A 7,000-Pound Car Smashed Through a Guardrail. That’s Bad News for All of Us.
Vehicles are getting way too heavy to be safe.
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Yeah well let's quit making 7000 pound consumer vehicles. Small EVs would be more efficient and better for the environment because they need less materials to build and and less energy to recharge.
Judging by the general trend I don't think this is happening anytime soon. The overall car industry is obsessed with even bigger cars.
And even in Europe it is sickening to see those half buses on our roads. And this is especially true for big cities, where parking space is very limited and usually those cars occupy park space for 1.5-2 cars.
And knowing that the fertility rate is really going down I wonder what justifies those cars.
There was once a legend about vehicle's size and ... Well...
I would pay money to have this physically mailed to everyone. I have money because I have an economy car.
That's because the USA subsidizes bigger trucks as "work vehicles". This practice needs to stop and they need to be taxed more than smaller vehicles.
State vehicle registration where I'm at is based on vehicle weight. Costs about $400 to renew the registration on my daily driver and $600 to renew for a larger truck. Motorcycles are only like $80 to renew.
Consumers are being taxed more for larger vehicles, it's the manufacturers trying to avoid safety regulations that are seeing the cost benefits.
This article summarizes the subsidies I'm talking about. Here's an excerpt:
For now, the important point is that trucks generally are more profitable than cars thanks to two big government incentives, both of them historical footnotes.
The first is the so-called chicken tax, a 25 percent tariff imposed by Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964 on foreign-built work vehicles as part of a chicken-related trade war with Europe. If you’re making a pickup or cargo van in the United States, profits should be higher, because foreign factories can’t come close to undercutting you on price.
The second incentive lies in the fine print of Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards adopted in 1975, Gerald Ford’s reluctant response to a crippling Middle East oil embargo that sent gas prices soaring. To protect American commerce, work trucks and light trucks were subject to less-strict CAFE standards than family sedans. Trucks are also exempt from the 1978 gas guzzler tax, which adds $1,000 to $7,700 to the price of sedans that get 22.5 or fewer miles to the gallon.
That’s because the USA subsidizes bigger trucks as “work vehicles”.
Can you cite this? Don't get me wrong, I understand that if it's actually a work vehicle you probably get some tax credits/breaks, but I highly doubt many consumers are getting these breaks for buying large vehicles.
https://youtu.be/jN7mSXMruEo?feature=shared
Not op, but I really liked this video, as it explains quite a bit. It is of course a biased video, but still...
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I watched most of the video, it's primarily about safety. It's says the growth is mainly due to the regulations not applying the same to light trucks, which SUVs are classified as. This seems to contradict the claim that I was asking about.
If there is something about the state subsidizing the vehicles and I missed it, I would appreciate a time stamp. Noone needs to convince me that suvs are unsafe and an environmental disaster.
In the US it is called the 179 deduction. For trucks over 6, 000 lb gross vehicle weight you can deduct the total price for the year the truck is put in service.
Thanks for the citation, I'll look into it.
In Australia it breaks down thusly. (for reference average wage is about $80k per annum).
If you buy a vehicle for $50k, you're entitled to claim a tax deduction for that cost, usually spread over a number of years.
However, if you buy a vehicle for $100k, you're only entitled to claim a tax deduction for the first ~$56k (changes each year), unless the vehicle has a large enough carrying capacity that it can be considered to have been designed for the purpose of carrying stuff rather than people.
This rule is designed to disallow deductions for wanky vehicles. Like why should someone be allowed a deduction for driving a wanky mercedes SLK when a cheap and chearful toyota camry can perform the same task of moving a taxpayer from point A to point B. Of course, if someone buys a $300k prime mover (tractor?) designed for hauling 90 tonnes of wheat from a farm to a port, it's just not possible to do that with a toyota camry so you should be entitled to claim the entire cost.
Suppose you have 2 vehicles, both costing $100k, one is a regular sized Toyota truck, and the other is a ridiculous RAM truck or something. Suppose you plan to sell whichever you buy, after 8 years or so, when it's value is $50k.
On the Toyota you can only claim a tax deduction on the $6k difference between the $56k notional purchase price and the $50k sale price, which if your tax rate is about a third then you save yourself $2k in tax, so the vehicle cost you $48k to own for 8 years.
On the RAM you can claim a tax deduction on the entire $50k difference between the $100k purchase price and the $50k sale price. A third of that is ~$16k, so it only cost you $34k to own that vehicle for 8 years.
See my post above with citation.
I'm guessing you don't actually pay attention to the tax law, then. Annual vehicle registration (aka, a vehicle ownership tax) is more expensive as the weight on the vehicle goes up. Vehicles over a certain weight limit require more complex and strict drivers license classes (granted, class B starts at 26,001 lbs which is way higher than even today's heaviest consumer cars), and any vehicle used for work has higher insurance and regulatory costs, regardless of the size.
Buying an F350 (a truck that really only has a place in very specific situations anyway) requires so much extra work and almost always requires a class B license because of the kind of work being done with it. People who choose to get something like that because of small-dick syndrome are idiots. And that's coming from a person who used to drive 18-wheelers and still has a compact SUV as my daily driver.
See my post above in the thread where I show the laws I am talking about and cite source.
Yeah because emission standards are based on size and weight. So why spend the money making environmentally effective equipment when you can just make everything bigger and still rake in money?
The EPA under the Obama admistration enabled this. I was surprised to learn this. It needs to change. I think trains need to change too.
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Congratulations, the fossil fuel industry just put a hit on you
Small PHEV's would be ideal for the current generation. Battery advances will come, but we should always try to optimize with the current technology and 10 cars with a 10th the battery of a Tesla would be better for the future.
I do want to see more efficient, smaller EVs, but no one wants an EV that only gets 50 miles per charge. They aren't worth producing from the manufacturer's perspective.
My 2016 Nissan Leaf is 4400lbs, which is more than my larger (but still not that big) 2016 Mazda CX-5 at 3500lbs. Both manage to fit my family of 5, but the Leaf is far less accommodating and it weighs a good deal more. Small EVs are still pretty substantial. A Kia EV6 which is roughly the same size as my CX-5 weighs 5500lbs. You add a lot to a vehicle when you add an EV battery.
The article has a link to EVs by weight all but two of them were under the threshold.
Yeah but I'd like to visit my family and the nearest charging station is halfway across the state
If you are unable to find a charging station at some point halfway across the state you're either being too picky, or blind. I live in the middle of nowhere Maine and I can still find at least one electric vehicle charger per major town. Hell there is three of them in the town next over and it's not even considered one of our highly populated towns. I thought the same that you did until I actually looked up where charging stations are located I was pleasantly surprized
I live in Wyoming, having been to Maine, yall have an amazing and beautiful state but your definition of bumfuck no where is lacking. I checked the EV map again the ENTIRE QUATER of the state I live in that doesn't have a single charger is where my family lives. I down south near Colorado for reasons I don't want to get into right now but I want to be able to actually visit my family without having to take a plane between the two airports in Wyoming.
yea looking at wyoming I can see there is defo a lack of EV stations, it looks like for southern wyoming the longest stretch is between rock springs and Lareme, but that's mostly if you lack the ability to use super chargers. I can see how it would be a pain to use an EV in that case, doable but it would stretch it a little further than i would be comfortable with as well. That being said you would never catch me driving 3 hours one way to visit someone anyway lmao
Ehh 3 hours isn't that bad, just means the trip back happens the next day or you're dropping in to say hi while passing through town.
Plus, it's Wyoming. Famously the least densely populated state. That comes with some associated costs.
The benefits are great though, people leave you alone and living here is cheap
Couldn't pay me to live that far from an ocean. Or good internet.
My internet is pretty solid actually.
Your house is halfway across the state?
Many people live halfway across the state from their family.
I live in Wyoming, people not from here have a hard time understanding how desolate it is here. If I were to switch to an EV I'd have to take a plane everytime I wanted to visit my elderly mother, who would send a cousin in her ancient f-250 to drive me around, because there isn't a single electric charger in that QUARTER of the state
Could be a student or military or live in an apartment.
Not sure any of those establishments are going to be thrilled with you running an extension cable across the parking lot or sidewalk to charge your car.
Also pretty sure they meant their family lives outside of the range of a single EV charge and there's no charging infrastructure on the way. What would be an 8 hour drive to visit family for the holidays turns into a multi-day trip with a stay at a motel/hotel to wait for your car to charge.
Lighter vehicles should be able to have the same range as larger ones, just have to find the right battery/weight/range combination.
Yeah the current weight/range/battery combo for me in my almost entirely rural state is an ICE vehicle as much as I like EVs they just can't get me where I need to be with the current infrastructure. Unfortunately my attempts is also revoking its green energy tax stuff, got to love Republicans. But at least we got rare earth metals now, so that means nothing has to change! (God I love my state but hate the people running it)
Without doxing myself, from my hometown the nearest charging station is 30 miles away, that's not end of the world far its definitely feasible but its not good enough. Especially when there's gas stations everywhere. Charging stations need to be in way more places outside cities before they become appealing to folks living outside built up areas.
Nearest one to my hometown is about 3-4 hours out. I would have to take a plane and have a cousin come get me in her truck whenever I visited my family if I used an EV the tech has come a long way but the infrastructure just isn't always there as much as I hate that
