Just SUVs? Why not Lamborghini, Ferrari, Bently, or all the other luxery vehicles? This seems pretty arbitrary at first glance. I don’t know french car culture very well but aren’t SUVs more of a middle class thing?
French car culture isnt much different than European car culture in general, for the sake of the topic here. Small displacement engines (1.6, or 2.0 liter usually) and small footprint because of space. Scooters and pedal bikes are super common around places like Paris, tho…parking, gas, weaving through the congestion, etc. However, some of the wagon variants of cars and these luxury cars you mention sometimes have a much larger footprint than small and mid-sized SUVs. Unless overhead clearance is an issue, like in parking garages, i don’t quite understand the reason for singling out SUVs here.
This, of course, is all stated with European sized SUVs in mind that share the same small displacement engines as other cars. Not the giant American sized ones that have much larger engines where emissions issues now come into play. However, all those luxury cars usually have even bigger engines and sometimes the loud exhaust as well…sooo…🤷
Could it also be to do with the increased lethality of SUVs? A study in Ireland shows 11.5% of pedestrians hit by an SUV were killed versus 4.5% for a car.
No law is perfect and there’s always an edge case to provide a reason for doing nothing. This is definitely a step in the right direction to stop the arms race that purchasing larger vehicles has become though.
True tho. In some episodes they just solder random panes of metal together for a joke and those look better. Id rather drive the two sided car than this.
Bruh, my only vehicle for close to two years was a truck that I inherited, a 2002 Chevy Silverado 1500 LS. I believe it got about 8mpg on average, but I dealt with it because I didn’t have any other way to get a different vehicle at the time.
Nowadays I drive a 2018 Ford Fiesta SE. The difference is night and day. Stops on a dime, accelerates quickly, I can fit it anywhere I want, and it gets an average of 34mpg. I went from paying between $75 to $125 every week and a half for gas to spending about $30 over the same time period.
I drive small cars in my personal life, although I currently own 2 station wagons because of family and pets. I usually get an average consumption of 6-7L/100km, which is not bad at all.
My first and most beloved car was a hatchback that could get 5,5L/100km.
I have to drive a pick up for work but I do not enjoy it, to the least degree.
Most of my friends that are in the trades prefer small vans over pickup trucks. They can fit more tools, better organized, and easier to secure. Pickup trucks are very niche vehicles.
Unfortunately, to my knowledge, there are no risen raised vans or with 4x4 traction, which I often require to reach some remote locations, especially with rainy weather.
But I would gladly trade it in for a small van.
Either that or a 1990’s 4x4 FIAT Panda, with a roof rack.
Pretty sure mercedes has some vans like that. I know of a company that build them into off road & off grid camping vans and they do rock climbing, or whetever one would call it, in them. They are still quite long and big but not like the sheer stupid toys that a modern pickup is.
There are, not sure what your qualifications for a “risen van” are, but Ford Transits and Mercedes Sprinters have an AWD variant. Dodge has had 4wd panel vans since the 90s, not sure if they still are, tho. There’s probably other makes out there, but that’s what I know off the top of my head. I think there’s also aftermarket companies that can mod vans into 4wd, but that’s getting a little crazy for just a basic work van.
At least 20cm of clearance from the road, awd capable, with high torque setting for rough terrain and steep inclinations, as I sometimes need to use trails not even fit to be considered goat paths.
Ya, it’d be doable for sure with the craze of all the overland van-dweller builds the last few years. Ive seen plenty that meet all your requirements. But, whether it would be cost-effective or not for a work van would be the major issue, especially considering most trucks can do all that without being a special order for probably less than half the price.
Unfortunately not a lot of demand for such a thing, like you said.
Years ago i was in a spot where i needed the same as you for basically all the same reasons. The old van kept getting stuck everywhere, and then it actually got rolled from hitting a patch of black ice one winter, so it was totaled. These high-top vans had just started coming to market which was great, but I couldn’t convince the boss to spend the extra money for at least an AWD version, nevermind the higher ground clearance or low-torque options. I still got that thing stuck so many times…having a high-top I could stand up in was nice though.
What is an ULEZ camera?
Without details, it seems a bit weird that people are called extremists who don’t like their country being converted to china by covering every inch with a camera, maybe even if they used explosives against these in a way that didn’t hurt anyone.
I mean, just google what a Ulez camera is, man. It’s to enforce a low-emissions zone, so that cars don’t kill people with air pollution. It’s an expansion of the already successful low and ultra-low emissions zones in London.
The explosion didn’t hurt anyone but that was pure luck. You cannot safely blow something up on a public road. Anyone who’d been walking, cycling or driving by at the wrong moment could’ve been seriously injured or killed. Again, this is obvious.
And, yes, anyone who responds to a public health policy with explosives is an extremist.
In our case, we were able to get a better rate from investing than the rate we’re getting charged on the car loan. It was “cheaper” to take the loan than to pay up front! This economy is nuts.
When borrowing rates are lower than investment returns borrowing just makes good financial sense.
I could pay off my home loan today, but at 2.5% interest why, when I can keep that money and leave it in a safe high return investment? I’d be losing 10s of thousands a year in returns for my retirement to save a few thousand in mortgage interest.
Same thing with cars.
Then again, I don’t even buy new cars. I just get a dependable used Japanese car and drive it until it dies at 300k miles.
It’s OK to go into debt over a depreciating asset if you can afford to default on the loan, and it substantially improves your ability to make money. Businesses do it all the time. If a sole trader could work better with the cybertruck for some reason(I’ve got nothing) and could borrow off their house as collateral, that’s a financially savvy business decision.
But a lot of people fall victim to predatory marketing. We need to recognize that it’s not just them being dumb, they were manipulated, tricked and lied to by a powerful machine.
I love taking the wind out of Elon’s sails because he is just a horrible and cringe person to an extreme degree, but I personally like the cybertruck aesthetically. It definitely different from anything we have seen in a truck, and I’m all for it. It’s also basically a concept car that is somehow actually making it to market, and if it motivates the bigger auto makers to take more chances with their designs and ideas, I think it’s great.
That said, its so ludicrously expensive, and so impractical/not advisable for all the reasons I would personally use a truck, because it’s basically an SUV with a bed. It’s like a Chevy Avalanche/Honda Ridgeline mashup. This thing is the ultimate pavement princess. If there’s one thing I wouldn’t be an early adopter for, it’s something thats whole purpose is to get beat the fuck up.
I can understand liking the idea of the cyber truck but its aesthetic is so different from convention that I think people need to see it in person to decide if they like it.
There are so many things in it that are different in ways that might be better it is hard for me to imagine it selling well.
I really can’t fathom anyone seriously thinking this is good aesthetically without assuming they have a serious bias affecting their judgement in form of payment, cognitive deficiency, misplaced Musk sympathy, or otherwise.
Other auto makers are doing just fine with their designs overall, we don’t need to include children’s scribbles of a car when talking about where car designs should be headed.
There’s aesthetic differences stemming from simple original taste, then there’s differences stemming from being on the challenged side of the bell curve. Like smearing poop on a wall and trying to call it art.
Plus you can’t leave it parked anywhere. Anyone who sees it will want to recreate the famous steel ball test. Dude will spend a fortune at the tesla dealership getting his “bulletproof” windows replaced every week.
Honestly this just seems like the best way to have both sides of the relevant conversation hate you. The urbanists will hate you because you bought a Cybertruck which exemplifies all the problems with large cars in urban areas and car dependency in general, not to mention techbro dependency. And the truck people will hate you because you bought a liberal socialist soy boy electric truck instead of a noble, God-anointed, by your bootstraps diesel truck.
Wouldn’t be surprised if someone comes back to the parking lot to see a line of alternating rednecks and railfans all taking turns keying their truck.
Really not what I meant. I mean you don’t chase after happiness with purchases. You know how like people chase after happiness with alcohol, drugs, etc. These things won’t make you happy, you have to find happiness in life at a more fundamental level.
IMO it depends on what you’re buying. Exercise and training to compete in sports that I do brings me some of the most happiness I have in my life, so buying sports equipment really does improve my happiness because it lets me do what I enjoy. I enjoy astronomy and just bought my first telescope recently and it has brought me a ton of joy. OTOH I have also been pulled into the cycle of buying shit because it’s new and shiny and once it transforms from a “new thing” into just a “thing”, it loses my attention.
Don’t forget that you can’t haul much because the dumbass designers sloped the walls of your bed. You have plenty of room for friends though, if you could make any.
The vast majority of pickups don’t have sloped bed walls. The only other one I can think of is the Chevy Avalanche, and they aren’t sloped the whole way to the tailgate, only part way.
I would personally bet a full paycheck that in two years, most of these trucks have hauled no more than like a few pieces of furniture, a couple 2x4s, and maybe some bags of potting soil or mulch.
Definitely justifies daily driving a 7000lb, bullet proof, pedestrian slicer.
No sane industrial or construction operator is buying a Cybertruck. They’d probably get the base model F150 Lightning or something if they wanted electric, you know, like they’ve already been doing.
This kind of post on here gets auto praise. There are specific buzz words/images/brands/rich people you can use on Lemmy to be praised how they’re saying people praise Elon.
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