* All of the weight is in the bottom of the vehicle, giving a lower centre of gravity. I'd bet this will kill the old F150 in a moose (or child!) test.
* The lack of engine means the entire front part of the car is a huge crumple zone. This gives designers more wriggle room for pedestrian protection too. This is an increasingly important requirement in road safety standards.
* The electric motors are able to respond with torque far faster (in ms) than an ICE engine, so traction and stability control are more effective. Again good for things like the moose test.
* Switching our road transport to electric will probably save more children, and the adults they will become, from a lifetime of lung problems and premature death from pollution than better pedestrian safety features ever will.
Crumple zones don't help pedestrians.
The new F-150 will be bigger and heavier than the absurdly huge early-00s Hummers. The hood is so tall and long that they're talking about putting forward-facing cameras inside the cab because you can't see anything in front of you shorter than 6" tall out the windshield.
If Ford was interested in safety, they would reduce the outrageous length and height of the front end which is now no longer even pretending to be necessary housing for an engine. Vehicles made to work prioritize visibility, Ford trucks are made to intimidate and kill.
See https://usa.streetsblog.org/2020/04/28/vehicle-safety-standa...
And a Tesla Model 3 long range is heavier than a 2020 F-150.
Not the kind you're thinking of.
But the top half of the bulbous front end that basically every modern car has is mostly empty space and flimsy plastic to create what's basically a crumple zone for pedestrians.
Citation needed
New F-150 Lightning curb weight estimate is 6500 lbs.
H1 is 7200-7500 lbs.
H2 is 6400-6600 lbs.
The F-150 is a couple feet longer but both the H1 and H2 are wider and taller.
Use those numbers to make your own determination. F-150 specs are from here: https://media.ford.com/content/dam/fordmedia/North%20America...
this is important. It is an option they DID IGNORE! for marketing.
The thing that kills pedestrians (both physically and preventing vision) is the high trunk. They could have lowered it since there is no 9L engine or whatever inside. But they decided to keep it for "frunk" marketing.
The sizable majority of modern car pollution comes from particulates that come off asphalt, not emissions from engines. It's still important to go EV to reduce carbon, but that doesn't improve local air quality. Modern internal combustion engines have pretty minimal pollutants in their emissions.
Getting older cars off the road is the major way to improve emission pollutants. Beyond that, improving air quality to any significant degree requires either fewer cars on the road, or less heavy cars on the road. Asphalt particulates scales quadratically with the weight of the car.
> Switching our road transport to electric will probably save more children, and the adults they will become, from a lifetime of lung problems and premature death from pollution than better pedestrian safety features ever will.
Do you (or anyone) have order-of-magnitude estimates for either/both of these figures? I mean, electrification in general is great, but the F150 cannot take credit for all of it. I am interested in reduced pollution deaths/QALYs that can be attributed to F150 electrification specifically -- that's the topic of this article and thread.
https://youtu.be/Jzfpyo-q-RM?t=355
On average in the US, the CO2 output required to power an electric vehicle is 1/3 of an ICE vehicle. So theoretically this would translate to less deaths as bb123 suggests, but hard to compare to direct pedestrian deaths. (Yes there are some logical gaps as ICE C02 output is a very low percentage of total fossil fuel output).
Source: https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1129478_lifetime-carbon...
Electricity only accounts for about 25% of greenhouse gas emissions, but it also enables industry (20%) and transportation (15%) to decarbonize too, by allowing them to replace their fuel with electricity.
A 50% reduction is already massive, but electrification of both vehicles and the industrial processes creating the vehicle will eventually let that number go to zero which should be our goal.
Edit: Here's relevant data to the other side: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/apr/10/vehicle-... https://www.cdc.gov/asthma/asthma_stats/asthma_underlying_de...
The important thing to note about the moose test is that it doesn't specify that the moose has to survive. It's simply a test of whether the occupants will survive hitting a moose. I would wager anything that is designed to pass the moose test will kill anything that it hits that is below the moose's center of gravity. So actually the vehicle is way less safe for pedestrians than a vehicle that would fail the moose test.
But if all that matters is the safety of the occupant I guess this is okay.
> * The lack of engine means the entire front part of the car is a huge crumple zone. This gives designers more wriggle room for pedestrian protection too. This is an increasingly important requirement in road safety standards.
The kind of "crumple zone" that enhances pedestrian and cyclist safety is more like a beer can. Again, the crumple zones in this vehicle are designed to keep the occupants safe but not designed to keep any other road user safe.
The moose test is about safely dodging around a moose that wanders out onto the road without wrecking the vehicle.
Why did you write this long comment as if you were an expert on the moose test if you don't even know what the moose test is? That's an incredibly disingenuous thing to do.
These zones are explicitly designed with pedestrian safety in mind, as it is a specific area of testing for roadworthiness certifications: https://www.euroncap.com/en/vehicle-safety/the-ratings-expla...
Completely wrong: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moose_test
The car fails the test (at that speed) if the "moose" is hit at all (or it skids, turns or tips over).
Tall SUVs typically fare worse at this because of their higher centre of gravity causing instability:
I think more worrisome is the center console - pedestrian deaths had been going down for 20 years until smartphones became widespread and we've had increases every year since.
I wish there was more discussion and acknowledgement of the dangers here.
I would rather drive next to people with .09 blood alcohol than someone on their phone.
Social media and cell phones are very convenient, but come with major drawbacks that must be addressed. Phones, for many young people, are just mental disorders with a touch screen.
Not in a "guns don't kill people way", but because I think smarphone helped spread society's worse effects on girls, but they were already in a very shitty position, and we can't just get back to the status quo before the smarphones and social networks.
We can of course also work on reducing sns negative impacts, but I think it will also be a bad, long and thorny way before seeing improvements.
But newer vehicles also have AEB with pedestrian detection. If these vehicles displace older existing vehicles without those safety systems we will see fewer fatalities overall. Most kids and pedestrians are hit at low speed, not at 60+ mph due to the driver not paying attention or not being able to see the pedestrian. While AEB can’t save all pedestrians that would otherwise be hit, we know that these systems lead to big reductions in preventable accidents [1].
The F-150 is already a bloated monstrosity, it makes no difference if it’s electric. It’s some tiny bit faster, but they’re all fast enough.
https://techcrunch.com/2021/05/19/ford-f-150-lightning-elect...
> “If your F-150 Lightning is plugged in when your outage occurs, Intelligent Backup Power will automatically kick in to power your home,” said Ryan O’Gorman, Ford’s energy services lead, in a video briefing prior to the reveal. “When power is restored, the truck automatically reverts to charging its battery.”
This new Lightning (putting it that way because F150 Lightning once corresponded to a gas-guzzling Supercharged V8 trim) has 775ft/lb of Torque. For reference, the existing models are between 265 and 510 ft/lb.
Additionally, one of the benefits of an electric motor, is that torque is essentially instantly available, compared to an ICE where there's only a slim power bad where that max torque range is hit.
Unless Ford 'governs' acceleration in software, I can see some lead-foots getting themselves into trouble quickly. They probably -will-, but I'd expect them to offer some sort of switch for that, lest the Ford zealots grab their pitchforks. Let us not forget that a lot of 'Car guys' are arguably insane. When Ford considered switching the Mustang to a Front Wheel Drive Mazda design, they had to deal with death threats!
You might want to look in the mirror. Car threads bring out really destructive attitudes, and mostly not from the 'car guys'. The stuff that gets said here is astounding...
I provided a very real world example of car enthusiasts doing something that a sane human being would not do. Can you help me understand what I should be looking for?
And yeah, a lot of people on HN are also car enthusiasts. How many of us sent death threats in response to the Ford Probe? I was even a Mustang enthusiast at that time. I never sent any death threats, nobody I know did either. You are describing a sociopath, who may also be a car enthusiast, and then claiming that this means all car enthusiasts are sociopaths.
And I've never sent anyone a death threat. I don't hate people for their choice in cars, or non-choice as the case may be. I enjoy interesting cars of all kinds. I'm not especially into trucks from an enthusiast perspective, though as a homeowner and RV owner I do happen to own a Ford F250. And I don't mind people that are into them. You have to be a bit of an enthusiast, IMO, to daily drive a super duty if you don't need it :). I'd own a Taco if I didn't need to tow anything, as it would be far more livable for daily use.
> compared to an ICE where there's only a slim power bad where that max torque range is hit.
second, this is only true of naturally aspirated engines, which are pretty rare these days. engines with turbos or superchargers are usually tuned to make (roughly) peak torque all the way from 2000 rpm to redline.
this is a lot of fretting over the peak acceleration of a truck. I believe the thing does 0-60 in something like 4.5 seconds. that's really quick for a truck, but only above average compared to performance sedans. in any case, most people (even the crazy ones) do not often hit peak acceleration from a red light, especially in an EV.
Seems like the people in this thread arguing about a fast truck don't know about the original Lightning, nor are they familiar with modern sport trucks like the Ram TRX or Shelby F-150 Super Snake, both of which will give proper high end sports cars a run for the money in a drag race.
It's worth checking out the 1/4 mile times from guys with RCSB F150s, whether it's an Ecoboost or a Coyote.
At this point, I'd say that the main limitation tends to be traction issues.
[edit]
Example: https://youtu.be/HGzlV4ggudM?t=425
We all realize it's due to safety, but a lot of sports cars have gotten progressively less fun as a result. The M3 is no longer a small nimble sedan. It's larger than the 5 series was from only 2 generations ago. That's all he's pointing out.
2021 G80 M4 length: 189.1″, width: 74.3″, curb weight: 3,840 to 3,890 lbs
2011 E92 M3 length: 180.4 to 181.8″, width: 71 to 71.5″, curb weight: 3,704
2001 E46 M3 length: 176.8", width: 70.1", curb weight: 3415 lbs.
2021 M5 length: 196.4″, width: 74.9″, curb weight: 4,345 lbs
2010 M5 length: 191.5, width: 72.7, curb weight: 4,012
2001 M5 length: 188.4″, width: 70.9″, curb weight: 4,024 lbs
An EV truck presumably can be any size, but there's no current small truck platform to build on.
My dad had a Ranger in 97 that was just about the perfect truck for day-to-day use. It fit 2 adults comfortably, had a tiny 4 cylinder engine, got great gas milage, and could be used to pull a small trailer. He was crushed when Ford got rid of the Ranger. And what they've released now is basically the size of the old F-150 from the 90s
You're right that CAFE is literally designed to favor trucks. And the definition is so vague that even vehicles like the PT Cruiser are considered Light Trucks for the purposes of CAFE. It is also designed to hurt small cars, because vehicles with footprints (wheelbase * wheel wide) smaller than a Mustang (literally, to the square inch) have to face ever-more-strict CAFE standards.
As a result, cars like the Fit are might face a CAFE penalty while a base F150 does a-okay despite getting like half the fuel economy. And that's not even getting into BS like flex fuel credits (basically, being flex fuel capable is like adding ~5mpg to the vehicle CAFE score).
This is exactly why every small vehicle is a crossover anymore (they are light trucks for CAFE purposes), and why cars like the Civic get are today, the size an Accord was in 2005 (CAFE is less strict the larger the vehicle is).
Which seems pretty crazy if the net effect is that any car manufacturer has to produce a full line if they want to build any inefficient cars.
"The tariff affected any country (such as Japan) seeking to bring light trucks into the U.S. and effectively "squeezed smaller Asian truck companies out of the American pickup market."[16] Over the intervening years, Detroit lobbied to protect the light-truck tariff, thereby reducing pressure on Detroit to introduce vehicles that polluted less and that offered increased fuel economy.[15]"
Having a 40 mpg target for a small truck and a 25 mpg target for a big truck makes it pretty hard to build and sell a small truck.
A modern version of, say, a Datsun 620 [3] or an 80's Ford Ranger [4] could be pretty popular. One might even be able to circumvent the chicken tax by importing the body/frame of a foreign-made truck and building an electric drive train in the U.S. or NAFTA country.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_average_fuel_economy...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_average_fuel_economy...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datsun_Truck#/media/File:Datsu...
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Ranger#/media/File:1st-Fo...
Well, the third really; Ford made 1500 1998-2001 Ford Ranger EVs, and Chevrolet made a few hundred 1997-1998 S10 EVs. But yeah, one with modern batteries and drive trains and (therefore) decent capacity and range could sell a bunch.
Huh? The shorter/narrower wheel base is better in any off-roading situation.
"Compared with cars, buses were 11.85 times and motorcycles were 3.77 times more likely per mile to kill children 0–14 years old. Buses were 16.70 times more likely to kill adults age 85 or older than were cars."
If you count crossovers as cars, trucks make up like 35% of auto sales and account for 39% of pedestrian deaths.
There is nothing to be concerned about.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/276506/change-in-us-car-...
You can’t get around physics. More mass with more force carries more risk.
Basically light duty trucks take an extra 10-30 feet stopping from 60 MPH. This is dwarfed by distance travelled during reaction time. In the 1960's sedans were in the ~150 ft range for 60-0, about what modern pickups achieve.
Heavier vehicles have more kinetic energy at the same speed but the braking force for all vehicles is proportional to mass and friction with the road surface which depends on tire quality and road material, and since acceleration is proportional to mass from a given force the deceleration from braking is basically the same at any mass with equivalent tires and road surface.
Obviously heavier cars are more deadly when hitting people with all the other variables fixed, but not all these variables are independent. They could also depend on the weight of the cars. For example, maybe the car becomes easier to control/steer when it's heavier (totally made up point), which counters the inherent risk introduced by the weight.
Without real-world data I won't be too quick to say heavier car is more dangerous.
We also know that speed kills and people are driving faster today than ever before.
I'll post the conclusion for the light trucks weight reduction part (fatalities part, there is also non-serious injuries part in the paper) here as TL;DR for other people.
Reducing the mass of light trucks would significantly increase the fatality risk of their occupants in
collisions with objects and big trucks. But downsizing of light trucks would significantly reduce risk
to pedestrians, motorcyclists and, above all, passenger car occupants. There would be little effect
on rollovers because, historically, there has been little correlation between the mass of light trucks
and their rollover stability (width relative to center-of-gravity height). There would also be little
change in collisions between two light trucks, if both trucks are reduced in mass.
Even though the effect of mass reductions is statistically significant in four of the six types of
crashes, the net effect for all types of crashes combined is small, because some of the individual
effects are positive and others are negative. The benefits of truck downsizing for pedestrians and
car occupants could more than offset the fatality increase for light truck occupants. It is estimated
that a 100-pound reduction could result in a modest net savings of 40 lives, (0.26 percent of baseline
fatalities). However, this estimate is not statistically significant, the 2-sigma confidence bounds
range from a savings of 100 to an increase of 20 fatalities; the 3-sigma bounds range from a savings
of 130 to an increase of 50 fatalities. It is concluded that a reduction in the weight of light trucks
would have a negligible overall effect, but if there is an effect, it is most likely a modest reduction
of fatalities40% is like speeding up to 60.
If you are worried about vehicle weight, worry more about speed.
That's why crumple zones are important for vehicle-vehicle collisions--not because they turn kinetic energy into a stored form of potential energy in deformation, but because they drastically decrease the rate at which momentum changes.
The crumple zone spreads that energy transfer out over a longer period of time.
The battery being low should dramatically improve the safety of the vehicle by improving stability.
It's still a huge vehicle, though. It would be nice if we trended smaller, and left vehicles like this to people who actually need it.
The weight of an entire small car!
A little appreciated fact is that a Model 3 and a Mustang have the exact same weight ranges: the SR RWD Model 3 weights about what a ecoboost Mustang does, and a GT500 Mustang is actually about 200lbs heavier than a Model 3 AWD LR Performance.
Constantly telling people that existing on earth as a human is bad for x, y, z is a good strategy if you want people to tune out and stop paying attention to what you're saying.
Depends how fast it's going.
2022 Ford Lightning: 6,500 lbs
2021 Ford F-150 Hybrid: 5,794 lbs
2021 Ford F-150 ICE: 5,014 lbs
(All 4-door models)
I’m not sure how much the weight really matters if you’re colliding with a cyclist or pedestrian anyway though.
Valid point about the height, but it’s no different than any other modern truck on the road today (all of which are too high if you ask me).
If you get hit by any vehicle you're going to have a bad time. This vehicle is not an exception.
All electric vehicles sold in the US since September 2020 must have a Pedestrian Warning System that emits noise at speeds less than 18mph: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_vehicle_warning_sound...
Once you're above 10mph or 15mph the road noise from the tires makes more noise than the quiet gas engines we have these days anyways.
This electric F-150 will not be "almost silent" in any way that matters to a pedestrian. It will certainly be less obnoxious to everyone than those grating diesel engine trucks, and I hope no one complains about the loss of that noise pollution.
I don't know if 2020+ EVs are louder, but at least our Fiat 500e does make this tiny whirring sound at parking lot speeds, supposedly so pedestrians can hear it. But it is so quiet that it doesn't accomplish much. Even the quietest ICE car is substantially more audible in parking lots.
Are you mental? I live on a residential street, not even too busy, and every single day, I hear these idiot gunning their motors to be cool. With electric its a non issue.
There is a also a massive difference between noise a normally driven ICE vehicle makes compared to an electric one at city speeds. The electric ones are very silent and barely audible if they don't make that humming sound. Even at 20-30mph.
Source: typing this in a city with lots of roads and traffic.
https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2016/12/14/2016-28...
I would have though it would be in the city, if only for the fact that I practically never see pedestrians on country roads where I live. There can be cyclists, though.
In the city, though, most car noise is clearly the engine. Source: traffic outside my window. I clearly hear the engine noise or the exhaust if it's a scooter or motorcycle.
Instead, they kept the high nose and used the space as a trunk. After all, injuring fewer pedestrians sells no cars. Indeed, the market prefers an enormous, deliberately threatening-looking chariot that makes you feel big and virile.
Ford are behind this game in that they haven't given their truck an explicitly hostile name like “People Mulcher”.
Most people with a truck are just trying to get their job done. They aren’t trying to look or feel anything.
Trucks designed for work have low frontends for maximum visibility. I drove a 1999 Silverado for 10 years, went offroading often, it had just as much horsepower as last year's F-150, but with a front-end that was basically indistinguishable from a sedan's, instead of the new ones that are so tall they have to put cameras in the cab so that you can see what's in front of you.
The frontends of modern trucks are for intimidation, not work.
No insult intended here: I assume people who have never had this thought have also never done things like replacing their kitchen cabinets or some other simple home improvement project. That's fine, but it's also quite relatable to many people, and it has nothing to do with penis.
I bought a truck for two reasons. Hauling the occasional thing around (having a home makes this happen more than I had initially thought) and it fits 6 (we just had our last child in January).
I WFH so it's lower fuel economy is a non-issue to us.
It has literally _nothing_ to do with "feeling big" or any compensation thing. I had no idea how much I'd use the utility until I bit the bullet and purchased one.
I'm incredibly excited for the F-150 Lightning because I am a perfect candidate for it.
I used to work at a horse racing track and every single jockey (really small dudes) had the hugest truck you have ever seen. We're talking Ford F-350 with a lift kit and bigger tires. The works. You needed to use a ladder to get in them.
There is definitely a thing that some people want bigger, taller vehicles because it makes them feel bigger and stronger. And there is definitely a thing that truck size becomes a pissing contest for some men where it's not just enough to have a big truck, you need to have the biggest one among your peers.
(And if you think nerds are immune to this phenomenon, perhaps take a more critical look at your gaming PC, boardgame collection, etc. We're a tribal species competing for mates using status symbols. Few of us are totally immune to this effect.)
At the same time, many truck owners are not motivated by that and painting them all with the same brush is uncharitable and unkind. I drive a pick-up. I absolutely love it. I have yet to kill any children, destroy the ozone layer, crush another car in a parking lot, or any of the other many moral crimes this thread seems to accuse most truck owners of.
Paraphrasing Freud, sometimes a truck is just a truck.
This in turn has actual effects on their behavior, including but not limited to making certain purchases more likely. Obsessing about power and speed and commanding the road definitely has an impact on how people drive - especially younger folks.
Car choice influence an incredible array of things up to how cities are built. Car commercial are omnipresent and include product placement in movies as well as, apparently, US presidents gunning it in a new truck, which is the topic of this whole thread.
Don't hit anyone with your vehicle and you won't kill anyone. I've been hit by a truck bicycling, thankfully not too hard. But I don't really think it would have been better to have been hit by a low slung sleek car. It would have put all the force through my legs.
Vehicle safety regulations aren't about "blame", ever. They're designed to save lives. If you can do that with better driver behavior, great. If you can do it with assistive technology, great. If you can do it with different vehicle designs, great. You do what you can, based on the techniques available and the costs involved.
To wit: if you start your safety analysis with "fuck the pedestrians, that's the driver's fault, not Ford's", then you're doing it wrong.
Ford trucks are the #1 killer of children and adults at crosswalks because drivers can't see what they're about to run over, vehicles of that front-end design account for 40% of all pedestrian traffic deaths.
Do you own a truck? I do. I've owned a truck for 15 years. Some of them lifted, and unless you are pretty much parked on top of a crosswalk, there is no problem seeing the crosswalk. Especially 3-4 foot objects in said crosswalk.
Edit: F150 is the most popular vehicle in the US. So, yeah, it stands to reason it will kill more people than any other vehicle, too
There is a such thing as good and bad design. If I sell a hammer that shoots a bullet whenever you swing it for no good reason, I'm responsible for people getting shot.
What I'm telling you is that you have an opinion that is different from mine and also probably an ignorant one since you didn't answer my question about whether you have ever owned a truck.
That's why professional models typically have cabover or sharply-sloped hood designs, not the enormous flattops that are marketed at suburbanites.
I have owned a truck, I drove a 1999 Chevy Silverado for ten years, it could haul just as much stuff as a 2020 F-150 but it also let me see the road.
"1999 Chevy Silverado for ten years, it could haul just as much stuff as a 2020 F-150 but it also let me see the road" - this is also utter nonsense. A 1999 Silverado 1500 is a 1/4 ton truck with a TC of about 4,000 pounds. A 2020 F-150 is a 1/2 ton truck with a TC of about 7,000 pounds.
So the more apt comparison would be with a Ford Ranger, which obviously sits lower to the ground than an F-150, but having owned both a 2500 Silverado and several F-250, the front visibility isn't much different.
What's an acceptable blind spot - where if someone hits a laying down/sitting kid in front of their car, it's the driver's fault and not the vehicle's?
When designing mass manufactured items, it is a responsibility of manufacturers to ensure that their products are as safe as they can be.
Even HN cannot see past the perverse dangers and flaws of modern auto design responsible for the current vulnerable road user epidemic in America. [1] When it comes to cars - it's "personal responsibility". When it comes to treadmills - it's a "manufacturing flaw" [2]
[1] https://www.freep.com/story/money/cars/2018/06/28/suvs-killi... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26846641
If what you say is true, then cities should not have roads.
It's also why cities are taking back whole roads from cars when they can, as it's so hard to preserve a middle ground in a lot of areas.
The air was co-opted by planes... should we turn that back over to avian only traffic?
For the main point was that roads weren’t built for cars - cars co-opted them from people. It doesn’t have to be that way.
The trend that they need to be an everyday vehicle for anyone is something that should be looked at. What is the psychology and intentional planning that's caused this shift? What subtle population engineering has lead to this without people realizing it?
I think the attitude of “you don’t need a truck unless you’re a blue collar worker” is pretty elitist and ignorant, honestly. As if the decision to buy a truck is somehow invalid because white collar workers don’t see the need for one.
The mystery to me is how very occasionally that seems to be, at least anecdotally. Perhaps >95% of pickup trucks I see are not hauling anything bigger than groceries. Yet, they’re hauling around their own ridiculously giant metal frame and emitting huge amounts of fossil fuels in the process. Those occasional boat trips are very net expensive in atmospheric carbon! Thankfully electric pickups will partially mitigate that problem although pickups will be hogging space in commuter parking garages for many decades hence I’m sure.
I mean, it sounds like your real reservation about trucks is not that they emit carbon, but that they are hogging up space and inconveniencing you, which is not a very persuasive argument.
I didn't mention rural truck drivers and made no comment that could reasonably be interpreted as such. If you have to deal with corrugated dirt roads and hauling materials etc on a daily basis then it's perfectly understandable you won't exactly be driving a hatchback.
> I mean, it sounds like your real reservation about trucks is not that they emit carbon, but that they are hogging up space and inconveniencing you, which is not a very persuasive argument.
Or, numerous city and urban commuting giant truck drivers is an effective image of the ridiculous excess they represent in the vast majority of their uses whereas carbon is a less visible but extremely negative externality from that excess.
/s But yes, those that point out this are the real problem.
A sedan with the rear seats folded down will likely hold as much as you can get in a Costco run.
Or two bikes you throw in there.
I know because mine does both of these things.
I'm pretty sure the vast majority of current truck owners 1) don't own boats 2) rarely, if ever, haul furniture 3) use the space in the rear on a regular basis.
Against this we have the known statistics of pedestrian and cyclist fatalities due to the obstructions to visibility provided by the very high front grille and very high ride height (plus wide A-pillars, etc.)
So it's therefore not only a waste of gas but a public health hazard, and making that claim is not "elitist", it's merely "rational" and "empirical" (and allow me to add, "humane")
https://smartgrowthamerica.org/bigger-vehicles-are-directly-...
"Recent research from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee found the share of pedestrian deaths involving trucks, vans, and SUVs has increased from 22 to 44 percent since the mid-1980s. More SUVs and trucks in the fleet = more pedestrian injuries becoming deaths instead."
https://www.outsideonline.com/2411345/suvs-trucks-deadly-cyc...
Most sedans have a max payload < 1000lbs including all passengers.
An F-150 has a payload over 3000lbs and can tow up to 14,000lbs.
Do you need that for your groceries? No, but if you don't live in the heart of the city the F-150 enables you do many many things that a sedan can't do around yard work, home ownership, agriculture, hauling gear, etc..
A sedan is about the worst car design anyway.. you'd have more of a leg to stand on if you had argued for a hatch or a minivan.
I've never owned a truck, but they have their uses.
it's also hard to find anything smaller than a truck with 4WD. if you live outside the city/suburbs, this can be a pretty important feature by itself.
I'd argue there is a societal disadvantage regarding the emissions these trucks kick out.
The F150 has fuel economy close to that of wagons sold in the US. The F150 is less efficient, but it has way more than half the fuel economy of a wagon. Examples:
A base E-Class Wagon gets 24 mpg (22 city, 28 highway). A 4WD V6 F150 (which I think is the most popular) gets 21 mpg (19 city, 24 highway). The most efficient F150 available (the 2WD Hybrid) gets 25 mpg (25 city, 26 highway).
Wagons aren't super popular in the US so there aren't that many on the market. Here is a comparison of the fuel economies of the F150 vs several wagons available in the US: https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/Find.do?action=sbs&id=43464&...
Of course the E450 is going to get atrocious mileage, it’s a V6 turbocharged luxury car
It’s crazy that the choice is so limited in the US. I can understand why the Prius was so popular with you guys, despite handling like a whale on wheels.. there are nearly no options in the big hatchback segment .
The cost premium of hiring someone for home improvement jobs vs. DIY seems to have gone up. And the difficulty of finding someone qualified, reputable and with available capacity seems to have become exponentially higher.
"So I guess I need a truck" is what I've recently been thinking.
Vans are nice and in the used market often cheaper. I used to rent/borrow a friends full size van before having a truck. Still, the roof creates limitations. Can't transport a fridge or water heater upright, for example.
And for towing as mentioned, a van is limited to a bumper pull trailer whereas a pickup can pull a fifth wheel or gooseneck.
There is another group that doesn't need any of things but is convinced that they might some day. They are aspirational requirements. Why are those people convinced they need these things? The same reason anyone is convinced they need anything in the modern world. Advertising. Truck ads tell you that the Ford F150 is a tough truck for men who are tough (or want to be) and don't take nothin' from nobody (once they get out of this crappy job) and are masters of nature (or surely would be if they didn't live in the suburbs).
They buy product placement in all the badass movies, their commercials look like b-roll from a transformers movie, and the trucks themselves get more comfortable and less utilitarian every year.
Ford is not in the business of selling (light) trucks - they are in the business of selling an aspirational lifestyle to a population that thinks they might one day become an action hero. The F150 is, and has been for a long time, a consumer toy and not a serious work vehicle.
Could you ever see yourself buying a panel van? Why or why not?
However for my truck in particular I got a somewhat luxury trim with 50k miles for only $20k, so it was a good mix of things I would want in a vehicle generally as well as the utility. Panel vans aren’t really offered in that configuration, and I probably wouldn’t get one now because I plan on just keeping this truck as a secondary vehicle long after it’s paid off and I eventually get a smaller daily driver.
All that being said the one thing that could make me change my mind is an electric van with extensive usage of solar panels. That has a rather unique value proposition so if it existed in the future I’d be interested in it at least.
There are a good number of legitimate uses and legitimate users for these vehicles (I know a lot of legitimate users), but the vast majority of the giant vehicles on the road have only 1 visible occupant and no visible cargo.
And although I am doubtless projecting, I can't help but envision a fresh hot latte in their cupholder, which the driver is on their way back from procuring.
I can't speak to the more general, aspirational subculture to which you refer, but the aggravation of multiple vehicles is in some ways the first stop on this tour.
Americans want it because everyone else has one. Down here in TX, the number of pristine trucks that have never seen a speck of dirt, never had anything in the bed, and that are parked on their 1/8 acre lots in the city is staggering.
The reason an entire car hide in front of the bumper, out of the driver's view is that it makes the truck look cooler. The window sills are also at a silly height, to make the truck feel bigger, but at least that doesn't create the same safety issues (for everyone outside the truck) with no real value.
But this truck will be very heavy, very tall, and very fast. Drivers are already the leading killers of children, and more and more people are being killed while walking and cycling.
I'm very worried about the effect of making this vehicle even faster and heavier. Hopefully reduced deaths from pollution offset this.