Car manufacturers are happy to build the majority of their consumer-facing vehicles as "light trucks" so they can ignore environmental standards, and those of us that want smaller, lighter, and more fuel efficient vehicle need to compromise on safety.
SUVs need to be heavily penalized, and need to have far stricter licensing requirements. This will bring down emissions much more than some blanket move to EVs, and be beneficial for safety as well.
On the surface, weight penalties seem to be an effective way to accomplish this; I am curious if there are any examples or case studies about this that you can cite, 'bryanmgreen.
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[1] https://jalopnik.com/every-car-looks-like-this-thanks-to-a-g...
I do think the popularity of the truck has sparked something in the auto industry. I believe Toyota is working on a competitor, but we likely won’t see that for another year out two.
[1] https://are.berkeley.edu/~mlanderson/pdf/anderson_auffhammer...
The International Energy Agency has done some good research specific to the subject of SUV emissions.
[2] https://www.iea.org/commentaries/global-suv-sales-set-anothe...
[3] https://www.iea.org/commentaries/as-their-sales-continue-to-...
And specific to weight, it's topic that is not ignored by federal or state regulating bodies. Heck, even 10 years ago the EPA stated if reduce the weight of your vehicle by 100lbs you can achieve 1-2% fuel improvements. And weight removal is the opposite of diminishing returns, so every pound reduction yields better results.
[4] https://afdc.energy.gov/files/u/publication/10_G00888_saving...
[1] Which are heavy, because they can't source 2/3 of their reaction mass from the atmosphere and have to keep all the reactants in the battery at all time.
Is it not? Particular matter from tires is a major factor in air pollution and the heavier the vehicle the more that ramps up.
It's something the tire industry has been fretting over for a while: https://www.tiretechnologyinternational.com/news/regulations...
-Nissan leaf - 3500 to 3900 lbs
-Tesla model 3 long range - 4250 lbs (131mpge)
-F150 lightning - 6000 to 6900 lbs
At best, vehicle mass is a proxy measurement for those things. But the thing is, you use a proxy measurement when the things you're trying to measure are hard to measure. That stuff is easy!
Fundamentally my point is libertarian: If we want to regulate safety, we should regulate safety and not play dumb games with weight rules that then need to be tuned for EVs or whatnot. Fine-tuned rulemaking doesn't work.
Hopefully battery tech can improve at a steady pace that there are in the near-ish future notable reductions in weight.
Please don't. we don't need more idiots telling us how to live our lives and micro managing us on how you feel we should live.
If
a) vehicles cause pollution.
b) pollution is bad.
c) bigger vehicles cause more pollution than smaller vehicles.
than naturally it would follow that
d) if a vehicle is oversized for the owners use cases that is bad.
How can we avoid d? Taxes seem to work as deterrent, just look how angry everyone gets when you add a new one.
Literally this very form of tax is one of the main reasons why in countries where the avg. person is wealthier than the avg. american (norway is a good example) drive significantly smaller (and less polluting) cars.
There are lots of small cars you can buy. People don't buy them. They want bigger cars.
I would rather make that decision myself, rather than some government bureaucrat deciding he is going to overrule my own preference.
It is not "government telling you what to do", it is you paying for your sh*t.
Who decides the owner can't drive the vehicle? Why not leave that decision to the driver?
or
Who decides vehicles must have lights? Shouldn't we leave that decision to the owner?
As equally valid?
As for seriously, have you ever seen a bike accident?
One such woman walking down Locust Walk (University of PA) suffered severe brain damage and no longer can move all of her limbs. I can't tell you how many times I was nearly clipped by bikes speeding past me (at car speeds) and missed me by a few inches. Luckily the campus police started to prevent bicyclists from using Locust Walk.
but its a stupid argument anyways. we aren't comparing cars to bikes in this conversation. Many people can't use bikes. I'm sure in your bigoted mind (everyone should do as I see fit) that you didn't consider disabled persons, elderly, or even people with say - broken legs, but needless to say bikes are not for everyone. Thats not even taking into account bikes cant satisfy the vast majority of traveling needs of Americans. We aren't Europe. Our cities are bigger and things are further apart. Nor is bikes the one size fits all solution in the EU.
If you observe the rush hour traffic for an hour, how many of those people have broken legs, severe disabilities or a debilitating case of elderly? The majority of people are not disabled, and the fact some people might need cars is no excuse for everyone driving a massive SUV
And yet I'll bet the average number of morning commuters in each vehicle is ~1.
- I know that most people I'm aware of all drive their car by themselves to their work, there was very little carpooling.
how many of those are suvs? and then we go bk to use case. there is a reason soccer moms exist. u focus on work commute and likely on metro areas only but fail to account for other activity types
[1] https://css.umich.edu/publications/factsheets/mobility/perso... [2] https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/indicators/occupancy...
[1] https://www.energy.gov/eere/vehicles/articles/fotw-1040-july...
And yes, I've seen accidents with bikes hitting pedestrians. Most of the time the people ended up fine with minor bruises and sometimes small cuts.
I've seen pedestrians hit by SUVs. Its been rare to see people walk away from that.
I've lost several friends and family members to car accidents.
Once again, if I'm going to be in an accident I'd probably take an accident between two bicycles at 12mph than two SUVs at 40mph.
These facts don't disprove the idea that one would 'rather' get hit by a bike vs a vehicle, but the fact that you keep saying that nonsense doesn't help your argument.
> I've lost several friends and family members to car accidents.
I'm not surprised, 76% of Americans require a car to get to work. that's a lot of car trips.
If you don't like cars, don't drive one. I don't. But stop pushing your views onto others.
I drive cars a lot. The way things are around me, I pretty much need to. I don't personally really dislike cars, I actually really like cars and enjoy driving them and riding my motorcycles. I just can't understand people arguing like bicycle accidents are practically as bad as car accidents or that having people trade their cars for bikes will make people overall less safe.
Your number of SUVs only being 8% of the market is way wrong. Try 80% in the US. It's been around 50% or so for years. The vast majority of cars around me are trucks and SUVs. The one that killed a cyclist near my kid's daycare recently was going over 50mph on a 40mph road. I'd like to see some actual statistics about "most pedestrians are hit by cars going under 40mph" statistic. It would surprise me either way.
EDIT: Some data about speeds here, and yeah under 40mph to pedestrians is definitely the majority.
https://one.nhtsa.gov/people/injury/research/pub/hs809012.ht...
https://jalopnik.com/trucks-and-suvs-are-now-over-80-percent...
If fewer people drove cars, our roads will be safer and we would have less traffic fatalities. Do you disagree?
Need and want are not the same thing. We for example need to breathe clean air. You seem to want to drive a big vehicle. If you need to drive a big vehicle then ok, just pay to offset for the added pollution.
As commenters have pointed out, the big problem here is that your car can kill other people. If you want to make decisions without being bound by regulation, choose a different avenue that doesn't harm other people.
Cities and heavily urban states could fix their pedestrian safety problems easily by creating massive local registration taxes on large vehicles, without a federal tax penalizing rural areas. The distance I travel to get groceries would be a net waste (financial, environmental, etc) if I had to make multiple trips rather than packing two weeks of food in one trip.
More broadly, I really wish activists / reformers (of any stripe) would recognize the limits of their own knowledge and experience and realize that the world has more diversity than dreamed of in their philosophy.
The fact of the matter is that current CO2 emissions are unsustainable, and we have no choice but to address the issue. That might mean that some may need to go to the grocery store more than bimonthly.
Part of my point was that, for me, going to the store more frequently, even in a smaller vehicle, would be a net environmental negative. Is there evidence (e.g., detailed simulations) that a blunt policy would have a better outcome (using your own definition!) than a narrowly craft one?
I am pretty confident that narrow policies also have the long-term positive effect of reducing tribalism, because the average person ends up dealing with far fewer negative externalities of poorly crafted policy by "the other side".
Or how about letting each side decide what they want to do for themselves, but not to the other?
Cities can pay for themselves. Rural areas can pay for themselves.
See how Switzerland does it.
Why? The majority of the US population (~80%) lives in urban areas [1].
Turning your suggestion on its head, rural areas and states could fix their supposedly over-penalized residents by providing them with money or other incentives to compensate.
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[1] https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2022/urban-ru...
Of course it all comes down to consumer demand and regulations. I suspect Regulations have gone a long way towards making cars heavier and bigger and less efficient.
Would you care to lay some of them out? I can see this being a problem with EVs, but I'm interested as to what you're thinking.
I believe that cars in general had less weight 40 years ago. But it came at a cost of much worse crash safety in form of deformation zones and general sturdyness.
But I am sure the GP is also aware of these issues and can comment.
The efficiency game as EVs scale up will always try to get the highest range out of the fewest batteries/battery cells, so cars don't necessarily "only get heavier" because weight impacts efficiency (as does drag coefficients and overall surface area). Lower weight cars get more battery range from the same size battery.
Also, while battery cells sometimes get heavier as the charge capacity gets denser, it is not a straightforward relationship. (Look at phone batteries over the last couple of decades: they store more charge than ever but are also effectively "lighter" in weight than ever.)
That "goal post" itself may shift, or at least open up to be more of a spectrum of consumer choice. As more Americans get more home charging infrastructure they may grow much more comfortable with smaller range batteries. The early Nissan Leafs have already shown that some home owners can successfully live on 100 miles per full charge or less batteries (even some road trips with current charging infrastructure). It may make sense for car manufacturers to compete on EV form factors that intentionally include smaller batteries and overall are much lighter-weight cars, if for no other reason than it is a way to drive costs down towards extremely cheap low end models.
That's not entirely imaginary speculation either, because Asian markets with faster EV adoption curves than the US average already have some really interesting competition on light-weight, low-range, extremely cheap "urban" EVs. There's probably plenty of market potential in the US for sub-$10k low weight, low range EVs as at least secondary cars in households, and in some cases (some cities) would even already meet many primary car needs. It's just probably going to take a lot more infrastructure, marketing, and consumer convincing in the US market past current "range anxiety" over-concern before we see such cars common in the US, though.
A related--albeit more "out-there"--idea is to impose momentum limits in addition to speed limits based on vehicle weight classes. We have a crude version of this on highways, where speed limits for trucks are often lower than the limits for cars (e.g., 70mph for cars, 65mph for trucks).
But I really like the idea of setting different speed limits for different weight classes of vehicles. Driving a Toyota Corolla? Let's call it a Class A vehicle (2,000-2,999 lbs), with a highway speed limit of 70mph. Driving a Jeep Grand Cherokee? That would be Class C (4,000-4,999 lbs), with a speed limit of 50mph.
This would make roads a lot safer, and add an additional, non-monetary, tax on heavier vehicles.
Another big benefit of imposing weight limits on consumer vehicles is that the United States would have a fighting chance of becoming energy independent, even before accounting for the shift to renewables. So we can add improved national security to the list of reasons to pursue this common-sense policy.
[1] https://vehicledynamics.com/suvs-why-you-may-drive-fast/
This seems more dangerous, not less. Change a lane and all of a sudden you need to slam on your brakes because you didn't realize how much slower the other vehicle was going. Hopefully the person behind you can react quick enough. I see near accidents from this sort of thing fairly often with less of a speed difference.
Cars are simply massively overbuilt for their average use case. Reducing weight of vehicles is a very achievable goal that will cut emissions dramatically while also having additional benefits like global supply chain material and emission reduction, pedestrian safety, and road maintenance.
If you are involved in automotive, environmental, political spaces - or know someone who is - please reach out, email in bio.