But in practice that sort of situation only applies during road trips. Most people's actual highway driving is driving in traffic, which is a lot less efficient.
Is that statistical, or anecdotal? It's counter to my personal driving patterns. Even in moderate congestion my Hyundai gets mileage closer to its "highway" MPG than "city" (when using cruise/distance control).
When I had cars I used them mostly to get out on weekends or for longer trips on vocations. May be I’m an outlier but during the pandemic time work from home is common and this allows to avoid driving in traffic.
The highway cycle is actually not all high speed driving.
Wow, that's not good... A large Sedan from early 2000s driven well can easily beat that..
I regularly hear about small cars doing 70 mpg == 30km/L
My Toyota Yaris is not fuel efficient at 130 km/h on the highway, but it still manages 40mpg = 17 km/L
Of course, it's not SUV.. I basically decided against buy a big car until EVs are ready -- they are now, but that doesn't mean I should throw out my existing car :)
First off, if you're not in the US, make sure that you are converting from a US gallon, and not imperial gallon.
35 MPG (US gallons) = 6.72 Liters per 100 km
Any case, my car does roughly 17 megameters / meter^3 -- that's proper SI units :)
US cars are a bit bigger than european or asian models, so they are probably a bit heavier. Still, I think fuel efficiency is pretty optimized in all modern cars regardless of where you live.
But maybe that's only downhill -- I'm certainly not reaching it :)
But other mini cars like: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_Lupo
Or so I hear...
My Toyota Yaris gets over 50mpg on motorways, so about 50% better.
All those sedans would be way more fuel efficient if they were motorcycles too, but I don't think you'd agree that they're comparable.
Honestly any time I have a larger item either being hauled to my place or away from it, it's someone else's vehicle, e.g. delivery of a new appliance or pricing it to move quickly on craigslist so someone comes and takes it away.
It's true for everyone I know who has children and owns a house in the burbs. The cost of taking delivery from everything from TVs, lawn mowers, dirt, mulch, Costco trips, adds up and SUVs aren't really more expensive than sedans.
Like I get you, I live a very privileged urban apartment dweller life and can afford to just pay for people to move things for me the few times I need it but renting tools and labor is expensive for a family.
People who specialise in it? Like moving vans or toe trucks?
> but renting tools and labor is expensive for a family.
Compared to the extra cost of the vehicle and gas? I mean how often do you buy new furniture? People ask how I manage without a car: simple I bus or take a cab. "cabs are expensive" per trip sure... but per year? Nothing compared to the cost of car ownership. If big cars aren't false economy yet, then they will be once we start paying for our carbon. Most of us could get around 90% of the time in a coupe.
2020 Honda Accord: $28k total cost of ownership [1] 30/37 mpg 282 g/m emissions rating [3]
2020 Honda CR-V: $28k total cost of ownership [2] 28/34 mpg 294 g/m emissions rating [3]
[2] https://www.edmunds.com/honda/cr-v/2020/cost-to-own/?style=4...
[3] https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/Find.do?action=sbs&id=42071&...
According to [3] the yearly fuel cost difference is $50. For reference on the emissions numbers a 2010 H3 Hummer is 555g/m.
We don't need all this crap, and we don't need SUVs to carry it around.