The picture would of course look very different if manufacturers had chosen to make smaller inexpensive electric sedans.
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Well it’s something… But it could be so much better.
The article only addresses emissions from the vehicles. It doesn’t address things like weight, which is a big factor on wear on the road (which makes it necessary to fix the road more often) and wear on the tires (which is pollution as well). Both of these are significant enough that they shouldn’t be neglected when you’re thinking about a vehicle’s effect on the environment.
It is a shame that companies as a whole are pushing these huge cars. I have pretty bad visibility in the bigger cars. When I need to purchase a vehicle, it is definitely a challenge to get something small. I’ve had to walk away from a salesman because he kept trying to push me into something bigger. Inventory is sparse for sedans and plentiful for SUVs and trucks. It’s non-existent for station wagons and nearly so for subcompact cars.
It seems like smaller cars would fit more people’s needs and would be safer for everyone around them… But as it stands I am terrified of walking near the road with these commonly driven behemoths.
I have the same problem with big cars. At the moment I have an ageing Toyota hybrid saloon, which is as big as I want to go. Years ago I knew a couple of people who had Toyota Rav4s - they were chunky little 4WDs, with a high wheel base but a small footprint. Perfect for the places I drive! Toyota still makes a Rav4, but now it’s a bulging, bloated monster. I’d love to have the original Rav4, but electric.
You can see the progression here: https://mag.toyota.co.uk/history-of-the-toyota-rav4/
That is such a shame. I would have loved a smaller RAV4 if I needed to drive up in the mountains. (My little Corolla struggled the few times I visited.)
So, it stands to reason an EV sedan would create even less pollution than an EV SUV, right? Where’s my EV sedan? lol
There are few in the USA, more in other regions of the world
Mind sharing? lol. I’m looking to upgrade my hybrid in the near future, and hoping to go EV.
Requirements are basically:
- Not a Tesla (don’t want to pad Musk’s wallet + quality issues)
- Not a smartphone on wheels (I want buttons lol)
- Affordable ($40K at the most)
The Hyundai Ionic 6, the new model if you like buttons.
Polestar 2, but it doesn’t have many buttons.
A used BMW or Mercedes, they are too expensive new but you may be able to find a used one in your budget.
The Nissan Leaf, technically not a sedan but it’s very efficient.
The Volkswagen ID.7, no price announced yet but it might be too expensive
Prob the Ionic 6 is the only one that really stands out to me (not a fan of luxury brands). Thanks, will check that one out.
Gotta wait until EVs are no longer… “Premium”
There are som in the 20’000 range
Yes. But they’re afraid they won’t make as much money if they sell those.
Though the extra weight of electric batteries will cause more particulate pollution from tyres and road surface.
Another reason to have smaller cars with smaller batteries with shorter ranges, just enough for the every-day commute.
Why do you need to bring several hundred kilograms of road-tripping range to work and the grocer every-day?
To answer the question, because a lot of people don’t want to or can’t afford to buy a second car just for when they need to drive longer than their daily commute.
I agree that you could go smaller than the average of 300mi, but the minimum necessary range for say interstate travel around here is 150 to 200mi.
The answer is to focus on the smaller sedans and such we lived with for generations instead of just the largest and highest markup suv or pickup out there. While EVs are heavier on average, it’s worth noting this difference is a lot smaller than the difference in weight between say a sedan and a crossover, or a crossover and a SUV.
To clarify, I find your reply unhelpful, because you explain the logical course of action for an individual to make the most of the current sorry state of western transport. US transport, to be specific.
And in reply to something obviously rheotorical.
Your answer is not even close to the most efficient solution to transport we might come up with as a society.
Meanwhime I am commenting about that hopelly improved future, where owning a car in the first place is no longer a choice made for you.
Where you can head out, and get to any point on the map for a reasonable cost, in a timely manner, while owning nothing more than the clothes you’d be wearing.
I literally live in a country where that is how it works. It’s possible.
Who said you need to own the car you need for a couple days, once or twice a year?
Do you buy the moving truck each time you need to move your stuff to a new home? What about the bus, train, or plane you use to go long distance?
“don’t want to” is not an argument as history has shown consumers will buy whatever marketing convinces them to want.
That’s kinda the whole reason behind the current big car problem in the US. It’s not what consumers wanted, it’s what automakers made in order to skirt environmental restrictions.
Because you can’t fly everywhere, renting for a routine trip is an expensive, time consuming, and logistically difficult process, and if you’re going to spend so much to own a car it might as well be useful for all your trips instead of just some of them?
Moreover, someone’s commute is often nowhere near the longest trip they make on a regular basis, as often one might need to drive several places, go into town multiple times in a day, travel to a neighboring city to meet with friends, etc… all of which can require several times the (hopefully short) work and back distance.
This is ignoring that battery degradation is a direct consequence of the charge and discharge current, and as such a larger battery will degrade at a significantly slower rate.
All this means you’re going to face an uphill battle trying to get people to sacrifice a bunch of capability for a few percent reduction in weight and cost.
Their is almost certainly a market for short range city cars, but that’s likely to be eventually more than filled by the used market, where a decades old 200mi range car is still going to be more capable than a 50 to 100mi range car.
Yup.
There truly is no alternative to car-centric infrastructure. And there is no way to reduce the distances we all simply must drive. /s
You’re presenting all these factors as if they’re intrinsic and unavoidable. They are not. We should not only move towards smaller vehicles, but denser urban design that removes the need to regularly travel stupid distances.
Intercity travel is truly the WORST in a personal vehicle. Why the hell would I drive somewhere for hours, when I can sit in a train and game on my steamdeck the whole time?
I know the US sucks in this regard, but that’s a reason to fix things, not perpetuate the problem.
Let me ask an even more basic question, who said you need to own a car, at all?
Because that was the auto-industry, too. You know what we did for “generations” before we all drove small sedans for generations?
Walked.
And it worked fine. When cities were for people, not cars, nothing was ever so far apart that getting from A to B was inconceivable without a personal vehicle.
Firstly, you are the one who started from the premise you need to own a car to commute, and indeed that one should own a car capable only of commuting and other very short often bikeable trips.
Secondly, while I do heavily support urban density, in the english speaking world we are generally woefully short of having enough urban housing for even the people who live there right now, much less relocate everyone who doesn’t.
Because these places are so desirable, people can and demonstrably do pay a large premium to live in these areas, pricing out a large number of people from the start.
Moreover, in a country where a solidly blue city in a solidly blue state can spend a decade and an obscene amount of money to try and so far fail to put in a bus lane, mass transit, as much as I love be it and want more of it, simply isn’t going to be built out to the point where it serves every house and farm in anything like the next ten years, which is already a painfully long time from a climate prospective.
It is also completely disconnected from a country where some large cities have gone so far as to outright ban rasing taxes to fund mass transit, and a continent where Doug Ford is literally ripping out well used bike lanes to signal how much he loves cars. The people and places who elected him still need to decarbonize, and an easy drop in change like electrifying the the current system while expanding transit.
To note the obvious, back before cars, trains, planes etc… when we walked, people still had horses and ships. It just meant that unless you were rich most people lived and died in the same small village as their family lived and died in, and is a rather silly goal for a world in which people talk and make friends with others on the far side of the planet, and where a day trip with nearby friends means less than 500mi and people regularly travel hundreds for work.
We live in a vastly more connected world where inter-city travel is a routine thing, and a country where we have spent the lasr half century desolving and selling off every intercity rail line we could, a network which took nearly a century to build.
Even in places like Swisserland or the Netherlands, places built before cars and with extremely prolific bike and rail infrastructure, about half the population own cars, they just don’t get used for short trips as often.
This is a great achievement that represents a hopeful vision of the future that is worth working for, and one that took entire generations of advocacy. To suggest we are going to go so much further beyond it in a few short years in a far larger and more spread out nation with a hostile federal government is outright absurd.
Firstly, you are the one who started from the premise you need to own a car to commute, and indeed that one should own a car capable only of commuting and other very short often bikeable trips.
Did I? Imo I merely expressed that the weight problem of cars meant that how they are designed should change. How does “we should have” mean everyone should have one, and only use that?
All I meant is that smaller and lighter, shorter range cars should be available, and be considered as normal to use as what is normal now.
And why did you just write nine paragraphs at me explaining things I’m fully aware of?
Do you think people with ideas about how the world could work, are somehow blind to how it does work?
The vehicles currently called SUVs are just Station Wagons with a higher centre of gravity.
In the old days, normal people drove Station Wagons, Sedans, Hatchbacks and Utes. Those people had a need for off-roading drive 4WD light trucks, which were a less pleasant to drive on-road.
Husbands wanted a toy for the weekend, but they still wanted something that was sane to drive to their day job. That meant that Wives for forced to drive the oversized Light Truck that handled poorly to drop the kids off at school and go day-drinking.
Eventually, 4WDs were remarketted as Sports Utility Vehicles and had their off-road capabilities handicapped. Manufacturers tried to push people to drive Wagons and the new MiniVans again, but the Soccer Mums liked the high seating position of the 4WDs.
Nowadays MiniVans and Wagons have been replaced by vehicles that are not as Sporty as Wagons and not as Utilitarian as MiniVans. They have no off-road ability.
The vehicles currently called SUVs are just Station Wagons with a higher centre of gravity.
There’s also a breed of what the manufacturers are calling a mini-SUV out there, which I reckon is just a hatchback with the same distinction.
Now compare it with a bus
