It's crazy to see how much trucks have blown up in the last few years. They clog up parking lots, barely fit in parking garages (let alone personal garages), blind me at night with their too-high too-bright headlights, and completely block cross-street vision for anything except other trucks when they park on the street.
A complete failure of US govt regulation. At this point I hope gas prices go through the roof and punish these truck owners for their selfish decisionmaking.
This guy makes some good points, but jeez he is so condescending and pretentious. It's really easy for a guy who makes YouTube videos and lives in a crowded European city to pass judgement on people who live lives completely different than his.
I am literally going to take my F150 and haul some lumber after work today, and the economic opportunities that having that ability affords me are so valuable to me as someone trying to build a home for myself and my family.
It just smacks of condescension to me when this guy writing this script sitting in a European cafe pretends that he understands all the possible uses that normal hard-working people use these cars for.
I'm not even disagreeing with him on a lot of his points, there are plenty of people who don't truly need one of these big cars, but there are also TONS of people who have uses for them.
> This guy makes some good points, but jeez he is so condescending and pretentious. It's really easy for a guy who makes YouTube videos and lives in a crowded European city to pass judgement on people who live lives completely different than his.
He has lived in those "completely different" places. He grew up in one of those areas: he moved to a crowded European city. He grew up in London, Ontario ("fake London")—which has typical post-WW2 car-centric layouts which he features regularly in his vides—, lived in Toronto, lived all over the world. He used to consult all over the world and has visited many cities around the world: see his video "Why City Design is Important (and Why I Hate Houston)" for some of the backstory:
After seeing all the different options, and initially trying to settle in Toronto—see his video "Suburbs that don't Suck - Streetcar Suburbs (Riverdale, Toronto)":
he and his wife decided to move to Amsterdam to raise their kids.
It wasn't random chance that he ended in Europe, but a conscious choice. He looked at the options and chose the one that he though was best.
And he has been asked about the 'tone' of this videos: his answer was/is: he doesn't care about how he comes off because (in his opinion) trying to be "nice" to the dumbasses that try to justify the stupidity of car-centric society that is destroying our planet is pointless. Either you have a brain and can see how bad this way of thinking/designing is, or you don't have a brain. He's tired of pussy footing around the (in his view) stupidity: there is no reason to bankrupt cities/society and destroy the planet for this lifestyle when you can (and people do) have high quality of life without car-centric living (in his view).
In general most people making a certain point will not disagree that there are exceptions to it. Just assuming that they are not aware of those exceptions is dishonest or at the very least not very perceptive.
Also, quote directly from the video (14:25): “And if you do live in a rural area you might need to drive a light truck and obviously that’s fine and I don’t care. But we are talking about suburbia here …”
I've got uses for my own pickup, which is a 2000 Ford Ranger.
Really about all I need is a 1980s sized Toyota Pickup/Hilux with a long bed would be great, updated for modern standards.
The idiotic way that trucks are turning into massive 4-door tanks with tiny 4.5 foot beds is not what I want as a consumer who wants to own a truck.
The market seems to very much be driven by people who aren't hauling lumber based on the bedsize. There's more and more pics showing up on social media now of idiots with 2x4s sticking out of the passenger compartments of new trucks because the bed size is so shit small.
I'm a big fan of all the derision that he pours on the trucks that are being sold right now.
Well, yeah, US government regulation (the chicken tax) ruined consumers' ability to get a nice small truck. Truly a case of failed regulation since we could have had a better result without it.
At this stage, they’re so intertwined with every day life that additional regulation—or removal of subsidies—will cause widespread impacts across many commercial industries, let alone unnecessary personal transport.
The only ‘saviour’ from the environmental perspective is the introduction of electric platforms like Rivian. The thought of the battery market being further constrained by mall creepers terrifies me.
Electric cars are here to save the auto industry, not the environment or society. Powering a 2000-kg vehicle to move a 100-kg human is beyond wasteful.
It's funny to see how people who hate trucks are now carping about things like parking space now that electric trucks make gas mileage and emissions irrelevant.
It's not wrong to like trucks.
If we could just agree on that, the discourse wouldn't be so ridiculous.
I personally don't have a truck, I don't like driving trucks, and I don't feel the need to own one. But I can also recognize that other reasonable people need or want trucks and that's fine. Sometimes I need to move a couch or a stack of drywall and I'm glad someone has a truck.
Trucks and bicycles are just proxies for the broader culture war. As some one who likes trucks AND rides bicycles, I'm used to getting massive amounts of hate from both sides lol.
> electric trucks make gas mileage and emissions irrelevant.
The majority of pickups being sold are still ICE, so gas mileage and emissions are definitely still relevant.
Also, electricity needs to come from somewhere, and for now it still comes mainly from burning fossil fuels. So miles per kWh and their associated emissions are still relevant when it comes to EVs.
> But I can also recognize that other reasonable people need or want trucks and that's fine.
I agree it's not for me to decide what kind of car or truck other people should drive. But I do think the government should at least structure taxes and laws to incentivize people to drive cars with fewer social costs (emissions, safety of others in a collision, road wear, parking space, etc). Currently the US government is doing the opposite, by offering a larger tax credit for EV Trucks and SUVs, for example.
> Better find someone with an old truck since those won't fit in the bed of a new one.
You can easily buy new long bed trucks today.
I guess you're referring to how so many people are buying short bed trucks. Which I agree doesn't make sense. If you're going to get a truck, might as well maximize it's usefulness as a truck which is the whole point.
IMO, trucks in the US are in large part an expression of the unfortunate tendency of people (especially Americans) to try to buy the product that they believe will cover 100% of their needs while ignoring that 10-40% of those needs are extremely intermittent.
Yes, trucks can be absolutely the right thing for hauling or towing (or both), or for moving specific types of material that either due to size or consistency can't really be moved in a typical car. They can be great for the great family camping trip with all that gear in the back and everyone else up front. And so on and so forth.
The problem is that those things happen (for most people) in the low-single digit numbers of times per year. Nevertheless the culture provides many suggestions that you're better off owning a vehicle that can do all this, all year, despite the extra cost of fuel, extra threat to pedestrians and cyclists, extra up front cost and higher insurance.
You don't have to be anti-car to see that owning a vehicle designed to cover all possible needs when most of the time you just commute in it doesn't make much sense.
Renting a truck is a pain. A truck that meets your general driving needs and most of your hauling needs is an investment in being able to haul without planning. Flexibility has a price, but it also has benefits. Proper small trucks are good enough at hauling and get good enough gas mileage (especially if you get the 4-cylinder), and have great sight lines. It's way harder to see pedestrians and cyclists with a typical sedan with a raked windshield, huge pillars and not a big window right behind my head. Of course, nobody sells those anymore, so there's that.
I'd like to own a box truck with a liftgate too, because those are really tough to track down on short notice, but they aren't very practical for day to day driving, and a vehicle that sits waiting for the day its useful is likely to develop problems.
I live 25 miles from Santa Fe, a city of 80k people (county is around 120k). I've rented pickups and box trucks twice a year +/- for the last 4 years. Each time, I drive (or cycle) into Santa Fe to one of two UHaul dealers with whom I've already booked the vehicle online. I spent less than 10 mins with the dealer, drive off in the truck for the 1/2 day or day, come back and head home. The rentals typically cost me about $60-80, and in almost every case, the rental place is closer to my reason for needing the vehicle than my home.
Renting a truck might be a pain for you. It's not a pain for everyone.
[ EDIT: The rest of the time I drive a Honda Fit which is flexible enough to let me do 75% of our recycling and garbage hauling, as well as move many, many other things around, and still get 36-38 mpg ]
There should be an additional licensing requirement for any vehicle over 5,000 pounds, with stiffer penalties and restrictions. Like commercial-lite. For context, the Ford F-150 is 4,021 to 5,740 lbs, and the F250 is 5,677 to 7,538 lbs.
(I say that as someone with a ~5,300 pound Land Cruiser)
The upcoming electric Hummer will weigh 9,640 pounds and do 0-60 in 3.3 seconds. Hopefully the high price will keep them rare.
A major thing I see pushing people towards trucks is the amazing ride the latest generation offers.
Going on long-distance road trips in something like a 2022 model year pickup truck is pretty close to the most comfortable setup available for < $100k. I don't know of any "luxury" cars that ride better today, even for multiples of the 100k limit.
That said, everything else about them is pretty awful. I own one and I mostly hate it until I find myself halfway between Houston and Austin. If I have to drive downtown all day I would much prefer an older, smaller sports car or sedan.
"Real" trucks have awful rides. Their suspensions are tuned for heavy loads so when they're not heavily loaded the springs are so stiff that it feels like they don't have any.
Yeah my Frontier, which is only a mid-size, is so stiff I can feel absolutely everything. Washboarded logging roads, on which this truck spends much of its time, can be a chore as the truck bounces and jumps around. But because it’s tuned so stiff, it also hauls nearly as much as a 3.3L F-150.
That said, I can’t imagine using a truck as a daily driver if I lived in a city. The turning radius on my truck is terrible, for example, making tight turns impossible.
Article didn't mention CAFE (which is the reason for larger sizes) nor chicken tax (which makes, even if they qualified under CAFE, foreign small trucks economically non-viable).
The demand for older compact S-10 and the old compact rangers is sky high. Make them legal again.
> The demand for older compact S-10 and the old compact rangers is sky high. Make them legal again.
Wouldn't the Ford Maverick be the modern version of these? It comes in two different forms as far as I can tell - the "truck shaped car" (FWD, hybrid powertrain), and the "small truck" form (4WD, no hybrid, rather lower fuel economy), depending on what you need it to do. And in a small truck, I think FWD vs the 2WD/RWD Rangers is probably the right option - some of those were pretty tail happy in the slick.
If the Maverick were slightly less tall and (more importantly) 2 door or crew-cab they would be a lot more useful. The usable bed is so small you can't get anything done. Instead I have to wait for a good condition 20-30 year old Ford Ranger.
> Article didn't mention CAFE (which is the reason for larger sizes) nor chicken tax (which makes, even if they qualified under CAFE, foreign small trucks economically non-viable).
I was pointed to the article from the just-posted Not Just Bikes video "These Stupid Trucks are Literally Killing Us", which does go over those things:
The point of the Axios article, which comes up at the 25m25s point in the NJB video, goes towards the point that the pickup truck has actually become less practical over the decades. And to the idea that most folks would be better served with a station wagon or perhaps a minivan.
Trucks have gone from the cargo bed being >60% of the usable length (ignoring the engine), to the (crew) cab being >60% of the useable length. Pickup trucks gone from thing-haulers to people-haulers, in which case, why bother with that form factor?
>Trucks have gone from the cargo bed being >60% of the usable length (ignoring the engine), to the (crew) cab being >60% of the useable length. Pickup trucks gone from thing-haulers to people-haulers, in which case, why bother with that form factor?
The bed was always a mixed-use people hauler. Then they made that illegal. Go to Mexico, Iraq, Philippines and other places where it's still tolerated or legal in most places and the bed continues to be a people hauler. It's in part the cab got bigger because you couldn't put the people in the bed anymore, not because more people started riding in the trucks.
If you want more bed and less cab again, make it legal for the passengers, kids, etc to ride in the bed again. Like we did when I was a kid. If not, don't be surprised when you make something illegal people adapt the vehicle to deal with it.
I would trade in my model y for a compact electric truck of similar spec and price if it existed. I live in a city and don't haul stuff most of the time, but every time I need to carry trash or dirt, make home depot runs, or move furniture I wish I had a truck.
> […] but every time I need to carry trash or dirt, make home depot runs, or move furniture I wish I had a truck.
If you actually read the article, you'll see that—going by usable length—pickup trucks are generally no longer thing-haulers but people-haulers, which kind of defeats the whole purpose of their form factor.
If you want general hauling space/volume, your best best seems to be a (mini)van.
> The demand for older compact S-10 and the old compact rangers is sky high. Make them legal again.
Nothing made them illegal. The Tacoma got quite a lot bigger, and the S-10 was replaced by the Colorado, because consumers wanted larger trucks.
I think there is some demand for small trucks, but not enough to get the automakers to manufacture them again. The Ford Courier seems to be doing alright, but I'm not seeing any of the other automakers copying it.
I wonder if we'll see compact pickups as EVs (again, Ford had EV Rangers in the time of the EV-1); because CAFE doesn't drive design for EVs, afaik. Personally, I found my 2011 Ranger with the 4-cylinder engine to be fuel efficient enough, and did my light pickup work. I've now got a 2003 S-10 with a v6 and it's much less fuel efficient; I wish I had kept my Ranger, but it made sense to get rid of it at the time.
Saying this as a white collar work, but I now drive a econ-auto.
I kind of think it has to do with many white collar workers wanting to look tough and maybe wanting to look like they do real work.
But, I hate the "drive like a car" trend for Trucks. I drove a Jeep CJ-7 for almost 20 years, but when it failed catastrophically, I went to an econ-car because all the new jeeps were really just cars.
That means, no manual locking hubs, automatic transmission, no manual steering and no plugs in the floor to let out water. It is impossible to get a Real Jeep now. And I believe the same is for pickups. The CJ nad no radio, driving faster then 50-60 mph (80-100 kph) was not recommended.
Nevermind the how expensive Jeeps and Pickups are these days. In the 70s/80s, these were cheap compared to Luxury Autos.
Pet-peeve time: Why do people in pickups slow down to 1 m/kph on speed bumps ? If driving a truck, no need for that when my car has no issues (for 10 years+) going faster than that.
I've lived in the US my whole life and even _I_ think America's car culture is bananas. Here are a couple of loosely-related rants.
Almost everywhere in the world, cars are a means to get around and occasionally carry things. But in the US, cars are status symbols first and transportation second. We're conditioned to buy as much car as we can afford via advertising, cultural pressure, and low-interest loans. Or even to buy cars when we don't actually need them. (If you live in a city with a subway, you don't actually need a car, you just want one. Your family probably does not need a car for every member of the household. Etc.)
Our mass transit is in a shambles because of the insanity of car culture. Except for a few HCOL cities, mass transit is essentially considered to be a service for the poor.
Gas prices in the US are embarrassingly low. They are subsidized by the government in various often invisible forms, at the behest of the oil and auto industries. The auto industries have an interest in keeping gas prices low because it means they can convince buys to pony up for ever-increasing vehicle sizes. The "true" price of gas nowadays is somewhere north of $7-8 a gallon and that's not including the inevitable cost of cleaning up the atmosphere, whenever we decide to get serious about that.
Where I grew up in the 80's and 90's, you were either a Chevy or a Ford person. Weirdest form of brand loyalty ever. I didn't even know foreign brands sold cars here until after I graduated high school and started seeing more of the country. I never moved back but I visit every few years and there are still no foreign dealerships outside of the major cities.
I really want to like electric cars (and trucks, sure) but I don't like that you don't really "own" them. I don't know of any that you can buy that don't require signing up with the manufacturer and having to install an app on your phone, or have the car permanently connected to the cloud via mobile network, just to drive and charge the damn thing.
> Almost everywhere in the world, cars are a means to get around and occasionally carry things.
This is as incorrect as it gets. Cars are considered status symbol almost universally. Look at Bentleys, high tier BMWs, Mercedes, Lexuses etc etc etc of the world.
Occasionally you may see funny things, like France's disregard for car paint and bumpers, but almost everywhere sports car, large premium suv or luxury sedan are very often status symbols.
I live in a city (Portland, OR) with an extensive public transportation system, and I own and drive a car for my daily commute. Whenever there are presidential visits or public holidays the public transportation system often grinds to a halt, leaving people late for work by hours. The public transportation system here also exposes people to secondhand smoke from hardcore drugs and also exposes people to violent crime. Commuters and families are often witnesses to public drug scenes. Last year more than a few people were violently assaulted on our public transportation. I am someone who very much likes to take the train or the bus or even ride my bike to work but I recognize that public transportation often fails at the margins. I am a person who values reliability and consistency - public transportation just doesn’t have the uptime or resiliency that I require. Because I live in the northwest and like to enjoy the great outdoors I need a vehicle to get me to trailheads that buses and trains cannot access. I also need a vehicle to carry my large art supplies I take into the wilderness.
> I really want to like electric cars (and trucks, sure) but I don't like that you don't really "own" them. I don't know of any that you can buy that don't require signing up with the manufacturer and having to install an app on your phone, or have the car permanently connected to the cloud via mobile network, just to drive and charge the damn thing.
That's not an electric car problem. All cars are going to end up that way.
We love cars because when we travel, we want privacy. Mass transit might be good but it is something which goes against American individualism. I don't want to smell someone else's body odour throughout a 5 hour journey.
Lived in the US my whole life and somehow escaped this. My 2 cars are an ‘03 and ‘04. Purely functional and bought with cash. I’d be blown away to learn someone actually thought better of someone based on what car they saw them driving.
> But in the US, cars are status symbols first and transportation second.
I really don’t believe this is true for the majority of buyers. I think most people are primarily buying based on the features they want: performance, comfort, space, technology, etc. Status is inextricably linked to what kind of car you drive, and it matters for some people more than others, but I don’t think it’s the foremost concern for most. At least not for myself and most of my friends and family.
Yes, people often buy more car than they actually need, but that is because they spend a lot of time driving and it makes them happy.
Readit News
It's crazy to see how much trucks have blown up in the last few years. They clog up parking lots, barely fit in parking garages (let alone personal garages), blind me at night with their too-high too-bright headlights, and completely block cross-street vision for anything except other trucks when they park on the street.
A complete failure of US govt regulation. At this point I hope gas prices go through the roof and punish these truck owners for their selfish decisionmaking.
They have been this way for a generation.
This guy makes some good points, but jeez he is so condescending and pretentious. It's really easy for a guy who makes YouTube videos and lives in a crowded European city to pass judgement on people who live lives completely different than his.
I am literally going to take my F150 and haul some lumber after work today, and the economic opportunities that having that ability affords me are so valuable to me as someone trying to build a home for myself and my family.
It just smacks of condescension to me when this guy writing this script sitting in a European cafe pretends that he understands all the possible uses that normal hard-working people use these cars for.
I'm not even disagreeing with him on a lot of his points, there are plenty of people who don't truly need one of these big cars, but there are also TONS of people who have uses for them.
He has lived in those "completely different" places. He grew up in one of those areas: he moved to a crowded European city. He grew up in London, Ontario ("fake London")—which has typical post-WW2 car-centric layouts which he features regularly in his vides—, lived in Toronto, lived all over the world. He used to consult all over the world and has visited many cities around the world: see his video "Why City Design is Important (and Why I Hate Houston)" for some of the backstory:
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxykI30fS54
After seeing all the different options, and initially trying to settle in Toronto—see his video "Suburbs that don't Suck - Streetcar Suburbs (Riverdale, Toronto)":
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWsGBRdK2N0
he and his wife decided to move to Amsterdam to raise their kids.
It wasn't random chance that he ended in Europe, but a conscious choice. He looked at the options and chose the one that he though was best.
And he has been asked about the 'tone' of this videos: his answer was/is: he doesn't care about how he comes off because (in his opinion) trying to be "nice" to the dumbasses that try to justify the stupidity of car-centric society that is destroying our planet is pointless. Either you have a brain and can see how bad this way of thinking/designing is, or you don't have a brain. He's tired of pussy footing around the (in his view) stupidity: there is no reason to bankrupt cities/society and destroy the planet for this lifestyle when you can (and people do) have high quality of life without car-centric living (in his view).
In general most people making a certain point will not disagree that there are exceptions to it. Just assuming that they are not aware of those exceptions is dishonest or at the very least not very perceptive.
Also, quote directly from the video (14:25): “And if you do live in a rural area you might need to drive a light truck and obviously that’s fine and I don’t care. But we are talking about suburbia here …”
He explicitly excluded you.
Really about all I need is a 1980s sized Toyota Pickup/Hilux with a long bed would be great, updated for modern standards.
The idiotic way that trucks are turning into massive 4-door tanks with tiny 4.5 foot beds is not what I want as a consumer who wants to own a truck.
The market seems to very much be driven by people who aren't hauling lumber based on the bedsize. There's more and more pics showing up on social media now of idiots with 2x4s sticking out of the passenger compartments of new trucks because the bed size is so shit small.
I'm a big fan of all the derision that he pours on the trucks that are being sold right now.
Aside from Japanese kei trucks (which are basically golf carts and rightly fail safety requirements), what kind of small trucks can't Americans buy?
The only ‘saviour’ from the environmental perspective is the introduction of electric platforms like Rivian. The thought of the battery market being further constrained by mall creepers terrifies me.
I live in a dense residential area with bays that either fit 3 or 4 cars. If there's a truck, those numbers go down to 2 and 3.
Dead Comment
It's not wrong to like trucks.
If we could just agree on that, the discourse wouldn't be so ridiculous.
I personally don't have a truck, I don't like driving trucks, and I don't feel the need to own one. But I can also recognize that other reasonable people need or want trucks and that's fine. Sometimes I need to move a couch or a stack of drywall and I'm glad someone has a truck.
The majority of pickups being sold are still ICE, so gas mileage and emissions are definitely still relevant.
Also, electricity needs to come from somewhere, and for now it still comes mainly from burning fossil fuels. So miles per kWh and their associated emissions are still relevant when it comes to EVs.
> But I can also recognize that other reasonable people need or want trucks and that's fine.
I agree it's not for me to decide what kind of car or truck other people should drive. But I do think the government should at least structure taxes and laws to incentivize people to drive cars with fewer social costs (emissions, safety of others in a collision, road wear, parking space, etc). Currently the US government is doing the opposite, by offering a larger tax credit for EV Trucks and SUVs, for example.
Better find someone with an old truck since those won't fit in the bed of a new one.
You can easily buy new long bed trucks today.
I guess you're referring to how so many people are buying short bed trucks. Which I agree doesn't make sense. If you're going to get a truck, might as well maximize it's usefulness as a truck which is the whole point.
Yes, trucks can be absolutely the right thing for hauling or towing (or both), or for moving specific types of material that either due to size or consistency can't really be moved in a typical car. They can be great for the great family camping trip with all that gear in the back and everyone else up front. And so on and so forth.
The problem is that those things happen (for most people) in the low-single digit numbers of times per year. Nevertheless the culture provides many suggestions that you're better off owning a vehicle that can do all this, all year, despite the extra cost of fuel, extra threat to pedestrians and cyclists, extra up front cost and higher insurance.
You don't have to be anti-car to see that owning a vehicle designed to cover all possible needs when most of the time you just commute in it doesn't make much sense.
I'd like to own a box truck with a liftgate too, because those are really tough to track down on short notice, but they aren't very practical for day to day driving, and a vehicle that sits waiting for the day its useful is likely to develop problems.
I live 25 miles from Santa Fe, a city of 80k people (county is around 120k). I've rented pickups and box trucks twice a year +/- for the last 4 years. Each time, I drive (or cycle) into Santa Fe to one of two UHaul dealers with whom I've already booked the vehicle online. I spent less than 10 mins with the dealer, drive off in the truck for the 1/2 day or day, come back and head home. The rentals typically cost me about $60-80, and in almost every case, the rental place is closer to my reason for needing the vehicle than my home.
Renting a truck might be a pain for you. It's not a pain for everyone.
[ EDIT: The rest of the time I drive a Honda Fit which is flexible enough to let me do 75% of our recycling and garbage hauling, as well as move many, many other things around, and still get 36-38 mpg ]
(I say that as someone with a ~5,300 pound Land Cruiser)
The upcoming electric Hummer will weigh 9,640 pounds and do 0-60 in 3.3 seconds. Hopefully the high price will keep them rare.
Going on long-distance road trips in something like a 2022 model year pickup truck is pretty close to the most comfortable setup available for < $100k. I don't know of any "luxury" cars that ride better today, even for multiples of the 100k limit.
That said, everything else about them is pretty awful. I own one and I mostly hate it until I find myself halfway between Houston and Austin. If I have to drive downtown all day I would much prefer an older, smaller sports car or sedan.
That said, I can’t imagine using a truck as a daily driver if I lived in a city. The turning radius on my truck is terrible, for example, making tight turns impossible.
The demand for older compact S-10 and the old compact rangers is sky high. Make them legal again.
Wouldn't the Ford Maverick be the modern version of these? It comes in two different forms as far as I can tell - the "truck shaped car" (FWD, hybrid powertrain), and the "small truck" form (4WD, no hybrid, rather lower fuel economy), depending on what you need it to do. And in a small truck, I think FWD vs the 2WD/RWD Rangers is probably the right option - some of those were pretty tail happy in the slick.
I was pointed to the article from the just-posted Not Just Bikes video "These Stupid Trucks are Literally Killing Us", which does go over those things:
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jN7mSXMruEo
The point of the Axios article, which comes up at the 25m25s point in the NJB video, goes towards the point that the pickup truck has actually become less practical over the decades. And to the idea that most folks would be better served with a station wagon or perhaps a minivan.
Trucks have gone from the cargo bed being >60% of the usable length (ignoring the engine), to the (crew) cab being >60% of the useable length. Pickup trucks gone from thing-haulers to people-haulers, in which case, why bother with that form factor?
The bed was always a mixed-use people hauler. Then they made that illegal. Go to Mexico, Iraq, Philippines and other places where it's still tolerated or legal in most places and the bed continues to be a people hauler. It's in part the cab got bigger because you couldn't put the people in the bed anymore, not because more people started riding in the trucks.
If you want more bed and less cab again, make it legal for the passengers, kids, etc to ride in the bed again. Like we did when I was a kid. If not, don't be surprised when you make something illegal people adapt the vehicle to deal with it.
If you actually read the article, you'll see that—going by usable length—pickup trucks are generally no longer thing-haulers but people-haulers, which kind of defeats the whole purpose of their form factor.
If you want general hauling space/volume, your best best seems to be a (mini)van.
Nothing made them illegal. The Tacoma got quite a lot bigger, and the S-10 was replaced by the Colorado, because consumers wanted larger trucks.
I think there is some demand for small trucks, but not enough to get the automakers to manufacture them again. The Ford Courier seems to be doing alright, but I'm not seeing any of the other automakers copying it.
https://arstechnica.com/cars/2023/01/general-motors-is-inves...
The number of farmers I know who are running 20+ year old pickups because they can't find any suitable replacement at all is too darn high
I kind of think it has to do with many white collar workers wanting to look tough and maybe wanting to look like they do real work.
But, I hate the "drive like a car" trend for Trucks. I drove a Jeep CJ-7 for almost 20 years, but when it failed catastrophically, I went to an econ-car because all the new jeeps were really just cars.
That means, no manual locking hubs, automatic transmission, no manual steering and no plugs in the floor to let out water. It is impossible to get a Real Jeep now. And I believe the same is for pickups. The CJ nad no radio, driving faster then 50-60 mph (80-100 kph) was not recommended.
Nevermind the how expensive Jeeps and Pickups are these days. In the 70s/80s, these were cheap compared to Luxury Autos.
Pet-peeve time: Why do people in pickups slow down to 1 m/kph on speed bumps ? If driving a truck, no need for that when my car has no issues (for 10 years+) going faster than that.
I always have a little giggle when I see a ten ton Escalade swerve to miss a pothole.
Almost everywhere in the world, cars are a means to get around and occasionally carry things. But in the US, cars are status symbols first and transportation second. We're conditioned to buy as much car as we can afford via advertising, cultural pressure, and low-interest loans. Or even to buy cars when we don't actually need them. (If you live in a city with a subway, you don't actually need a car, you just want one. Your family probably does not need a car for every member of the household. Etc.)
Our mass transit is in a shambles because of the insanity of car culture. Except for a few HCOL cities, mass transit is essentially considered to be a service for the poor.
Gas prices in the US are embarrassingly low. They are subsidized by the government in various often invisible forms, at the behest of the oil and auto industries. The auto industries have an interest in keeping gas prices low because it means they can convince buys to pony up for ever-increasing vehicle sizes. The "true" price of gas nowadays is somewhere north of $7-8 a gallon and that's not including the inevitable cost of cleaning up the atmosphere, whenever we decide to get serious about that.
Where I grew up in the 80's and 90's, you were either a Chevy or a Ford person. Weirdest form of brand loyalty ever. I didn't even know foreign brands sold cars here until after I graduated high school and started seeing more of the country. I never moved back but I visit every few years and there are still no foreign dealerships outside of the major cities.
I really want to like electric cars (and trucks, sure) but I don't like that you don't really "own" them. I don't know of any that you can buy that don't require signing up with the manufacturer and having to install an app on your phone, or have the car permanently connected to the cloud via mobile network, just to drive and charge the damn thing.
This is as incorrect as it gets. Cars are considered status symbol almost universally. Look at Bentleys, high tier BMWs, Mercedes, Lexuses etc etc etc of the world.
Occasionally you may see funny things, like France's disregard for car paint and bumpers, but almost everywhere sports car, large premium suv or luxury sedan are very often status symbols.
> I never moved back but I visit every few years and there are still no foreign dealerships outside of the major cities.
Of the 10 most popular cars in the US, 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 10 are foreign brands:
https://insurify.com/insights/most-popular-cars-2022/
That's not an electric car problem. All cars are going to end up that way.
I really don’t believe this is true for the majority of buyers. I think most people are primarily buying based on the features they want: performance, comfort, space, technology, etc. Status is inextricably linked to what kind of car you drive, and it matters for some people more than others, but I don’t think it’s the foremost concern for most. At least not for myself and most of my friends and family.
Yes, people often buy more car than they actually need, but that is because they spend a lot of time driving and it makes them happy.