I saw someone in a Dodge Ram yesterday when I was out of a bike ride. Frigging huge it was. This is in rural England where the roads are really not designed for these sorts of vehicles. I’d imagine that it wouldn’t actually fit down some of the narrow country roads because it was so big.
Dickheads. Looking forward to meeting one around here on my tractor and making it reverse uphill into a T junction.
fuck cars
#murica
Not just Murcia, I’m starting to see these mothafuckas here in Germany too 😑
Those are trucks, not cars.
Making absolutely positively sure, that if you run a guy over, they can’t sue you, because they’re dead.
Now, TBH the truck in the back can carry a much heavier and/or physically larger load. Even though the beds are the same length, it’s bed is slightly deeper and likely a good foot or two wider. But how many truck owners transport such loads on the regular? In fact, how many truck owners have anything other than Pavement Princesses?
The truck in the front is more than enough truck for most “truck owners”, they just choose the back option for it’s utility as a penis extender.
You’re correct. I managed two raised garden beds with two trips to Lowes in a fucking civic. I moved apartments with one of those tiny pickups.
I have an S10 with an extended cab approximately in the class of the little Tacoma above. perfectly capable truck. fits in a parking space, easily carries a sofa, there’s room in the cab behind the seats for baggage so it comfortably carries two people plus gear, I’ve yet to find a mission my pickup couldn’t do that didn’t require a box truck.
Usually if you’re hauling anything significant the bed isn’t even used. You use a trailer.
The beds are usually smaller than the cabs. It’s kinda silly
Eh… I’ve owned multiple trucks and used them to carry a shit load of stuff including 16’ lumber, I only got a trailer when I switched to a car.
You really shouldnt haul stuff that long, even if you have a 8 foot bed.
Giant land yacht with the LED permanent highbeams tilted up to blind oncoming traffic.
I know that truck
I ain’t no stranger
I know that truck
It’s a Ford fuckin Ranger
Sir this is a picture of a toyota tacoma and a ford f250
What a comparison. Pavement princess evolution.
I have a similar comparison between my 2000 bmw z3 and 56 Chevy bel air with a 74 Chevelle engine and I have tested my z3 mpg and got 29mpg and knowing my z3 tank and bel air tank are the same size and every week of daily driving my z3 has about a quarter of a tank left and my bel air typically has half a quarter left so I guesstimate my bel air gets about 20 or 25 mpg but because I work at a dealership I get to see the mpg of every brand new car that comes in and I’ve seen 4runners tundras and Silverados that roll onto the lot rated at as low as 15mpg how the fuck is my car from the 50s more eco friendly than a considerable number of new cars on the road today if my car had a overdrive I could probably understand but I have a 3 speed automatic that it came out the factory with I should be needing to have at least a modern engine and transmission to make my bel air comparable but no just having a early 70s motor is enough to get better mileage then new 2024 trucks
The bel air probably doesn’t have any emissions stuff. That’s why it gets better gas milage than you expect, whereas the newer stuff absolutely does. Plus trucks are geared for torque, unlike a car, which reduces mpg. A more apt comparison would be to older ('50-'70s) trucks, where you were probably talking more around 9-10mpg without emissions.
I used to own a 2012 Jeep Patriot. I swapped the air filter, fuel filter, spark plugs, plug wires, and coil pack. Chrysler sent technicians to me to verify that, yes, as long as I kept the tach between 1000 and 2000, I was getting 35/50 mpg.
I figured this out because I was a delivery driver at the time, and managed to go from Lexington, KY to a town in northern South Carolina that I cannot remember the name of, on one tank of fuel.
Also remember that those trucks are both heavier and less aerodynamic than your Bel-Air. A well-equipped Tundra or Silverado is pretty close to the weight of your Bel-Air and Z3, combined.
I guarantee that your 70s motor isn’t really all that eco-friendly. Once all the emissions stuff is warmed up, those trucks are honestly pretty “clean” in regards to tail pipe emissions compared to even a car 20 years ago. Remember that CO2 and water aren’t the only things emitted, and while they’re worse on the CO2 front, anything without a catalytic converter is going to emit some pretty nasty stuff in addition to all all the CO2.
Here, you dropped these:
. , . : ; , .
I would not say that we can completely get rid of cars, or that all cars are evil, but such absurdly big, extremely inefficient trucks with negligible visibility just should be taxed to shit.
Not even taxed. Outright banned. What happened to governments regulating and revising car safety standards? They can even collect all these back and offer change into more environment and traffic friendly ones, like they were doing 10 years ago.
What happened? Regulatory capture happened.
Capitalism progressing to its natural end stage.
At the very least you should need a special license to operate them. They’re classed differently to avoid safety and emissions regulations imposed on regular cars, so its perfectly reasonable that there should be different requirements to purchase them and get behind the wheel.
That’s brilliant.
I cannot believe my license lets me drive all sorts of vehicle sizes that can outright crush/kill, right off the bat.
But to operate a forklift or ride a motorcycle that is more likely to kill myself? Nah gotta have a license.
Not to mention the massive loads they can haul which basically turn them into semi trucks, vehicles which you would in fact need a special license to operate, with worse visibility to boot. Way too many people out there hauling ridiculously large campers and sometimes even towing an extra vehicle at the end of their train with zero special training to do so.
Gods I’d love A small truck like that if they made them, I know this is fuck cars and I agree with the sentiment, but I’d much rather these be everywhere than the monstrosities on the road today
I had one, a proton Jumbuck, great little machine. I’m not sure they are still made but you see them second hand occasionally.
Canoo is supposedly going to make a pickup based on their electric van platform that looks really interesting:
The expanding bed is an absolutely killer feature IMO. Small footprint the vast majority of the time but expands out large enough to fit a 4x8 sheet of plywood when you need that. All the fold-out workbenches are a really cool touch too.
The whole thing feels like the Kei trucks people in other comments are mentioning but upsized and up-powered to be more feasible on US roads.
Ford Maverick
I was very interested in the Ford Maverick up until the 2024 model year when the hybrid engine stopped being standard and instead a $2500 upgrade on top of an already significant price hike. That, and the complete inability to find one to buy anyway were what made me give up on the maverick entirely.
A move in the right direction for sure.
So rare, all the 2024 are sold since months in Canada, I don’t even know if you can buy a 2025 as maybe they are all already reserved.
“We know you want one because it fits your needs and your pricepoint, but we don’t make enough margin on those, so buy an F150 for more money please.”
Maybe Telo Trucks might be worth keeping an eye on?
Doesnt even list payload or towing capacity. What a joke.
Even from the renders I can tell you that it’s probably not going to work out, all other things being equal. Sharing the “format” of like, a cabover, similar to a kei truck, means that it would more readily be suited for smaller scenarios in which maybe turn radius and immediate over the hood visibility is more important, right, but then, its size kind of defeats that, and I suspect that the slant of the window, in order to make it aerodynamic at highway speeds, and efficient, is going to end up putting the driver back so far that it’s going to eliminate your ability to actually see over the hood as much as you might want to. Probably the format also has adverse effects on crash safety, as you really want a hood on your car in order to catch a pedestrian, scooping them up by the legs, and also as a crumple zone to dispel some of the force of crash from the front, which is ideally where most of your crashes are coming from.
I think probably also that the conventional american automotive taste might defeat it, as americans kind of, historically, prefer a larger shittier hood on their vehicle. They prefer the sort of idiot dominance that a big hood gives them. Carolina squat style. I could be wrong on all that, though.
I think my biggest concern would probably be that, even though light trucks are the segment of the market which are very obviously viable for EVs right now, the people who buy trucks won’t want to buy them, and the people who want EVs won’t want to buy them. Implicit in both of those is those who can afford them, which I think automatically maybe selects for people who have the worst taste of all time. Light trucks make sense for EVs, right, you have a rear suspension which is supposed to be beefier for large loads already, conventionally in consumer trucks you’re not going to want a longer travel distance because they’re not supposed to be these highly efficient vehicles, and going electric gives you a pretty good and easy tow rating and high levels of torque low in the power curve like you might get with a diesel engine.
But I dunno. Basically I think americans might be too stupid for it. Might see more success in japan, but I have no idea what their EV infrastructure is looking like or if they already have kei trucks or larger cabovers which are electric. Fleet vehicles would probably need something like a swappable battery on the cheap, or a fast charging system that doesn’t destroy the battery immediately, but the first one probably requires more infrastructure and the second one seems maybe like it would be a limitation of the technology.
May I introduce you to the Kei-Truck?
Aren’t those illigal to drive in most of the US? Besides that, they also cap at like 60mph, right? That really limits thier usefulness in a lot of the US, these are mostly good for cities, right?
Don’t get me wrong I love kei trucks, but I think having small regular pickups would help a ton too.
Only on high ways. They have all the required features (lights, seatbelts, indicators) to be legal on roads, only two states have official bans on their use for roads with speed limits faster than 55mph. But I don’t think any sane person is buying these things for long distance commutes, those that would would just buy a smart car instead.
They’re illegal for road use in a lot of states, yes, but not private use. So in most states, if you need something for around your property, you’re still allowed to buy one. Some states will let you register them for road use though.
The bigger issues are 1. To be imported, they have to be at least 25 years old, so the current ones are from the late 90s. Thus, they have the tech to go with it, limiting their speed.
And 2. They’re built and designed for Japanese roads and regulations, not American ones. Speed limits are different there, and as you said, they’re better for city use, I’d say non-highway use.
They’re legal in my state, and I want one when I can afford one, but I’m also less than a mile from a major home improvement store, and the other two stores I would need to visit are within 20 minutes driving by backroads. But I’m a fringe case, but I’d say for most people who live reasonably close to a Lowes or whatever and are only going to use it for weekend projects would be perfect candidates for a kei truck.
Beyond that, yeah, they’re limited :/
I think they’re awesome but yeah, unfortunately limited in most bigger cities due to how everything is laid out.
Their use case is basically “never need to go on the freeway”. Going over 50 mph is maybe possible, with a tailwind, downhill, but would be terrifying.
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Oh for sure, I’m not trying to defend the status quo, if anything g I’m saying we need kei trucks and stricter regulation making regular pickups smaller and more efficient. No one who doesn’t actually need a massive hauling truck should have one imo
Illegal to drive on the highway
If it’s old enough, you can import and drive them. Some kind of classic car exception.
It varies state-to-state wether you can register them for road use.
We’ve met, and it goes too far in the tiny direction and can’t drive on highways. It’s like suggesting a moped to someone who wants a smaller street bike.
So happy with my 80’s c10. Once I do the engine swap, I’ll be able to run it on biodiesel.
Just went through Japan and Korea and there are a lot of perfectly capable trucks that aren’t giant land-whales
Not 100% definite and it’s likely going to look a bit weird, but real good chance we’re going to have a model based on the transit vans you see rolling around called the ‘ford courier’ in a year or so but regulations make it difficult to release a truck like that nowadays.
I love cars (own several) and most are over 20 years old. Why? They were better. Smaller. Less tech. Better looking. Not controllable by your government/corporation (Elmo TeSSSla). I hate almost every new bloated rolling ad infested garbage i see now.
Those two vehicles are different. The one behind carries more people, can tow greater weight and with the right tyres probably has better capabilities off-road and in poor weather (floods and snow, for example). If the owner only needed it for the boot space then they’d be daft to get the bigger one (and probably wouldn’t, due to fuel efficiency) but how does anyone here know what the owners need them for? Judging by looks is rather passé these days isn’t it?
Most owners don’t need them. Else why is there not a single one of these cars on the roads in the entirety of Europe? Are we so different?
Europe licenses trucks and trailers differently than in the U.S. An American one-ton pickup can tow at a combined weight of up to 26,000lbs in most states on a standard Class D license. The same license you need to operate a Honda Civic. This weight would require a commercial license in Europe, raising the bar for entry.
The lengths of trucks and trailers is also regulated more heavily due to smaller European streets. A vehicle rated to tow a 26,000lb load in Europe would need to be much shorter in length to abide by these regulations. This is why you only see “cab-over” style “lorries” in Europe.
What follows is my opinion on some additional factors:
It’s more affordable for Europeans to hire a professional driver for heavy loads owing to the short distances between destinations. It’s also less likely that your average European owns land or has a need to haul a heavy load to maintain said property.
I don’t think the spotless white f250 parked in what looks like a strip mall parking lot in a warm climate is doing any off roading or driving through snow.
You’ve got a point about towing/load capacity, but the large majority of the time I see those big 4 door pickups driving around, they have one passenger, an empty bed, and no trailer behind them.
boot
So you’re not American right? Over here large pickup trucks are literally the most popular selling vehicles. But only a small portion of these people actually use these things for anything they’d need one for. Half of my apartment parking lot is large pickup trucks. They pollute, they’re less safe, they’re a waste of money, and they crowd parking space.
Even among the minority of people who regularly do things necessitating a pickup, only a small fraction of those need these huge heavy duties.
I’m not mad at the rural guys with these trucks hauling heavy equipment and trailers around out in the country. It’s the urban and suburban people who don’t need them at all is what gets me. If you need a pickup truck once or twice a year you can rent one for a day for ridiculously cheap.