In California, America’s largest state by population, our #1 selling vehicle is the Honda Civic. And driving on our roads, Civics, Corollas, Accords etc… dominate the roads. And even the biggest selling SUV the CRV gets like 30+ to the gallon.

Small cars sell in places where small cars work.

CAFE is killing the smaller vehicle. Vehicles are getting super round and boring for aerodynamics. Wheel base is getting longer. Track is getting wider. There’s no such thing as a small truck. Everything is am SUV (“truck”) or crossover (hatchback / station wagon). CAFE allows for less fuel efficiency for wider track and longer wheelbase and trucks over everything else.

Remember how VW got caught cheating on the mileage tests? Remember how every other major manufacturer was caught too?

The govt has set far too high of a standard for mileage, so car companies are making giant ass cars to meet (cheat) CAFE standards. The manufacturers have done everything they can but still can’t meet the standards.

There was a time back when gas prices got kinda high when I thought Americans would finally shift down to slightly smaller cars, but now it’s practically a cultural thing for half the country to burn as much fuel as possible, so I suspect even if gas prices here hit Europe levels it wouldn’t cause them to budge much.

It does feel really odd, though, going somewhere like a school and just being absolutely surrounded by huge SUVs and pickup trucks that you know damn well like 90% of the drivers aren’t actually utilizing.

Double-sucks because it’s becoming more and more difficult to find a small car. Everything new, even most cars, are huge.

Or just not buy so many ugly ass SUVs/crossovers/minivans/god the list goes on.

I’d be happy enough with a Smart Fortwo style vehicle. I’d be more than happy with good public transportation and non-car dominated urban planning. I’d be over the moon for high speed rail lines covering the country.

from the thumbnail, thought it was the Simpsons car haha

I mean, yeah. Small electric cars, more trains, more public transport.

Here we have higher taxes for cars more than 4m long, so there are lots of small cars. Also, a lot of 3.99m cars.

There still exist cars in 2023. It’s not just SUV’s available on the lot.

People just want them, because of grocery trips or a kid in school sports or whatever.

Whether most of them actually need that SUV space is something up for debate, but it’s gonna be hard to convince the average American (already in love with full SUV’s) to just switch away.

Bold idea here, but maybe if we stopped fucking subsidizing SUV’s, people wouldn’t buy so goddamn many of them. Just a thought.

My previous car is a Yaris.

When I got the Yaris I heard people make snide comments like “Anyone see that big guy get out of that tiny car?” then gas prices went up and they became “Hey, what kind of MPG does that thing get?”

I like hatchbacks. Bigger is fine but nothing huge.

americans will embrace small cars like they embrace gun control

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Heavier vehicles also wear out roads faster, though the difference between a small sedan and a large electric SUV amounts to very little when compared to the effect of a garbage truck rolling by each morning.

Just this week, Automotive News reported that the Mitsubishi Mirage is on the way out, joining the choir invisible alongside cars like the Chevrolet Sonic, Honda Fit, and Toyota Yaris, all of which were once sold in the US.

The Bolt’s biggest problem, from a bean counter’s point of view at least, was a battery that cost a lot more per kWh than one made with General Motors’ new Ultium cells.

News of the Bolt’s cancellation was met with much dismay, and GM recently decided to bring the nameplate back at some unspecified time on a new Ultium-based platform.

But GM CEO Mary Barra has also warned that even with the lower cost of Ultium cells, the company won’t make any profit on sub-$40,000 EVs until late in the decade.

In addition to the ever-escalating safety arms race that entices American car buyers, a misplaced obsession with having as much range as possible also factors in here.

The original article contains 493 words, the summary contains 193 words. Saved 61%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

Cars have gotten bigger externally, but internally it seems storage space is actually going down. My 2014 Nissan Note has a 10% larger storage capacity than a 2023 Renault Espace, even tho the latter is 50cm larger in all three dimensions and is literally called ‘spatious’.

Small, pink cars?

I like it. Reminds me of a movie or something.