
Detroit Has Had It with Cars - avonmach
https://www.chicagobusiness.com/opinion/detroit-has-had-it-cars
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sorenjan
The number of SUVs and pickups sold in the US shows that gasoline is way too
cheap there. Sure, a select few, maybe even a more significant portion, use
pickups for work. But the SUVs are simply a waste, weighing several hundred kg
more than necessary to do the job and less aerodynamic than a normal car. And
I'm pretty sure a lot of the pickup owners use them mainly because of their
image. I rarely see tradesmen in pickups here, stuff like VW Caddy is really
popular though.

Very few people actually need an SUV. They like being in this large heavy
thing because they feel safer and see further, so they buy it instead of a
station wagon. If fuel was more reasonable priced to better reflect the
external cost they would have to decide if the added cost of driving an
unnecessarily thirsty vehicle was worth it.

Meanwhile the last time we had as much CO2 in the atmosphere as we have now
were several million years ago, with sea levels about ten meters higher than
they are now, we have severe droughts, wildfires, melting polar ice, rapidly
diminishing glaciers, melting permafrost, and so on. And the American people
not only elects a president that doesn't even believe the white house
commissioned climate report, they continue to buy large vehicles that burn too
much fuel.

I'm pretty sure we will see more and more conflicts and climate refugees in
our lifetime when people are driven from their land by floods, droughts, or
similar.

[https://www.globalpetrolprices.com/gasoline_prices/](https://www.globalpetrolprices.com/gasoline_prices/)

~~~
whalesalad
Cars aren’t the primary green house gas issue. Animal agriculture and energy
are. Plus, America only accounts for about 15% of greenhouse gas emissions.

So even if all of us hedonistic Americans drove tiny little cars the current
global warming trend would continue.

You make decent arguments but the fact of the matter is it’s a drop in the
bucket.

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scarejunba
15% is huge. 1 in every seven tons of GHG is from a single country? That’s
wild. China is as bad. But neither are ‘only’.

~~~
sorenjan
I actually find it a bit sickening when I hear people like Trump say that they
don't want to stop polluting because China is polluting, and increasingly so.
China have more than four times as many inhabitants, most of them live nowhere
close the same lifestyle as the average or even most of the poorest Americans
(or Europeans, I'm not putting all the blame on the US). A lot of western
manufacturing is outsourced to countries like China, meaning that some of
their pollution is actually ours. We in the west have also had a lot of time
building our economy using fossil fuel, so we have a pretty significant
climate debt. But the argument "others do it too" isn't a valid argument.

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btgeekboy
A lot of modern SUVs aren't like the SUVs of yesteryear. The Honda CR-V,
Toyota RAV4, Ford Escape and the like are basically tall hatchbacks - they're
not built on truck chassis like the GM Suburban or the Ford Expedition used to
be.

If you're not driving aggressively, where you need minimal weight and a low
CG, a modern SUV is generally more versatile than a car, and more stylish than
a minivan, while still offering a ride and gas mileage that's on par with
equivalent cars.

~~~
wkpinecone
At over 1.6 tons a RAV4 is still hundreds of kg heavier than a sedan and has
significantly more wind resistance and higher fuel consumption. It's not as
bad as even bigger SUVs but it's hardly efficient. It's not difficult to find
more efficient sedans with more legroom or equivalent trunk size.

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deepakhj
2019 rav4 hybrid does 41/37/39 mpg. (City/highway/combined)

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adrianN
Now imagine what it would do if it weighed 30% less and had lower wind
resistance.

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kenhwang
Like a Camry hybrid from which the RAV4's platform is based on?
44city/47hwy/46combined.

The Camry only weights 10% less though. 20% reduction in fuel economy for far
more cargo space, AWD, and higher ground clearance seems like a reasonable
tradeoff to me.

~~~
eigenvector
You might have a different opinion if your fuel costs priced in the negative
externalities of that 20% additional fuel consumption. It might not seem like
much at $2.25/gal. What about at $4? I'm paying about $4.25 USD/gal now in
Canada and that's still lower than many European countries. At $5/gal you
might start asking whether you actually need AWD or how many times you've
actually needed higher ground clearance driving on developed-country quality
roads.

~~~
kenhwang
I'd like the higher ground clearance daily just to avoid scraping up my bumper
on the dips on my commute home on the residential streets. Instead I just take
the 30% longer/slower route around.

Even if gas were $6/gal, at the typical American 12k miles/year, that's still
less than $300/year extra to run the CUV over the sedan. That's less than the
cost of a rental for a weekend trip.

~~~
danaris
> just to avoid scraping up my bumper on the dips on my commute home on the
> residential streets

That sounds like you're saying we _also_ need a significant amount more
investment in infrastructure in America.

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keeganjw
Sure, Americans are buying fewer sedans but they're definitely buy way fewer
American sedans. Domestics ones just haven't been as good as imports for a
long long time. Why buy a Chevy Cruze when Toyota Corollas and Honda Civics
exist? Add in Hyundai, Kia, and Volkswagen's offerings and it's no contest.

~~~
PhantomGremlin
The US content of many Toyota and Honda sedans is quite high. They're
"domestics", not "imports".

Toyota and Honda are able to build American sedans. Apparently GM isn't.

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Tiktaalik
Bad news for pedestrians since SUVs are so much more dangerous than cars in a
collision.

[http://www.governing.com/topics/transportation-
infrastructur...](http://www.governing.com/topics/transportation-
infrastructure/gov-SUV-rise-pedestrian-deaths.html)

~~~
Gibbon1
Thing I and two friends noticed about newer cars, the wide low sloped A
pillars create blind spots making it difficult to see pedestrians in
crosswalks.

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kenhwang
Modern crossovers (marketed as SUVs) can pretty much do everything well
enough. It can haul people and cargo just as well as a car/wagon or minivan;
wagons are generally not offered in the US so that's one less option for a
cargo hauler. Poor road quality and consumer preference favors the higher
ground clearance than a minivan. AWD is still a rare option on cars, but
optionally available on every crossover on the market. Gas is cheap and
crossovers are really close to cars in fuel economy. The biggest crossover
drawback of increased rollover risk has pretty much been eliminated by modern
stability systems.

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throwawaythekey
The worst thing about _other people 's_ SUVs is they obstruct your vision. I
suspect there's an arms race going on with more and more people picking up
SUVs to see around other cars.

~~~
kenhwang
My coupe completely fits below the window line of most crossovers. Driving is
terrifying sometimes. I suspect part of the CUV trend is just an arms race to
keep up height wise with the general vehicle population.

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kokokokoko
SUVs have moved into the role of the default family car. We are seeing a
reduction in people without children owning cars. Trucks are preferred in more
rural areas.

Therefore, this appears to be the effect of less new automobile purchases by
people without children who live in urban areas. I wouldn't draw too many
dramatic conclusions outside of that.

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olivermarks
The US (and probably Europe) are arguably ceding their ICE automobile
manufacturing to China, who will manufacture future government controlled EV
transportation. The authorities will decide what vehicle you are allowed to
travel in and where to or not. Related article: Can Germany survive the
‘iPhone moment’ for cars?

[https://www.ft.com/content/61684fa6-d2f6-11e8-a9f2-7574db66b...](https://www.ft.com/content/61684fa6-d2f6-11e8-a9f2-7574db66bcd5)

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PankajGhosh
I think the sentiment here is not acknowledging the full picture of shift in
car ownership in US.

While it is true that more families are opting for SUVs, but that is because
more families are opting to share a car (preferably an SUV from utility
perspective) rather than owning two or more cars/sedans. The increase in
availability of rideshare (Uber/Lyft) is also playing a part in this gradual
shift.

(I can't seem to find the study which stated above, but will keep looking and
update this comment when I find it)

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alphabettsy
Detroit automakers have for some reason been unable to complete with foreign
carmakers in the US for some time now. Chevy sold about half as many Malibu’s
as Honda sold of the Accord, same goes for Cruze vs Civic. What I don’t
understand is how selling 180k vehicles (Cruze and Malibu) isn’t enough to
consider them viable?

At the same time, am I crazy to think these companies won’t find themselves in
or on the edge of bankruptcy again when the market changes?

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teilo
That's OK, because I've had it with Detroit's cars. In 2014 I went from an
Impala to a Mazda 6, and this year from the 6 to a fully loaded Passat
assembled in Tennessee. The closest thing from Detroit cost more, had lower
fuel economy, a lower warranty, fewer features, and was less comfortable.

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anfilt
How about small trucks, not the behemoths that are what most car makers are
selling. Like even Toyota's pickups are bigger than I remember and seem to
keep getting bigger. Almost all the trucks in the US are made for the US
market because of a 25% tariff. It's really annoying.

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intrasight
They're not good at it, and even if they were, there's not as much profit in
it. And GM's approach of making a dozen cars that fill the same ecological
niche stopped making sense many years ago.

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justin66
_Americans don’t buy cars anymore. They buy SUVs and pickups.

OK, that isn’t strictly true: Sedans, station wagons, hatchbacks and the like
were selling at a 5.5 million-vehicle annual rate in October. But that’s half
the pace of three decades ago._

Only a slice of the overall vehicle market worth tens of billions of dollars.
No big deal.

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dwd
Discontinuing the Bolt is a shame or are they shifting full production to
South Korea?

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btgeekboy
It's the Volt they're discontinuing, not the Bolt. 2 different cars with
unfortunately similar names.

~~~
dwd
Bah, probably should stop commenting via my phone - hard to proof a message
when you can't see it all on the screen at once.

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Waterluvian
SUVs existed 30 years ago?

My family has one vehicle, an SUV. I'm a newish dad and I don't understand how
you do parent stuff without an SUV. I would have to have multiple vehicles if
I had a sedan.

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dbt00
I have two teenage children.

I still drive a Mazda 5, even though they've been out of production for
several years. Seats 6 (if two are small children) on the wheel base and drive
train of a Mazda 3 hatchback. It was our only family car for several years
with pets and kids and sports and all the normal family bullshit people do.

Our other family car is a Subaru Outback. It has much better ground clearance
than the Mazda and seats 5 adults. You can lay the seats down and put a lot of
crap in there if you need to move a bunch of shit around.

Neither of these are SUVs. We never came close to needing an SUV for everyday
driving.

~~~
kenhwang
Depends on which generation Outback, based on your description of better
ground clearance, I think it's 4th of 5th generation which is marketed as and
considered an "SUV". That's the exact vehicle type that is replacing cars.

Even real SUVs (Tahoe/Expedition/4runner) are becoming replaced by CUVs.

