"What do you get in the place for this lower efficiency? Are American cars that much heavier? More comfortable? Faster?"

I cannot speak for everyone, but as someone who lives in the US and also spends a lot of time in Europe, there is a very big lifestyle difference at play here.

First, I have a five person family (wife and three kids) and you[1], statistically, as a European, have 1.6 children - and as a highly educated HN reader, probably less (on average).

Second, Americans move around a lot more than most europeans do. On the occasions that I have lived in Europe, I always spoke of how interesting it was that we could just "drive to St. Petersburg" or "just drive to Transylvania" or whatever, and otherwise smart and interesting european friends would look at me like I was a crazy person. It is very, very rare to meet Europeans who drive across multiple countries for leisure.[2]

So when I drive five people, weighing over 500 lbs total and accompanying luggage the equivalent of one Europe away and over two mountain ranges[3] I am going to need something more than a lawnmower engine. This is not an edge-case - this is something we do multiple times per year.

That being said, there are some very interesting cultural differences in the other direction ... once while in Denmark I saw a decent sized horse trailer being hauled by a nice, new Audi A8. Basically 100% of the driving public in the US would have considered this a gaping tear in the fabric of reality.

[1] Not you, but you on average.

[2] Zurich to Transylvania is 1800km - about the same as SF to Denver which is ~2000 km.

[3] CA to MN, for instance, over the Sierras and then the Rockies.

> On the occasions that I have lived in Europe, I always spoke of how interesting it was that we could just "drive to St. Petersburg" or "just drive to Transylvania" or whatever, and otherwise smart and interesting european friends would look at me like I was a crazy person. It is very, very rare to meet Europeans who drive across multiple countries for leisure.

Me and my gf did a Bucharest-to-Geneva and back car-trip last year and it was wonderful. There's something to be said about getting up to 2,000 meters in the Swiss Alps using a 1.4l gasoline engine car with 86bhp (probably less now, as the car is already 10 years old), all in third gear. Plus riding on the Austrian and German autobahns, as a car-lover that's pure bliss. Or riding on the Autostrade of Northern Italy in the middle of the night and stopping for an 1-euro ristretto at a gas station which was better-tasting than the majority of coffee-drinks that I had ever had.

But you're of course correct, ours was an isolated experience. I think my car was the only Romania (or Eastern-Europe)-licensed plate on the streets of Geneva (and Lausanne). If only gasoline were less expensive...

"But you're of course correct, ours was an isolated experience. I think my car was the only Romania (or Eastern-Europe)-licensed plate on the streets of Geneva (and Lausanne). If only gasoline were less expensive..."

Good for you! I love to do these trips.

It is so baffling how uninterested most Europeans are in just getting out and driving to parts unknown. It's tremendously rewarding.

Uninterested in doing it by car maybe, but not uninterested. Just that we have good(ish) train, plane, ferry and coach services - most people I know (I'm British) will have traveled a lot in Europe.

Also, don't forget that doing it by car is pricey for us - another comment above quoted $2.50 or something a gallon in parts of the US - here we pay about £1.20 a litre currently - so for example the cost to my brother of driving his van from the UK to northern Portugal (which he does to take his tools with him) can cost about £360 - where as he could fly and then hire a car there for a week or two for less money (if having his tools to do up his house there wasn't the reason for visiting!)

> Second, Americans move around a lot more than most europeans do.

I think it's just because flying is so inconvenient/expensive in the US. Sure, I could drive 10 hours from Lisbon to Barcelona, easily spending $100+ in gas and tolls.

Or I could pay 50-100 to fly and be there in 2 hours.

When I was in Europe, flying could be a weekly opportunity to visit other countries (with the cheap 20eur tickets). Now instead, I try to drive to avoid all the hassle.

Sure, but if you were taking a family of 5, suddenly your $100 plane ticket turns into $500. Driving becomes much more competitive as soon as you start adding passengers to the vehicle.

> It is very, very rare to meet Europeans who drive across multiple countries for leisure

Then you've never been to the south of France in the summer.

It's filled with license plates from all over the EU. Mainly Dutch, UK, German. I've even seen Estonian plates.

It's ~1200Km from the Netherlands to the south of France. People do it in camper vans all of the time.

Also Italy, north Spain, Croatia. And Germany/Austria/Switzerland in winter season.

It might not be as widespread to travel long distances by car as it is in the US, but it is definitely not "very, very rare". I would even say it's common for many Dutch, Danish, German, Belgian, Polish (from what I can observe).

Indeed. There are places in Croatia where you see more German plates than Croatian in the summer.

I witnessed that as well in Europe. They don't like driving any distances and they have some great countryside and fun roads. In London - people seemingly stay really tight to where they live and work. They have no problem flying to other countries, but exploring their own city and country or even neighboring country is a chore to them.

I think a lot of it is because there are so many different and interesting countries nearby combined with super cheap flights. And many have good public transportation and don't own a car, or if they do - they own an Urkel-mobile which does the job for short trips and fits into tiny parking spots where they live and around town. And gas/diesel is a lot more over there too. So it's a lot of things that sway travel choices to the tube or trains and planes over cars.

Regarding car size - yes you lose something like 7 HP for every 100 pounds. So if you do have a bunch of passengers and gear you need something with more power and you also need something with more comfort/room which leans towards vans and SUVs.

I'd say it is the cost of fuel vs the cost of public transport. I've taken the train London-Paris for £58 return, or flown to Spain or Greece for less than £50 return with easyjet or similar. Even with 2 or three of us travelling it would cost far more than that to do it by car (plus have to sort out European insurance and breakdown cover), and then struggle to find places to park in Paris, and pay through the nose for it.

Instead I can get on a train to Paris for just over 2 hours, or I loved leaving work one day at 5pm, getting the plane to Amsterdam for £27 each way, and arriving there at 8pm UK time (9pm Dutch time), and was in the city centre drinking by 10.15. If I'd tried to do that by car...

> It is very, very rare to meet Europeans who drive across multiple countries for leisure.

I don't have statistical data, but I have that experience. I have never heard of anyone doing that in Europe. Long car travels are avoided as much as possible. I heard of a guy that did a really long trip by car because was relocating and didn't want - or was too expensive - to move his dogs in any other way. He was not happy about it. I always see going by car as painful, while using trains is a good experience (https://visitsweden.com/getting-around-sweden-train/) and by plane is just fast.

But when people wants to visit the USA, to travel long distances by car looks like something you want to do. I know Europeans that have done that, in the USA.

So maybe it is not just a matter of taste, but it is geography or you just want to do what you see in the movies.

>But when people wants to visit the USA, to travel long distances by car looks like something you want to do.

Especially out West, for vast areas of the US, there really are no good alternatives to driving. For example, there's very limited ability to visit most National Parks without a car.

And most of the cities are too far apart to reasonably take trains between them.

So you're left with flying which gets expensive and a hassle, especially for a family.

If you want to visit cities in the Northeast you probably don't need (or want a car). But elsewhere it's between convenient and necessary.

> Especially out West, for vast areas of the US, there really are no good alternatives to driving ... > And most of the cities are too far apart to reasonably take trains between them.

Heh, that's a very USian response ;). That's largely because the US doesn't have proper long-distance trains. In a lot of other countries you'll be about as fast or faster with a train rather than a car, and can comfortably work for most of that time. Even if a 6h car-trip becomes a 7h train-trip, I'd almost always take the train.

Compare driving Cologne-Frankfurt Airport by car (2h, if the traffic gods smile), and train (45min). That's a faster track, so not quite representative, but even Berlin-Freiburg on mostly slower tracks - I've done that over a hundred times - is ~6.40h train vs. ~8h by car.

I don't see the US getting comparatively nice long-distance trains anytime soon.

> For example, there's very limited ability to visit most National Parks without a car.

Yea, that's true. I've so far done that with rental cars, works well enough unless you're going in winter... Hm, I should plan a trip soon.

The US has a comparable train to your Berlin-Freiburg route.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acela_Express

Unsurprisingly, it goes through a high population density region.

Even a route like this one wouldn't service all that many people and isn't even halfway across the country:

http://www.openstreetmap.org/directions?engine=osrm_car&rout...

(It does a decent job of passing metro areas; Pittsburg, Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, Des Moines)

> The US has a comparable train to your Berlin-Freiburg route.

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acela_Express

Well, it lags by over 100km/h of allowed speed (and more in practice I tihnk), but then the fast trains in Germany can't use their top-speed in a lot of regions either. The network isn't even remotely as varied. But, as you say:

> Unsurprisingly, it goes through a high population density region.

Everything in Germany is extremely dense compared to large swathes of the US. It'd not be feasible to have every medium sized city on a high-speed train network in the US.

But the situation on the US west coast, where I now live, is really kinda bad. There not being reasonable "public"/rail transport between Seattle<->Portland<->SF/Bay Area<->LA is hard to understand from a European/German perspective, although I see the political perspective of it being hard to do.

You really get used to that tho. I recently went to a conference in Stockholm, and reflexively wanted to hail a cab from the airport to the hotel/venue. Just to remember to check public transport: 15min less than by car.

You need a certain population density for high speed rail, or even decently fast rail, to be economically viable, don't you?

I've had brief experiences with high speed rail and I loved it. Much more comfortable than the whole taxi/airport/plane scenario. Though I do understand HSR doesn't scale for very long distances.

I don't understand this comment:

>too far apart to reasonably take trains between them //

It's way nicer IMO doing inter city travel by train. One of my favourite journeys ever was from Wales, via England to South France.

Aren't railways one of the main ways to do long journeys between cities?

No. A handful of city pairs have reasonably popular rail service (Milwaukee-Chicago, Boston-New York) which you might use becasue the freeways tend to be congested. The duration is comparable to a drive in clear traffic.

For any other route, a family would fly and then rent a car if upper class or drive if middle/lower class.

Amtrak sometimes serves these routes, but costs more than flying and takes days instead of hours (3 days Chicago to SF, 24 hours Chicago to New York or New Orleans, and if Chicago isn't on the way, you'll need to detour through Union Station). The max flight time here would be ~6 hours.

Too far apart does mean that A to B is so much further than A to B in Europe. It means that there's nothing in between them, so it would be insane to build a passenger rail line (i.e. high speeds, high priority on the queue, locomotives, ect). A 1000 km length of track in Europe serves 10, 15 cities. In the American west it serves the passengers of 2.

As a guy from Belgium, who lives half the year in the bay area, I can confirm. Maybe because Belgium is so small, but when I'm in the US I have no problem driving an hour just to get to a walmart. In Belgium, this crosses half the country and I only do it on very select occasions. In the US I even drive from SF to LA and back every month, when in Europe I wouldn't even consider driving that far.

Each time I spend some time in the US, I'm thinking: 'I should drive to more places in Europe', but as soon as I'm back, my European stay-at-home mood kicks in.

> we could just "drive to St. Petersburg" or "just drive to Transylvania" or whatever, and otherwise smart and interesting european friends would look at me like I was a crazy person

Well, yeah, do you know what the roads are like? There are no interstate or federal highway funding. And a train or a flight is faster…

I would compare your US story to AU; I did multiple Adelaide <-> Nowra trips with my parents as a kid, and at uni we'd think nothing of driving 2 hours to a party (4 for a 21st).

Why? Because driving was way cheaper than flying, and way faster than trains; and because we'd still need a car at the other end to get around Nowra since the public transport there was non-existent.

The Audi A8 thing, is that because A8 is an expensive car? Or because it is comparatively smaller? If it's the second one, I've seen horse trailers pulled by smaller cars (even Golf, I think).

No, you see - in the United States it is assumed that any towing or work activities must be done with a truck.

I am not exaggerating at all when I tell you that the minimum acceptable size for this truck is larger than most freight/delivery trucks in European cities.

Here is a completely normal, totally average truck that millions of people in the US use as a daily driver and have on-hand because they occasionally buy some boards at the hardware store:

http://blog.sfgate.com/topdown/files/2015/09/the-14-most-aff...

> No, you see - in the United States it is assumed that any towing or work activities must be done with a truck.

I love subtle cultural differences like this where two sides are completely unaware that life could be any other way than it is. :-D

In the 80's and 90's in Sweden, I remember that every single car had a trailer hitch with a tow ball. And if you needed to buy something bulky at a hardware store, you borrowed or rented a small trailer. Every single hardware store has trailers for rent! Most large gas stations has trailers for rent! The only people who own pickups are farmers! Why would anyone want to buy a pickup?

Meanwhile, in the US, tow balls are extremely uncommon, and I don't think I've ever seen small trailers for rent anywhere.

Another funny difference is what camping looks like.

In Europe, it looks like this: http://www.widlundshusvagnar.se/valj-dragbil-och-husvagn-med...

In the US, it looks like this: http://www.rv-camping.org/towing-a-vehicle/

The first time I saw an RV towing a pickup I was completely dumbfounded.. It's on backwards! The car goes in front! Whyyyy?!?

> Meanwhile, in the US, tow balls are extremely uncommon, and I don't think I've ever seen small trailers for rent anywhere.

They may not be as common but are still common. Many people have hitches on their cars. You're correct that there aren't a lot of places that rent small trailers but you can rent trailers small enough to tow with a car for $20/day from Uhaul.

Also, tow balls aren't common because the bumper of a car or truck can't handle a lot of weight, so receiver hitches are more popular. And you're not supposed to leave the hitch in the receiver after you use it (unless you want it to never come out again due to rust).

The reason pickup trucks are used for towing generally is because they are body-on-ladder-frame construction, not unibody with sub-frames. With a receiver hitch attached (which is why you don't generally see the tow-balls on the bumper of pickups), you can haul and pull a lot more weight (because the hitch is connected directly to the frame).

If you have a regular sedan with a tow ball in Europe, you know that you can't attach very large trailer or pull a lot of weight. Knowing how much you can tow and under what circumstances are part of the written driving test in Sweden at least.

But, and here come the funny cultural differences again, for many Americans it's always MAX STRENGTH or nothing. Regardless of the actual future needs, most would go "YEAH BUT WHAT IF I WANTED TO PULL A HORSE TRAILER? I CAN'T? THEN NO!"

Please, there's no need to use all-caps for emphasis (and it's against the guidelines). If needed, please use italics (using asterisk for demarcation) instead.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

And the scary thing is how many large trucks and SUVs are sold without the hardware necessary to tow a trailer. It's absurd to buy something like a Suburban with a V8 that doesn't even have the potential to be burdened with the kind of load that would differentiate it from a van.

I don't own a pickup but they are quite fun to drive. Gaffigan has a related joke:: "why are they called a pickup? I'm pretty sure everyone that owns them aren't picking ANYTHING up". haha. So true.

This lifestyle is not unique to the US, but the big, inefficient car thing seems to be. South Africa is on a similar scale to the US and probably much more mountainous in general. Yet most of the cars there are European sized. And it's not just because they can't afford bigger ones; many of them can. It just seems that if they are going to choose one vehicle they choose the one that makes sense for every day of the week, not the few times a year they drive for 8 hours across multiple mountain ranges.

I live in the UK and I'd been told by Americans "you just don't understand" many times. But I can tell you now that it's perfectly fine to make day long road trips across mountain ranges in something like a VW Golf. You don't need a 3L+ monstrosity.

> Zurich to Transylvania is 1800km

You forgot to mention: 4 different languages (Swiss dialect, German, Hungarian and Romanian) and one border (Swiss - EU).

Having lived (and appreciated) Europe and their cars:

1. You guy drive a lot less than us. I do trips three times as long as what would destroy me in Europe (twice a month I drive 500 km without stopping and back the next day)

2. Are you using the imperial gallon or the american gallon? Very common mistake (the mile used in the article looks like and probably is the 3.8l gal)

Edit, you're using the right gallon.

Sure (if true), but that's not the point, because driving more doesn't increase mileage. Why does driving more make you prefer less efficient cars? What do you get back from it?

Sorry I forgot to finish the point for 1.

A larger car (more space, inertia and soundproofing) with a bigger engine (lower rpm therefore less noise) with more cylinders (less vibration) is more comfortable and wears you down less. And I loved my wife's no frills stick-shift Versa (4000 rpm at 80 mph really got annoying though)

As to American's driving large distances, based on my personal experience, there's no comparison. American cities are further apart, families are more scattered, families are larger. Don't forget that in many ways America is actually two societies in one. One America lives in places largely undistinguishable from Europe. The other has 90 mile one way commute (a colleague. Mine is only 17).

Driving 500 kilometers without stopping is terribly dangerous for yourself and the people around you. Please be considerate.

It's a matter of practice. 500 km is 312.5 miles. At 60 mph, this is about 5 hours of driving. You can definitely handle 5 hours of driving at one shot. Start at a time when you don't expect to feel sleepy for the next 5 hours and you'll be set.

No, it isn't. It's the difference between driving in the EU and driving in N America.

I can't think of any 500 km route in Europe that wouldn't destroy me. And a little engine screaming for dear life wouldn't help

no it's not. that's 4 hours of highway driving. waking up and starting a drive at 6am and driving until 10am is not any more dangerous than normal short trips and in fact is probably safer since you aren't dealing with intersections.

> I always wondered why American cars are so inefficient. Seems such a waste of your significantly cheaper gas

Cart before the horse? Cars are inefficient because gas is dirt cheap. If gas were expensive, people would shift away from guzzlers. We have documented evidence of this happening after both the 70s gas crisis and the shift towards hybrids/EVs during the $4/gallon gas $100/barrel of oil days.

It's a pretty easy optimization game to play. If we increased gas taxes instead of flat demanding a fleet MPG (which the manufacturers simply game by making one or two hyper-efficient compliance vehicles which lets them continue to build guzzlers), you'd see how quickly the market would turn...

Diesel vehicles for the most part which has caused European cities (Paris, London etc...) to have terrible local air quality but lower CO2 emissions!

American cars (read SUVs and Trucks) are much, much bigger. I drive a Mini Cooper (R56S) which is probably about the same size as your Astra. Most of my co-workers and non-"car guy" friends think it's impossibly small. Even "small" CUVs (a smaller, more car-like SUV popular here in the States) dwarf my car. Vanishingly few US folks would want to drive something with under 300 hp and fewer than 4 doors. Not to mention the interior space people think is "appropriate".

Your first sentence really covers it. We have really cheap gas, so we don't care that fuel economy is bad. Every time someone I know comments about how poor gas mileage their car gets I respond with "what are you willing to give up"? They aren't - they want a giant SUV with hundreds of horsepower and they want to get 50-60 MPG.

Very few Americans drive diesel cars, and diesel MPG is not comparable to gasoline MPG. Do your parents drive diesel too? What's the power of your parent's car engine?

There are a ton of Priuses on American roads, which I think are a bit larger, will easily meet or exceed those fuel efficiency numbers, and do it all while burning gasoline instead of diesel. (Diesel is more energy dense, so it's easier to get better MPG numbers with it. Diesel is also more expensive in the US, so it's not cost effective unless the efficiency gain is significant.)

It's not all that hard to find efficient cars here. The Honda Civic is rated at 32MPG city/42 highway (and our ratings tend to come in a bit worse than real-world driving will give you), Toyota Corolla is 30/42, Chevy Cruze is 31/47. You can do worse if you want, but you don't have to.

Good points, but diesel's higher MPG doesn't have to do with the difference in energy density but in cycle efficiency.

The Diesel cycle is, all things equal, inherently less efficient than the Otto cycle. Hoever, since it allows much higher compression ratio it's efficiency ends up being very high (20 vs. 30 traditionally) [see Faires]

Cheaper fuel is the reason the US doesn't care as much about MPG

Also worth mentioning that the US gallon and imperial gallon aren't the same size

@kmm's measurements are in Liters per 100KM. The translation is correct.

American cars are bigger (longer) and faster. When I've traveled in Europe, I'm always surprised by how small most cars are and how small the parking spots are.

High mpg options exist in the US. Americans seem to prefer to trade gas savings for more power and bigger cars rather than saving some cash, at least at the current price point of gas.

Re: parking spots

My family keeps growing (in numbers, age and size) and as I'm approaching midlife affordability I would love a decent large SUV, like the Volvo XC90 etc to replace my ageing Ford Focus estate.

But for the life of me, I can't imagine the pain of owning such a large vehicle. Parking would be a nightmare. At home, in town, anywhere. I live in Hampshire in England and the parking spots around here are all designed with 1970s Golfs and Morris Minors in mind it seems so not SUV compatible at all.

I already frequently can only open the door 1/4 of the way and really squeeze my stomach in to get into the car. With a large SUV, I would surely have to enter via the boot all the time. They may only be 5-10cm wider on each side, but that is totally impractical around here.

Tesla-esque self-driving/summoning would really solve this as I could just ask the car to reverse a little before I get in, so parking tightly would then not be a problem. For me at least.

Thankfully SUVs would be 4x4 as I also would surely have to go partially off-road when meeting other cars on the lanes around here.

Wouldn't automated reverse parking create problems for others? And leave dents and dings in your door?

Yes. Should really have been a "For me at least*" with a note that it would piss others off until most cars can be summoned.

It makes sense - most of the infrastructure was built before the car. So it's not really feasible to accommodate large vehicles.

It's not even possible for them to put the toilet anywhere other than INSIDE the shower in many places because the apartments are so small. Sometimes they even have "floor urinals". I get a laugh out of it every time but they do have some serious size constraints in many places over there.

I would think much of the infrastructure had to be rebuilt after WW2 though, no?

The roads? Rights-of-way & property boundaries didn't get bombed, and one narrowing due to right-of-way passing through historical-significant properties restricts the maximum vehicle size for the entire road/region (https://goo.gl/maps/BzJrXer8HmF2)

Consider this local intersection ('junction'): https://goo.gl/maps/UPjtR5VdSXM2. It's a favourite for the practical driving test: from the left lane, turn right into the side street. It's extremely dangerous, as you have to creep around the corner to the left to get visibility of the oncoming 30mph traffic, without getting so far pass the side street's centre line than you can't safely turn in.

Opel is owned by GM (well, until March 2017). You're actually driving an American car. Assuming the 2015 and up model year it's platform sharing with the Buick Verano. The big difference here is that your engine is a diesel, and that makes a big difference in city driving when you're idling a lot.

I've just come from a trip around the US national parks, and noticed something similar.

I rented the cheapest, smaller car that I could, which was a 2015 Dodge Dart which would probably be about mid-range in the UK. It claimed 30 miles / gallon for optimal driving. Converting, that's 36 miles / UK gallon.

I don't actually own a car at the moment, but for a few years I owned a 1995 Peugeot 106 which normally got just under 50 MPG, say about 40 miles per US gallon.

Makes for a pretty disappointing comparison. 20 years later and still 25% behind?

Looking at the Wikipedia article for the Peugeot 106 most of the engines that were offered in the 1995 model year only put out around 100 HP. Since you had a "cheapest" rental Dart I'm assuming it had the base engine which is rated at 160 HP of power, around 60% more powerful. Comparing the curb weights, the 2015 Dart is also around 70% heavier than the 1995 106 which is expected since the Dart is a segment larger than the 106 and it would have all the safety and "infotainment" technologies developed in those 20 years. The increased power of the Dart makes up for the increased weight, and at US fuel prices it still probably costs less to fill up for the average US driver than your 106 would in Europe even though it's more efficient.

For comparison, I own a 2012 Chevrolet Sonic (known as the Aveo overseas) with the 1.4 L turbo engine (rated 138 HP). I have a mostly-highway commute and my lifetime average MPG(-US) is 38.0. On a long road trip I take once per year I have gotten over 50 MPG (measured by dividing the fuel I consumed on the trip by the distance I traveled) despite the vehicle only being rated at 38 MPG highway by the EPA. You can easily exceed the EPA highway rating on most cars if you accelerate gently and don't drive too much faster than 70 MPH.

Well you can't compare the two unless you mention the fuel type.

> American cars are so inefficient.

They don't have to be -- the Chevy Volt (Vauxhall Ampere) is one of the most efficient cars on the planet, and is designed and manufactured in America (including the battery).

Many Americans just prefer inefficient cars, and vote with their wallets. For some, it's a badge of honour to have a car that's really huge (SUV moms) or loud and spitting out smoke (Muscle Cars / Pickup Trucks), as a cultural identity statement.

US made such a phenomenal win with cheap gas that Europeans still mis. Exposure to cheap energy EMPOWERED people across vast country. Robust chevy v8 powers everything for decades and still going strong: from cars, trucks, boats, generators - you name it.

This came exact opposite in the old continent. The fact we drive efficient lawn mowers is just a sad testament for this failed energy policy.

The US got the "win", but everyone will pay the consequences... I'm not sure that was a very good policy

I drive a Scion xA in America, it's only 100mpg. I think small cars like this (Honda Fit, etc) are catching on, at least in cities. But even still I only get 32-38mpg; maybe from worse aerodynamics?