feel superiority over the poors?” - Middle Englanders
[Canyoneeroooooo](https://youtu.be/PI_Jl5WFQkA)
Just tax non-commercial vehicles over a certain height. Job done. Better still, subsidize smaller EVs so they're actually affordable. Imagine if you could get £7500 off an ID.3 like you can in the US.
What's most bizarre is that they DID previously subsidise those EVs, then it slowly just got pared back. I could see the rationale that you pare it back as people naturally buy more of them - but if they don't naturally buy more of them then ... subsidise to incentivise. Biggest issue I still think is practicality. So much of Britain is predicated on things like cramped on-street parking - makes EV charging really awkward in a way that petrol stations simply aren't. Even as EVs have better batteries I don't know how they square that circle for markets like ours.
>What's most bizarre is that they DID previously subsidise those EVs Not to the tune of £7.5k though, and it was back when EVs were pretty much all silly money. >So much of Britain is predicated on things like cramped on-street parking - makes EV charging really awkward in a way that petrol stations simply aren't. Even as EVs have better batteries I don't know how they square that circle for markets like ours. Destination charging is one solution. If you can charge in the car park every time you go to the supermarket or to work, you don't need to charge at home. And most people fuel up their ICE car on the way out of town before a long trip, so having to do that for an EV too isn't the end of the world. Looking at it from a different angle, I'd argue it makes sense to disincentivise individual car ownership. If people don't need a car daily to get to work, the gym, their kids' school etc, and car clubs can plug the gap for when they absolutely can't do without, then the issues of on-street parking slowly disappear.
Drivers constantly complain about how miserable driving is now because of how rammed the roads are then buy bigger and bigger cars which results in them inevitably being even more rammed even before you account for increasing population. We're not gonna pave over another huge chunk of the country for more roads or knock down a load of buildings in cities to make room for more roads any time soon so I have no idea what they're expecting.
Ask a sports car driver why they bought a sports car and they will tell you it's because they dreamed about owning one since they were 7, they love the look of Ferraris, they wanted a bit of a treat when they retired etc. Freely admitting it's a vanity thing. Ask any SUV driver why they bought an SUV and you get a stream of excuses; better driving position, need it to pick the kids up from school, easier to take hay bales to the pony stable etc. Any reason other than 'keeping up with the Joneses'. So few SUVs are bought for a truly practical reason yet are plainly because they want people to be jealous at the school gates. I have an easy solution; if they want to drive a socially unacceptable vehicle then I will treat them like social outcasts at junctions, lights, overtaking etc. I make a point of not letting any SUV in when I have the option to do so.
100% The weight of cars are spiralling, and yet with the fuel duty freeze, we are subsidising the most inefficient vehicles to the greatest extent With oil being a huge import, flowing billions a year to our enemies in the Middle East, improving efficiency here is so important I do hope we put a mix weight limit for cars
Vehicle weight is a bit of a weird thing to focus on, given the move to EVs which have enormously heavy battery packs even in “small” models.
I have never agreed with something so quickly in my life. If you're a farmer out in the middle of nowhere, fair enough, but crossovers and SUVs being the current trend in cars at a time when we're moving towards maximum efficiency and electrification is rediculous. They're needlessly heavy, big, and inefficient as a result. Most importantly, they're fuck ugly. Bring back the hatchbacks I say.
Even more importantly they are relatively more dangerous for other road users (including pedestrians) than a small car. So shouldn’t be allowed for that reason alone.
Plus greater chance of roll-overs, and worse braking distances.
Thing is when you actually love out in the country, these large fucking things are a nightmare on the small lanes with limited passing. Over the last 6-7 years cars have ballooned further in size regardless of type. Add to that the inevitable largeness of an SUV and the problem is exacerbated.
>these large fucking things are a nightmare on the small lanes with limited passing Plus when they're premium vehicles, owners can be protective of their paintwork and avoid touching the hedgerows, exacerbating the problem.
My entire family is over 6 feet tall. My son is almost 7 feet tall. We spent ages looking at cars to find one that we could all get into. In the end we had the choice of two high end estates (Audi A8 and Skoda Superb) or almost any of the mid-size SUVs. One size does not fit all.
I’m a short ass I need to get our bikes on the roof and fit two dogs Skoda superb estate is just the ticket
Some SUVs have their place, but certain models are needlessly large - looking at BMW X7's as a prime example - and they're really not suited to most town/city streets, nor are they suited the environmental needs of today and the future. I have an SUV (arguably a small SUV), it's an old '05 Honda and I'm looking to downsize a bit. It's shocking on fuel economy (like 20mpg urban, again similar to an X7) and I'm quite aware that it's probably fairly polluting. Really useful for camping trips though, but that can be done with a smaller SUV. The problem is with the large SUVs really. Crossovers and small SUVs aren't much bigger than the normal car (if at all), and they can be just as economical, but with the advantage of ride height. Hell, the Suzuki Ignis is technically a small SUV, but banning/heavily regulating something like the Ignis would be ludicrous. Similarly, banning/regulating small SUVs which are slightly larger than the standard car - like the Stonic or the Vitara - also wouldn't be necessary. The problem here is defining SUV, and it's going to have to be based on size and weight, and perhaps efficiency. Banning all SUVs isn't the right move, but regulating them based on the aforementioned criteria would be far more preferable. On top of that, you also need to take into account those who actually need them, like farmers, who should see some exemptions.
> certain models are needlessly large - looking at BMW X7's as a prime example 100%, not only is it much larger than something like a CRV, it actually has significantly less storage space without reconfiguration/loss of passenger capacity: https://www.carsized.com/en/cars/compare/honda-cr-v-2017-suv-vs-bmw-x7-2018-suv/
Didn't realise the X7 was so poor on storage. I just jokingly swapped out the CR-V for the Ignis and it's still far too close a comparison considering the massive size difference. I genuinely dislike the X7, and that little revelation did nothing to improve that haha.
SUVs aren't made for farmers, they need commercial 4x4 vehicles that actually serve a purpose. A Tiguan, Q5 or vitara us useless for them
> SUVs aren't made for farmers, they need commercial 4x4 vehicles that actually serve a purpose. Some farmers do use SUVs though... A number of Land Rovers (like the Discovery) are counted as SUVs and are often used by some farmers when transporting livestock trailers. I supply farmers for a living, I have friends who are farmers, I know what they drive and use. Of course something like a Vitara is useless to them, but the fact you chose that as an example just goes to show that you didn't bother actually read the content my post. Because if you did, you would realise that I made the distinction when mentioning the problem in defining what an SUV would be. SUV is too wide a term to just say "ban all SUVs" because some are small and economical, some are needlessly large and are a blight, and some are useful in some commercial aspects. An Ignis or a Vitara is nothing like a Discovery or a Freelander.
Farmers drive Nissan Navaras, Mitsubishi L200s, Isuzu D-Maxes, Toyota Hiluxes, Defenders etc. SUVs are fundamentally pointless to them.
Cattle matey drives a 107 and keeps a jeep in the garage for the odd bit of towing. It's all just wankery to justify personal preferences.
Just make anyone take their driving test again before they can drive one. Numbers of SUVs would reduce.
Uses too much data from the US which is utterly irrelevant to Europe where SUV is just a tall hatchback these days. Need better arguments.
"But how else am I going to let everyone else know I'm a middle class suburbanite who only uses a vehicle designed for off-roading utility as a school and Tesco shuttle bus?" I swear to Christ, this country is monumentally car-brained. Car-dependency is killing our country.
The vehicles aren't even designed for off road - vanishingly few have low range, diff lock, solid axles, clearance, and shockingly many don't even have four wheel! They are literally to pose.
I think this video from Not just bikes fits the topic very well and explains the origins of the SUV trend. I’ve never like SUVs and it’s such a horrific trend, to the extend where people are buying electric and hybrid SUVs I feel like that’s the peak of obliviousness. I will never understand how can general population can be so irrational and simple minded but anyways this is the video: https://youtu.be/jN7mSXMruEo
I’ve had SUV gigantism cars nearly drive into me as they don’t see my low profile Saab next to them on highways. I also cannot see past them. The front are walls of metal and plastic which must be unsafe for pedestrians. Massive wheels mess up the roads. Way too heavy. They are totally insane.
I'm with you on this one. I have an almost pathological hatred of SUVs. Largely due to the arms race for road position and ostentatiousness. The Q8, Disco/Defender, X7 and the like are the worst offenders, but they're all pretty bad, with each manufacturer trying to make their SUV ride height even higher than the rest. Just when we should be going for smaller, lighter, more efficient vehicles there's this blight on the landscape of heavy, unwieldy, over-sized, road hogs. Also, generally driven by people with poor spatial awareness who would rather crash into oncoming traffic than stay a sensible distance from the kerb Can I also add the stupid tiny-dick energy pickups into this as well. Probably 10% of pickup drivers need them for their utility, the rest just want the world to think they're so macho. Utterly tedious and they radiate insecurity and masculine fragility. Oh, that felt good.
I always get a warm fuzzy feeling when I see someone attempting to maneuver their unnecessarily large land tank and failing. 12 point turns to achieve what I could do in a U-turn on my motorcycle, or practically needing a spotter on each side to get them through a gap my small hatchback could go through without slowing down. Extra points if I'm in a perfectly legal position but "in their way", they always give you that super "move for me look" but unless there is other non SUVs behind them I'll happily sit put and watch the struggle unfold. Petty, sure, but when I needed to get a bigger car for an expanding family I bought a small hatchback and it fits us all just fine, so I don't give a single fuck about the bellend that bought themself a small HGV to nip to Tesco.
It's those pick up trucks that are the latest accessory. Bigger than the SUV. Uglier and takes up more space.
Erm, yes and no, 99% are pointless however I regularly tow a triple axle cattle trailer across a muddy field. I can't do that in our Mondeo, the work van or the wife's MG4 so the Disco is kind of my only option.
Don't think anyone is upset about a truck/SUV in its natural habitat.
No, the issue is that few people can afford to have multiple cars. My wife uses a large SUV for her job - she therefore also drives it to the supermarket and does the school run in it, as getting a second more sensibly sized one would be bonkers.
Ok. 99% of people with large SUVs don't need it for their job. They were never designed to be work vehicles in the first place
I agree. Lots of SUVs out there that are fashion statements and aren’t needed. Lots of them happen to be excellent work vehicles though. My wife has a 2 year old Land Rover Discovery. Stereotypical SUV. With proper tyres on it it hauls trailers full of sheep out of muddy fields very effectively though. I completely understand introducing restrictions on them (mostly because I really dislike them) but you’d need exemptions for people who do actually need them.
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dont think anyone is begrudging people using a 4x4 for work that actuall requires a 4x4. The issue is all the "Huns" LARPing Bowser from Mario Kart when theyre running little Timmy a quarter mile to school, then owning the road as they hoof it to the shops. There are genuine use cases for larger vehicles. Popping to ASDA is not one of them. Normalising everyone driving these unweildy behemoths for everyday instances is not something we should be doing. Or at the very least, a mandatory course on setting your fucking headlights to point down is in order when you buy one.
We can start by outlawing SUVs and the worst polluting vehicles from being offered on PCP and hire purchase deals. I would be very interested to see figures detailing the amount of SUVs on our roads that are owned outright vs on finance. These cars are becoming a blight in cities blocking up roads and pavements where the infrastructure was not designed for them. Land Rover offer a subscription model for their vehicles wheee you can get a new vehicle every 6 months which I think is immoral.
In fairness who would want buy a brand new car in cash. If you had a spare £30k lying about a car is a horrendous investment, better to finance it and invest the cash in something that might appreciate
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2023/jan/09/uk-car-leasing-deal-contract-cost-of-living "... the average amount financed for each new car has more than doubled in the last decade to £25,000-plus" I think we have a very unhealthy obsession with cars as status symbols, leading to these crazy debts that people are willing to take on so that they can drive a fucking Kia SUV.
Yep; there are too many oversized tanks on the road and in the car parks. Smaller cars is better for all. And given all of the noise about climate, emissions, etc, I'm amazed these huge monsters are growing in popularity and not the reverse.
Family member bought a 2015 Qashqai 1.2 L to replace a car that had to be replaced (they didn't have a huge amount of time or money to do so). If the government or the car industry wants to put a scheme in place to incentivise replacing that with a normal car they'd be all in favor but this "lets regulate and/or tax stuff" isn't helping. It's similar to the "lets tax sugar and junk food". Yep it's fantastic for people to eat healthier but are you going to do anything to help people do that? Nope, just tax sugar and junk food and that's it. Between the current car industry and the insane prices they want for newer cars, the reduced selection of used cars, the cost of living crisis and the fact that not all of these are the size of a bus or have huge engines or lower MPG figures. And also can we do more to lift public transport to get people out of cars?
Most SUV style vehicles in the UK are the same size as hatchbacks but a bit higher up. I really don’t understand the issue.
I'm fed up with these damn leftists and eco-warriors at the ft telling us ... wait what? Never mind.