I don't think it's as much a culture difference as you think, more like the environment where we use the cars.

I'm from Europe, living in bigger European city, and I have a small car (3-door RAV4). I bought it so I can drive and park easily in the city and go up hills and mountains when I leave the city once a month.

And if I'm honest, that is the best car I could afford. I see lots of rich people with bigger and bigger SUVs cruising in the city in Germany: G wagons, BMWs, Audis, Volkswagen Touaregs, Porsche Cayennes everywhere.

I went on a road trip in the US, rented an SUV that would be huge and impractical here, but there, it actually felt small. The roads were wide, traffic wasn't bad, parking was easy. I loved it.

If I lived in the countryside in Europe where I need to transport stuff for my ranch/farm (and if I could afford it), I'd definitely consider buying a pickup truck.

The same goes for properties. The reason why I lived in a 30sqm apartment with my wife was that is all I could afford while living in the city, close to good job opportunities. I would have been obviously happier if I could have a 300sqm house.

> I would have been obviously happier if I could have a 300sqm house.

This is not necessarily true, though something people often believe.

Okay, let's remove the "obviously" from my quote. Everybody is different.

In my case, I don't see why I would be sad over having a bit more place. It would be nice to have a place for an office, a small home gym, bigger kitchen, dining room, terrace with a BBQ, etc.

I'm not saying it would solve every problem in my life, but it would make a couple of things less inconvenient.

I really doubt anyone needs 300 sqm (~3000 sqft). I've never seen places like that where the majority of the space wasn't simply collecting dust.

> small car

> RAV4

Viewpoint from Japan: is it small?. I feel same thing for BMW Mini because it's bigger width than average on the road.

It's a three door version, 3860 mm long. It's about as much as the shortest Mini model. It's amongst the shortest cars around here, Renault Twingo, and "smart" cars are shorter, but nothing else comes to my mind that would be significantly shorter than the RAV4.

Ah three door version is very short than I expected.

Yes, or mid-size. Japan is to Europe what Europe is to America in terms of car sizes.

E.g. vans within the Kei (keijidōsha) classification pretty much don't exist in Europe, but are common in Japan.

Didn't the oversized phone craze originate in Asia?

American here with a Smart Fortwo, but I may be an outlier. Dead simple to park in the city though, and I hear lots of people complaining about parking, so… I don’t know why everyone buys those enormous cars here. :)

China loves the Pro Max - it outsold the Pro there [1], and my understanding (based largely on hearsay, so take it with a grain of salt) is that they generally love large phones over there.

1: https://www.thenationalnews.com/business/technology/2022/01/...

But admittedly here in Germany SUVs are also on the rise, even though we have that "environmentally conscious" reputation.

I don't think I've ever heard anyone talk of Germans as environmentally conscious. Car culture is usually one of the first things that comes up when someone talks about Germany.

I have lived in Germany for five years and this is absolutely true. Even many students have cars, which was completely surreal/absurd to me, since I didn't have any fellow students in The Netherlands with a car (only bikes). I'd cycle to work every day (22 km for the round trip), I'd regularly get comments from Germans that I was crazy to cycle that distance through all weather.

Watching German politics more closely during those years, I have seen that choices between: is better for car owners, is better for something else, gets decided in favor of is better for car owners 90% of the times. Heck, even some members of the Green Party are very cozy with the car industry (e.g. Kretschmann).

> I'd cycle to work every day (22 km for the round trip), I'd regularly get comments from Germans that I was crazy to cycle that distance through all weather.

The Germans probably don't know that with 2cm of snow, all the other means of transport, including the Amsterdam metro, stop working. So bicycle it is. I loved my 25km (round trip) bike commute when I lived there, it was such a great way to clear my head before/after work.

I wish we still got any snow to speak of...

> I'd regularly get comments from Germans that I was crazy to cycle that distance through all weather.

It is a bit unusual outside of the Netherlands and Denmark.

I tried to cycle to work 8km or so and it was fine until I had to cross a slope. And since this slope was etched by the nearby river, it went through the whole city, so there wasn't any way around it.

Took all the fun out of it honestly, especially during heatwaves.

Sure car culture is big, but does that mean people like big cars?

Also curious where you're from that you never heard of this.

I think your comment is a good example of the disconnect in how you and I seem to mean different things when we say environmentally conscious. In my opinion, driving a car every day isn't environmentally conscious, regardless the size of the car. These days, the difference between two modern cars is not that big, they're both still big polluters. You don't need to drive a 5-person car to work alone every day, nor to the store, nor to the gym, but it is what very many people in Germany do. Whether that car is big or small does not make that big of a difference when you compare it to the alternative of taking the public transport, cycling or walking. I understand the alternatives are not as comfortable, but that is a matter of choice — it is a choice to build cities in a way that favors cars over pedestrians and cyclists.

A simple example of what I mean is traffic lights. I've lived in many European countries, including Germany, and travelled a very fair bit in the rest. In Germany, traffic lights are green for cars for a long time and green for pedestrians a very short time (feel free to measure this at any traffic light in your city). In countries where infrastructure is planned around humans, it's the other way around.

Cycling is another example of this. Germany doesn't have "bad weather for cycling". People cycle to work in winter in Helsinki and don't bat an eye. The difference is infrastructure. Helsinki has not only built the roads, lights and the rest around it, but they also ensure it's in good condition. When it snows, bike paths often get cleaned before car roads. It's a matter of choice. I bring up Helsinki because it's easier to compare. Netherlands and the like are so far ahead everyone else in humane cities that the comparisons are hard to make. Helsinki is a good example because their developments are recent and go to show that you can choose to live a different way.

Well, I was talking about reputation explicitly. Buying a small car instead of a big one is generally perceived as environmentally conscious by most. Most international colleagues I deal with, and got my anecdotes from, are from France, Switzerland, Norway and the US. They are frequently amazed by all those little things we do that they consider proof of that. Whether we actually are environmentally friendly in a measurable way is an entirely different topic. :-)

I have lived in Southern Germany for ~5 years and lived in The Netherlands before and after. Germans most definitely (at least in the south) have bigger cars on average.

Admittedly also on the rise in Australia, but they're nowhere near the size of pickup trucks that occupy American highways.

And those SUVs still are relatively small compared to US-style pick-ups.

Yall are the home of VW right?

> Europeans and Australians

Australians will jump at the largest, cheapest Soniq TV JB Hi-Fi sells. Likewise (with 'local' brands) in the UK.

Weird, all the europeans who visit me in the US talk so much about how great it is to have this much space.

It's nice to have that space for your house, but on the other hand your kids can't go to school by themselves, and neither can you jump on your bike for some shopping and be back in ten minutes.

Bigger houses and more (sometimes mandatory) parking also means everything is further apart and making cars more needed even when going between stores.

While the americans visiting me in Europe complain about the cramped streets. One of these is polite.

It's probably easier to notice the upsides of "loads of space" without living there, while the downsides are more obvious when you live there.

That's weird, I'd expect them to celebrate the walkability (never been there but I've heard it is a major advantage to your towns and cities).

As a sibling comment noted, you have to live there - in this case to get to know walkability, especially if it was a foreign concept to you...

Right, it's not that we don't want bigger houses, apartments or cars, we just can't justify it in terms of cost.

I'd love to get my wife a bigger car, so she wouldn't be scared of driving in the snow, but just buying it would be three times the price (or more) compared to the small car she's currently driving.

Plenty of room down south, we'd be happy to have you both.

Plenty of room, but no women's rights to speak of and a lot of other unlivable factors involved.

You sound prejudiced

Where's the visa? :)