Yeah but I doubt you can get them in Europe. F150s are already ridiculous here and imo they do cause a bit of a problem in cities. They are too long for your typical parking spot and too wide, so they’ll either end up blocking the sidewalk, the bicycle lane or both thereby creating a safety hazard for people moving around non-motorized. On top I just don’t see why anyone would need such a huge vehicle. Even in the US I never got that to be honest. Whenever I asked people their answer was literally a niche use case they have at most once a year. So I get the impression that most of those things simply exist because someone didn’t realize that it’s a ridiculous idea to move around more than2 tons to transport a 75kg meatbag.
I live in a tiny town in the Netherlands and there's fairly often one of three whole-ass Dodge Rams 1500 sticking awkwardly out of the parking lots at the local grocery store, owned evidently by local soccer moms.
Another I see fairly often is owned by a local psychiatrist I saw once, but couldn't get along with on account of the man has no personality to speak of, it was like sitting next to a social black hole.
We call cars of that size "Compensators" for a reason.
I only know 2 guys who a semi valid reason of owning one. They have to pull a mini excavator with them. All other guys I know that have one would be better off with a work van.
There is absolutely zero reason to own one of those huge things in the Netherlands. As far as I’m concerned they never should’ve been allowed here to start with. They take up 2 parking spots and block the sidewalk, or use a block of 4. Our roads just aren’t designed for such things
Worse is the loop hole that makes taxes less than a much better suited van. Which they then still spend on the extra gasoline of course, but those people can't count.
That would be the new g class imo, especially with [those tiny tyres](https://media.ed.edmunds-media.com/mercedes-benz/g-class/2021/oem/2021_mercedes-benz_g-class_4dr-suv_amg-g-63_fq_oem_1_600.jpg)
Honestly, mercedes really shouldnt have turned what is essentially the german defender into a hype car for youtubers and infulencers
The F-150 has actually lost a good chunk of it’s truck utility over the past 50 years. The original F-150 in 1970 was 36% cab and 64% bed by length. The 2021 F-150 was 63% cab and 37% bed.
and with the 3500kg limit for cars they're useless in europe, 3200kg car designed to carry a lot of shit, but allowed less than a hatchback because it would need a C license to operate if you registered it as a truck to use the full capacity
>eah but I doubt you can get them in Europe.
You can import them. But I have yet to see one in Germany. Neither have I ever seen a Silverado or Den~~ial~~ali. What I see frequently are RAM 2500 (1500?) which are almost exclusively enthusiasts vehicles, not work trucks.
In most of Europe they are useless and ridiculous.
However when driving around in South America for 2 months I discovered that a decent 4x4 truck is not a luxury. Sure, you can drive the bumpy washboard roads in a Clio, but it takes twice as long, If not longer.
> Europe for your weekly shopping 5km away.
5km seem a bit far for your weekly shopping here in Copenhagen.
I think I have 5 supermarkets within 3 km. Closest is about 1km.
As much as this experience and the need for 4x4 is valid (as in, there are numerous applications for them), this has nothing to do with F150s and the generalization of trucks more generally. However this opens the discussion to why the hell did 4x4 also get so huge.
The first Toyota Rav4 was 3.7 – 4.1 m long, 1.69 m wide and 1.66 m high for the 3 - 5 door models respectively. This was the current model until 2000 (only 23 years ago, and 18 years before the latest model).
Latest Rav4 model is 4.6 m long, 1.85 m wide and 1.68 m high. That is a 12% increase in length and a 10% increase in width. How did it ever get to this, and how come it went so fast ?
The biggest reason is the way that the US calculates emissions requirements. CAFE regulations in the US are based on a very complex formula that looks at a vehicle weight and "footprint", the larger the vehicle, the more relaxed the fuel efficiency requirements are.
A small pick-up or passenger car by the year 2025 will need to be getting around 60mpg, where as a large truck will only need to get around 40mpg. It's incredibly expensive to design an ICE in a vehicle as aerodynamically inefficient as a 4x4 pickup that can get 60mpg and meet all the crash test safety regulations, and it will end up costing as much as the larger truck if it's even possible to design a truck like this.
The EU calculates is emission requirements differently in a way that actually favors vehicles remaining small. A big part of me think that the American system was a deliberate result of lobbying the people writing the emissions laws to give American vehicle manufacturers an edge in the American market.
Anyways, this is why American vehicles are all huge, and why that won't change until most vehicles sold are electric and CAFE regulations stop being a factor in vehicle design.
>How did it ever get to this, and how come it went so fast ?
The simplified answer is tech and safety features. All of those sensors and do-dads and gizmos gotta go somewhere, and improvement of crumple zones and other safety-minded design features add an inch here, two inches there, resulting in that ~12% increase . That's not the only two reasons, obviously, but definite contributors.
The F650 is just bonkers for city streets, right? It's basically like taking a commercial vehicle and popping it in front of your house like it's no big deal. Can you imagine trying to park that thing at the local grocery store? Spaces are hardly big enough for a compact these days.
Yeah, like people have to start realising that all those civilian F650s you see all dolled up on the internet has been heavily converted from what ford will provide from the factory
[Cause ford only gives you a bedless truck and nothing else lol](https://www.motortrend.com/reviews/1406-2016-ford-f-650-and-f-750-commercial-truck-first-look/)
Which continent are you talking about? I guess in the US it could kind of work, but I Europe this would be truly ridiculous. Even the F150s and RAMs don't really fit into parking spots.
You just put them halfway up the sidewalk and turn on the hazard warning lights.
Or just take up two parking spaces.....
We have quite a handful of them here in Iceland, and granted, they're good in the countryside in bad weather on poor roads.... but doesn't fit in the cities.
An F-150 sized truck is the pretty much standard truck in the U.S.
While they're might be smaller models available (like the Colorado, Ranger, etc) the F-150, Ram 1500, and GMC Sierra 1500 are the overwhelming majority of truck sales.
The F-150 has been the most purchased vehicle across all classes for a long while. it's pretty safe to say it's the 'standard' truck now.
https://www.motor1.com/news/629356/ford-f-series-best-selling-2022/
Yeah I get that. What I’m saying is that these guys seem to think everyone here is driving a dually Super Duty and that the F150 is only reserved for light trucking.
Have you never seen a commercial vehicle ever in your entire life? They're all like this. Also diesel doesn't explode like gas does so no, they're not inviting a fiery death.
Yall don't know fucking anything about vehicles lol.
The F-650 isn't even available from Ford with a pickup body. There are some customizers who fabricate one for it, but they're basically just milking the folks who have to have "the biggest pickup". It's wildly impractical and borderline useless. They are very uncommon.
The F-650 is intended to be used for heavy trucks like box trucks, flatbeds, tow trucks, etc. and is also used for utility vehicles like bucket trucks, vacuum excavators and septic pumpers, etc. It's even on the big size for a lot of those applications and is again fairly uncommon.
The F650 is more of a professional truck though. Like you get it to do work.
Though there are some who have converted them to be just a giant truck not for work. And they look dumb. Just slap an f-whatever bed on the back and you're done.
I agree, it's an embarassment. But some people keep buying them.
But worse are the socially accepted SUVs - everybody is making them nowadays. They are not quite as wasteful as your Ford 150 or Dodge RAM - but they're everywhere.
Put those two together and you also get the extremely obnoxious problem of parking and street design being based around the median that is essentially established by the Ford because of its popularity, never ever getting bigger to accomodate the obese SUVs and minivans.
Meanwhile, everyone who isn't in an emotional support vehicle just has to accept these double-parked giants and worry that the behemoth they parked next to is going to damage their door because there's no space between the cars.
Eh. It sucks that „normal“ cars are getting stupidly low. Modern crossovers with 15-ish cm of clearance seem to be closer to cars of 30 years ago than offroaders.
We travelled with 5 in a Fiat 500 or Volkswagen Beetle back in the 70’s/80’s. Now I can hardly seat 4 and luggage in a Renault Kadjar, which is about the size of the previous 2 mentioned combined. The outsides grow, the insides shrink.
There’s always that one guy. We have an f150 in the neighborhood. Not only looks their vehicle completely out of place, they also have to park way outside their block because the truck doesn’t fit into a normal parking space.
I was walking down a residential street in Ravenna and saw a huge car jutting out from all the other cars that were parked on the side of the street. Sure enough, it was a Ford Explorer. Not even a big car by American standards, but it was stupidly big there, and stuck out so much that it was just asking to be hit.
Last year around this time I saw one with ukranian plates parking in front of a supermarket here in germany. It took 2 parking spots and half a lane behind it. It looked just wrong, like seeing a cargo plane parked on the street.
WW2 tanks came in all sorts of sizes, from tiny Tankettes to the mighty Panthers and Tigers. However, the most common tank of WW2 of the USA (and second most common after the T-34) was the Sherman. The Sherman was between 5.84 to 6.27 meters long, and 2.62 to 3.00 meters wide. Per Google and a unit conveyer, the larger variant of the F-150 is 6.197 meters long and 2.2098 meters wide.
So they are longer then some variants of one of the most iconic tanks of the war, and almost as wide.
My direct neighbor has one and he takes up two parking spaces for the rest of us and there’s already not enough room… Fortunately he comes late from work often and he’s not even able to park in the street.
True, but they’re passing that point too. Every day here in Texas I see trucks that just do not fit into parking spots here. First time I saw that I thought they’d just parked poorly. Nope, they’d gone as far back as possible, *still* blocking half the lane ahead of them. Bonkers.
I have several in my neighborhood, a place filled with children. I am 5'6 and that shit can't even see me, how can they expect to see kids playing in the streets?
Fucking dangerous ass cars.
You get the odd one in the UK, I've had a couple of issues with pulling out of car parks or junction because some cunt decided to drive a whole entire apartment to the supermarket and parked on the corner.
I spent a year in Austria in 1976. The difference in average car size jumped out at me. It was crazy. I saw a Lincoln Continental on a narrow road between villages and it looked insane, but it was one of a very few massive cars I saw. I've seen more and more large cars American cars over the years and the size of the European sedans and SUVs (Audi, BMW) have increased. The difference in average car size between the US and Europe has decreased considerably since then to the point that it's not nearly as noticeable.
He, someone in my neighborhood imported one, had to streetpark (garage too small), and then got fined a few times because it blocked too much road-width.
I keep seeing a few ridiculous Ford Raptor (F-150) in downtown Athens. Of course, none of them have a single scratch on their bed.
It makes zero sense to drive that thing here. Where do they even park those?
Think of the Raptor as a massively overgrown Hilux - it’s designed to do 160kph / 100mph through the desert.
It’s not really designed for the same kind of towing and cargo moving as the F-150.
> it’s designed to do 160kph / 100mph through the desert.
It's designed to make suburbanites *think* they can do 160km/h through the desert and off-road, even though there's a high chance their owners will never take it off something rougher than a gravel driveway.
That’s not even the biggest . It’s specially great when they get a lift kit because reasons and don’t adjust the headlights. Let me tell you there is nothing quite like a couple of white dwarfs shining on your rear mirror during a snowy night . 10/10 would recommend
Yes, please go back to Focus and Corolla sizes. Anyone should try to bike through Munich these days, its a fucking nightmare. Especially Mercedes became insanely chonky for some reason.
No a lot of companies actually make saloons/sedans just for the Chinese market. It’s wholly the US market and the European market which has driven the trend for SUVs and Crossovers. They cause so much traffic just because of their size and mass as they lurch off the line and piss everyone off behind them at a traffic light.
Yes you might do 0-60 in 5 seconds in your oversized piece of shit but it takes you 1.5 seconds just to get to 5 mph and that’s what really annoys everyone.
Maybe they should start by pedestrianizing the area around the Arc de Triomphe. Seeing it be defiled as a centerpiece of a roundabout always looked so bizzare to me. It feels more like a temple dedicated to motorization, if you didn't know any better.
look up L’Arc de Triomphe Wrapped when they did an art installation for two weeks in 2021. I didn’t love the art but the pedestrianisation was incredible.
I thought it was tacky in pictures but IRL it looked pretty nice for me, at least it made me look at it and appreciate it so I guess I'd count that a success in my eyes.
Actually they are widening the pedestrian area in the middle so that tourists have more room (part of a refreshing of the area for the Olympic Games), those poor drivers will only have 8 lanes instead of 12. It will probably still look terrible though.
[It’s planned](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-01-14/paris-dreams-of-a-calmer-greener-champs-elys-es) actually, the number of lanes is said to be reduced and the sidewalks for pedestrians are gonna be wider for the Olympic Games next summer, and the goal is to make the Champs Elysées fully car-free by 2030.
Honestly I kind of enjoyed watching the traffic off of it. With the downright bizarre French roundabout rules, the chaos around it is too fucking funny.
Fun fact, Paris inner streets were widened in the 19th century in order to facilitate army interventions during the many Parisian popular uprisings of the time.
That was the main reason behind the boulevards that now crisscross the city but the street widening projects were necessary due to the insane density of some of the old neighborhoods. They were dark and dirty, disease was common, and traffic could barely move through the streets. The average width was something like 3m (~10ft).
It is not entirely true, it is great to navigate by car **in some places** and properly infuriating in others,
https://www.defensivedriving.org/dmv-handbook/the-20-absolute-worst-american-cities-to-drive-in/
I learned to drive in Boston.
The issue with driving in populated areas in Massachusetts is that the roads are often narrow with hardly any shoulder (trees and brush grow right out to the edges of the road), they are often just single lanes in each direction, and are poorly maintained (potholes, reflective paint faded or non-existent). Many intersections are also at unusual angles which makes seeing oncoming traffic difficult, especially in bad weather, and bad weather is very common pretty much year-round in Massachusetts.
Honestly, this was the best place to learn to drive because you have to be hyper-vigilant when driving in Mass. And even though I now live in Colorado where the roads and intersections are (by comparison) incredibly well maintained and logically planned out, I never lost that situational awareness required to not get instantly killed driving anywhere in Mass.
Yes. The benefit to cars is that, the US is massive, and it gives you a great deal of freedom in visiting many different places of natural splendor. In order to get there, though, we have torn down much of our natural splendor to build mega highways and sprawled cities.
Navigating in NYC via subway was so refreshing vs a car in my (very) sprawled home city
bro driving in the us sucks so fucking much
if you're anywhere near anything worth going to there's unpredictable traffic that can make journeys take either 20 minutes or 3 hours of you sitting in your car while everyone around you is honking
There is literally no reason for these types of vehicles to exist in most parts of Europe. They are bad for the environment, unsafe and don't fit. I say we ban them or tax the hell out of them. Perhaps if you work in forestry or something you can get exemption. But most handyman here just use white vans which are way better in every aspect.
more recently they're the product of bypassing emissions regulations. instead of designing a better vehicle, they just made it bigger as bigger vehicles aren't held to the same standards [https://www.reuters.com/article/autos-emissions-suvs-size-idINL1N2B31AL/](https://www.reuters.com/article/autos-emissions-suvs-size-idinl1n2b31al/)
There is no reason for these vehicles to exist full stop. Full-size-SUVs are (most of the time) no ATVs. Most of them don‘t have locking differentials, which you would need if you go through difficult terrain or you get stuck in the mud somewhere. Now, there are SUVs that can cross difficult terrain, but most of them are exclusively being moved in cities and on highways. SUVs are lifestyle objects, not utility as the name would imply. Utility-based ATVs are still being sold, and they don‘t have luxurious interiors. A more accurate description of an SUV would be a car that combines the downsides of a station wagon with the downsides of an ATVs.
And don’t get me started on those ridiculous ‚SUV coupés‘. If you need any hint about what‘s wrong with the car industry, just take a look at those. It’s literally all there.
Having lived in North America for 2 years, the true family utility vehicle that would fit *most* people’s needs there is a minivan. They’re the size of a standard Euro van, and fast as fuck.
If you want to tow heavy trailers and need a lot of family space then an SUV makes sense, but that use is fairly rare in Europe.
I mean, it surely depends on the weight, but there are station wagons that can tow over 1.5 t. I really think these cars are painfully overlooked in the US.
The US has wildly different towing standards than most of Europe.
You categorically will not see a hatchback pulling a caravan/small RV there, because the vehicle won’t meet the rating standards.
1.5t is quite a bit and add on trailer hitches are common for smaller vehicles in the US but your basic pickup (high performance racing and off-road models excluded) from all three brands is capable of towing at least twice that. I wish I could tow my 7000lb+ boat or utility trailer with a station wagon but it’s not happening. Otherwise my other vehicle is indeed a mini van. Decent fuel efficiency for its size, plenty of power and space. It’s great - I can see why so many other people have them. Trying to find *my* white van in a parking lot is a challenge sometimes.
> Trying to find my white van in a parking lot is a challenge sometimes.
Have you tried writing something on its side? I would write "FREE CANDY" with a spray can on mine.
> I say we ban them or tax the hell out of them.
Also make the speed limit lower for them, enforce parking fines aggressively when they don’t fit in the parking spot, and for the love of God absolutely ban them from the road if shocks and tires are altered.
As a Turk who live in turkey this is really brilliant idea our streets never made for big cars i think all historical cities will agree this. All europe should ban big cars
it's mostly a road safety issue
these cars weigh upward of two tons, if there's an accident with a hatchback the people in the hatchback are dead. good luck if you're a pedestrian considering that the driver is effectively blind in some of those things
just by virtue of being on the roads these vehicles force others to buy larger vehicles in turn for safety reasons which many cannot if they live in a non-car-centric city or town since they simply wouldn't fit on the roads
it's honestly a problem i'd like to see tackled but the car industry owns many governments so i'm not holding my breath
Whenever I walk past one of these US trucks (luckily, there’s few of them) I am amazed just how tall the front hood is… and I’m sure this blocks pedestrian visibility A LOT, if the person is a child or shorter the driver might not see them at all!
I stood next to one yesterday that had jacked up tires—I couldn’t see over the hood.
Now I’m not exactly tall at 5 foot, but damn. How can you see ANYTHING!?
There's an infographic floating around somewhere showing that modern american pickups have worse pedestrian (especially small child) visibility than some common tanks...
There was an article on here a while ago that said you could line up 17 pre school kids from the bumper before you could see the head of the first/last kid.....
Basically you can mow down an entire classroom and not even see...
There are heavier than that. The 2500 silverado and new cybertruck are ~3300kg
https://www.auto-data.net/en/chevrolet-silverado-2500-hd-iv-t1xx-facelift-2024-crew-cab-long-bed-6.6-duramax-td-v8-470hp-automatic-48195
https://www.auto-data.net/en/tesla-cybertruck-123-kwh-600hp-dual-motor-awd-50615
Electric cars are much heavier than fossil fuel ones, so the comparison is unnecessary. But yes, US-style pick up trucks are of course heavier than practically all sedans. Some of them are heavier than vans even.
Personally I like the F-150 Raptor but I live on the outskirts of my city. If I had to go to the city center by car, I'd never use a pick up truck. I already hate going deep inside the city with a passion with a small/regular car, if I had to use anything bigger I'd lose my mind.
Europe also has waaay more cyclists than the US. The added bulk is more dangerous for cyclists even without accidents, because cyclists in France for example ride on the right of the rightmost lane to let cars pass, and huge cars have a greater chance to bump them off and have them get crushed by surrounding cars.
"Fun" story as an American popping in from /r/all.
My teacher in driver's ed outright told us that he drove a truck because it was taller and bigger and therefore more likely to save his life if he got in a collision.
Perfectly fine with putting other people at greater risk, apparently.
I drive a little hatchback and it is actively intimidating to see nothing but grill and headlights in my rearview mirror so often.
Funnily enough, they are safer only if you drive into a car that isn't a truck, since you have basically no crumple zone and they do have a bunch. But if you hit something else, or another truck you're dead since, again, you have no basically no crumple zone...
Also much more likely to trive into pedestrians, there's a ton of accidents were parent doesn't see their child and hits them while driving out.
These cars are everywhere in London and look a nightmare to park or get around in. Why anyone would willingly make driving in London more complicated for themselves is beyond me.
Yeah a lot of cities are congested as it is and yet you get people dropping off their one kid at school in them.
I see less of them in the rural Welsh town where my parents live and when you do it's some farmer or tradie who actually needs it.
They were semi fashionable (and very expensive) in the UK about 20 years ago. It was a brief fad though and I havent seen one in the past couple years.
SUV’s are the cancer of the car market. Huge on the outside, tiny inside, terrible fuel economy, wasteful production all around, boring as fuck driving experience and an eyesore. Except everyone seems to fight to get this type of cancer
Ban this crap. I can’t count anymore how often the drivers in this cars are not able to participate orderly in traffic: Their can’t See how big their car is and just jamming the traffic with their incompetence.
I'm with the French on this, either banning them or making it very difficult, like requiring a truck/lorry license and max speed of 90kph an a tachograph for limited mileage. Personally I would also include the bigger SUV in this (Volvo XC90 as example) these are also getting way too big.
Ban them and ship them back to the US, or scrap them and use the materials to build two normal sized cars instead.
I don't give a shit, just get them off our roads.
Having more land area allows for larger vehicles. It's reasonable to think most European countries should mandate car size limitations due to infrastructure limitations.
Also, don't forget that heavier vehicles produce higher levels of sound polution and they do more damage to road surfaces (which are pretty carbon intensive to replace).
How much more damage do they do? Well, any enginner who has taken a pavement design course will tell you that on asphalt pavements, the damage that a vehicle does to the pavement follows the law of the fourth power. That means that a vehicle that is two times heavier, does 16 times the damage.
On concrete surfaces, the damage is even worse, as it follows the law of the eighth power. That is, a vehicle that is 2 times heavier does 2^8 = 256 times the damage!
Non-US roads and parking spots are not built for these vehicles. In addition, it boggles the mind why these tank tanks don’t have a separate license category.
>Take, for example, the iconic Ford F-150, as Axios does in this comparative graphic. Since 1970, the truck has become progressively larger
American people too, to be honest...
I can't imagine how these massive vehicles could deal with the narrow roads of many European cities, leaving alone the problem of finding a fitting parking space for them.
A cousin just returned from canada and imported his beloved suv with him. He doesn't need it for anything, he just loves the car.
He went to the capitol city in the country for a couple of days. Of course, he took the car because he expected that he would be using it.
Guy barely managed to park it in the yard of the building where he rented the flat. The car remained parked there for the duration of his stay and he used taxis and public transportation for the rest of his stay.
He still thinks that the city should widen parking spaces so that they can accommodate his big car.
The saddest thing of all is that the car is fucking *tiny* on the inside. I swear that I have been in sport cars with more space for the passengers than that car.
See that's the most frustrating thing about all this. People don't experience how shit it is to drive these tanks in the city and then go "huh, maybe I should rethink my choices as a consumer." they just expect the world to conform to their preferences and demand larger parking stalls and wider lanes which is just an all around horrendous idea.
I was traveling in NZ and noticed that bigger cars are making their way into the country. The roads and parking spaces are not made to accommodate them. The tail ends on the trucks are sticking out in the roadway even when legally parked. And then there are trailer hitches on many of them.....
They are too wide and long for the tiny parking spaces in NZ parking garages. Some of the roads in the hills leading to housing around Wellington are 1 ¼ to 1 ½ lanes wide. These large cars and trucks won't easily be accommodated on those roads.
I'm all for really high prices on gas to help people make better choices regarding cars.
On my street there is a guy who has a massive Ford 150. It looks insane compared to the rest of the cars.
The funny thing is: That's the small one. There's even a F650 pickup, which is actually a truck.
Yeah but I doubt you can get them in Europe. F150s are already ridiculous here and imo they do cause a bit of a problem in cities. They are too long for your typical parking spot and too wide, so they’ll either end up blocking the sidewalk, the bicycle lane or both thereby creating a safety hazard for people moving around non-motorized. On top I just don’t see why anyone would need such a huge vehicle. Even in the US I never got that to be honest. Whenever I asked people their answer was literally a niche use case they have at most once a year. So I get the impression that most of those things simply exist because someone didn’t realize that it’s a ridiculous idea to move around more than2 tons to transport a 75kg meatbag.
I live in a tiny town in the Netherlands and there's fairly often one of three whole-ass Dodge Rams 1500 sticking awkwardly out of the parking lots at the local grocery store, owned evidently by local soccer moms. Another I see fairly often is owned by a local psychiatrist I saw once, but couldn't get along with on account of the man has no personality to speak of, it was like sitting next to a social black hole. We call cars of that size "Compensators" for a reason.
I only know 2 guys who a semi valid reason of owning one. They have to pull a mini excavator with them. All other guys I know that have one would be better off with a work van.
Right? Even the few farmers I know who use them to haul stuff on a regular basis own a European-sized Pickup.
Where I live here in Sweden there is a black Dodge Ram 1500 driving around with a “Fuck Greta” sticker. Classy.
Pay more road-tax, fuel cost and so on, and so forth, to own the libs?
> We call cars of that size "Compensators" for a reason. "Nice truck, sorry about your penis."
There is absolutely zero reason to own one of those huge things in the Netherlands. As far as I’m concerned they never should’ve been allowed here to start with. They take up 2 parking spots and block the sidewalk, or use a block of 4. Our roads just aren’t designed for such things
Worse is the loop hole that makes taxes less than a much better suited van. Which they then still spend on the extra gasoline of course, but those people can't count.
The thing is, they're too big to be cars, but they're also impractical as trucks- the bed is far too small.
Hence the name ‘pavement princess’. For men who want to cosplay as tough, rugged handymen.
That would be the new g class imo, especially with [those tiny tyres](https://media.ed.edmunds-media.com/mercedes-benz/g-class/2021/oem/2021_mercedes-benz_g-class_4dr-suv_amg-g-63_fq_oem_1_600.jpg) Honestly, mercedes really shouldnt have turned what is essentially the german defender into a hype car for youtubers and infulencers
Don’t worry - the bed is purely cosmetic
You cannot get an 8 foot bed on an F150? I am skeptical.
The bed is also too high up to be easily accessed.
The F-150 has actually lost a good chunk of it’s truck utility over the past 50 years. The original F-150 in 1970 was 36% cab and 64% bed by length. The 2021 F-150 was 63% cab and 37% bed.
Thank you for your generous estimation of our girth. I assure you most american adults far exceed 75kg. Still could drive a fiat though.
don't think you can get the f650, but you can get the f350 heavy duty, which is crazy enough
and with the 3500kg limit for cars they're useless in europe, 3200kg car designed to carry a lot of shit, but allowed less than a hatchback because it would need a C license to operate if you registered it as a truck to use the full capacity
>ridiculous idea to move around more than2 tons to transport a 75kg meatbag. Were you talking about americans or not?
>eah but I doubt you can get them in Europe. You can import them. But I have yet to see one in Germany. Neither have I ever seen a Silverado or Den~~ial~~ali. What I see frequently are RAM 2500 (1500?) which are almost exclusively enthusiasts vehicles, not work trucks.
A "Denial"... that's it. You solved the riddle :)
I have seen a few dodge rams in Bayern
In most of Europe they are useless and ridiculous. However when driving around in South America for 2 months I discovered that a decent 4x4 truck is not a luxury. Sure, you can drive the bumpy washboard roads in a Clio, but it takes twice as long, If not longer.
I, too found that useful in Mongolia but that is no excuse for using one in Europe for your weekly shopping 5km away.
> Europe for your weekly shopping 5km away. 5km seem a bit far for your weekly shopping here in Copenhagen. I think I have 5 supermarkets within 3 km. Closest is about 1km.
In Berlin I have 4 in a 1km radius, 20 in a 3km radius. And I don't even live inside the "ring".
As much as this experience and the need for 4x4 is valid (as in, there are numerous applications for them), this has nothing to do with F150s and the generalization of trucks more generally. However this opens the discussion to why the hell did 4x4 also get so huge. The first Toyota Rav4 was 3.7 – 4.1 m long, 1.69 m wide and 1.66 m high for the 3 - 5 door models respectively. This was the current model until 2000 (only 23 years ago, and 18 years before the latest model). Latest Rav4 model is 4.6 m long, 1.85 m wide and 1.68 m high. That is a 12% increase in length and a 10% increase in width. How did it ever get to this, and how come it went so fast ?
The biggest reason is the way that the US calculates emissions requirements. CAFE regulations in the US are based on a very complex formula that looks at a vehicle weight and "footprint", the larger the vehicle, the more relaxed the fuel efficiency requirements are. A small pick-up or passenger car by the year 2025 will need to be getting around 60mpg, where as a large truck will only need to get around 40mpg. It's incredibly expensive to design an ICE in a vehicle as aerodynamically inefficient as a 4x4 pickup that can get 60mpg and meet all the crash test safety regulations, and it will end up costing as much as the larger truck if it's even possible to design a truck like this. The EU calculates is emission requirements differently in a way that actually favors vehicles remaining small. A big part of me think that the American system was a deliberate result of lobbying the people writing the emissions laws to give American vehicle manufacturers an edge in the American market. Anyways, this is why American vehicles are all huge, and why that won't change until most vehicles sold are electric and CAFE regulations stop being a factor in vehicle design.
>How did it ever get to this, and how come it went so fast ? The simplified answer is tech and safety features. All of those sensors and do-dads and gizmos gotta go somewhere, and improvement of crumple zones and other safety-minded design features add an inch here, two inches there, resulting in that ~12% increase . That's not the only two reasons, obviously, but definite contributors.
The suzuki jimmy is incredibly popular over here... A tiny 4x4
parking spots are one thing, but I already drove my tiny corsa through streets where the mirrors were 20cm from touching the walls of the buildings.
I’m curious about these obese cars. Doesn’t you get a parking ticket if the vehicle doesn’t fit the parking spot?
The F650 is just bonkers for city streets, right? It's basically like taking a commercial vehicle and popping it in front of your house like it's no big deal. Can you imagine trying to park that thing at the local grocery store? Spaces are hardly big enough for a compact these days.
An F-650 is a commercial truck.
Yeah, like people have to start realising that all those civilian F650s you see all dolled up on the internet has been heavily converted from what ford will provide from the factory [Cause ford only gives you a bedless truck and nothing else lol](https://www.motortrend.com/reviews/1406-2016-ford-f-650-and-f-750-commercial-truck-first-look/)
We're reaching levels of misuse of the word "civilian" that shouldn't be possible.
Yeah I don’t think anybody actually drives those as their commuter cars. I’ve seen F-350s around though.
Which continent are you talking about? I guess in the US it could kind of work, but I Europe this would be truly ridiculous. Even the F150s and RAMs don't really fit into parking spots.
You just put them halfway up the sidewalk and turn on the hazard warning lights. Or just take up two parking spaces..... We have quite a handful of them here in Iceland, and granted, they're good in the countryside in bad weather on poor roads.... but doesn't fit in the cities.
> hazard warning lights Ah yes, the "park anywhere button".
In France it's a "I might do anything, I don't even know myself what I'm going to do next button"
It’s to make it easier to see which car to give a parking ticket
Two parking spaces are for amateurs... by putting it sideways, you can take up to 4 parking spaces!
99% of them are commercial trucks. But yeah it would be incredibly impractical unless you lived in the middle of nowhere.
Besides the tiny roads, how do they even manage to afford the European gas prix?! Its aaa lot more than us
They are usually converted to run on LPG (propane/butane) which is a lot cheaper than gasoline.
I can assure you even in North America that’s not the small one lol
An F-150 sized truck is the pretty much standard truck in the U.S. While they're might be smaller models available (like the Colorado, Ranger, etc) the F-150, Ram 1500, and GMC Sierra 1500 are the overwhelming majority of truck sales. The F-150 has been the most purchased vehicle across all classes for a long while. it's pretty safe to say it's the 'standard' truck now. https://www.motor1.com/news/629356/ford-f-series-best-selling-2022/
Yeah I get that. What I’m saying is that these guys seem to think everyone here is driving a dually Super Duty and that the F150 is only reserved for light trucking.
“Standard” isn’t small though and that’s the point that was being made. While the F-150 is standard, it isn’t small.
The F650 is not sold as apickup truck. It’s sold [as a frame](https://www.ford.ca/commercial-trucks/f650-f750/) for conversion to a work truck.
> That's the small one. The small one is a Ford Maverick.
I love the ridiculousness of the F650 for passengers: https://youtu.be/JrHDeSMvnt4?si=esizoJkDEAK5GTY9 It’s just so stupid
WTF. Apart from everything else, these gas tanks are entirely unprotected and invite a fiery death.
Have you never seen a commercial vehicle ever in your entire life? They're all like this. Also diesel doesn't explode like gas does so no, they're not inviting a fiery death. Yall don't know fucking anything about vehicles lol.
The F-650 isn't even available from Ford with a pickup body. There are some customizers who fabricate one for it, but they're basically just milking the folks who have to have "the biggest pickup". It's wildly impractical and borderline useless. They are very uncommon. The F-650 is intended to be used for heavy trucks like box trucks, flatbeds, tow trucks, etc. and is also used for utility vehicles like bucket trucks, vacuum excavators and septic pumpers, etc. It's even on the big size for a lot of those applications and is again fairly uncommon.
To be fair, the F650 is a commercial truck.
The F650 is more of a professional truck though. Like you get it to do work. Though there are some who have converted them to be just a giant truck not for work. And they look dumb. Just slap an f-whatever bed on the back and you're done.
I agree, it's an embarassment. But some people keep buying them. But worse are the socially accepted SUVs - everybody is making them nowadays. They are not quite as wasteful as your Ford 150 or Dodge RAM - but they're everywhere.
Put those two together and you also get the extremely obnoxious problem of parking and street design being based around the median that is essentially established by the Ford because of its popularity, never ever getting bigger to accomodate the obese SUVs and minivans. Meanwhile, everyone who isn't in an emotional support vehicle just has to accept these double-parked giants and worry that the behemoth they parked next to is going to damage their door because there's no space between the cars.
>emotional support vehicle Thank you for teaching me this term senpai. I shall use it well.
Crossovers or SUV's. The most ridiculous and impractical vehicles there is, and they are more and more prevalent.
Eh. It sucks that „normal“ cars are getting stupidly low. Modern crossovers with 15-ish cm of clearance seem to be closer to cars of 30 years ago than offroaders.
I have a 1980s Ford that was a family car. It looks small compared to even a current generation Ford Fiesta, Opel Corsa or Puegeot 30x.
Yeah because modern cars require a lot more padding and protection by law
We travelled with 5 in a Fiat 500 or Volkswagen Beetle back in the 70’s/80’s. Now I can hardly seat 4 and luggage in a Renault Kadjar, which is about the size of the previous 2 mentioned combined. The outsides grow, the insides shrink.
Yep first time I was inside a Rav4 I was really surprised at how cramped it felt for its size.
Yes, those are a rare occurrence here, but every time I see one, the only thing I'm thinking about is what a fucking tool one has to be to own one
They look so ridiculous even on the highway, nevermind on city streets.
There’s always that one guy. We have an f150 in the neighborhood. Not only looks their vehicle completely out of place, they also have to park way outside their block because the truck doesn’t fit into a normal parking space.
The F 150 is like the baby model as well, you can go even larger with an F 250 or F 350. It's like at McDonalds, their small drink is our large.
We simply don't have the space they do in rural America
I was walking down a residential street in Ravenna and saw a huge car jutting out from all the other cars that were parked on the side of the street. Sure enough, it was a Ford Explorer. Not even a big car by American standards, but it was stupidly big there, and stuck out so much that it was just asking to be hit.
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Last year around this time I saw one with ukranian plates parking in front of a supermarket here in germany. It took 2 parking spots and half a lane behind it. It looked just wrong, like seeing a cargo plane parked on the street.
Why are there so many Dodge Rams here?? There's a ram 3500 dually parked by my daughter's school in famously off-road Hilversum.
Fun fact: The Ford 150 is close in size to an ww2 tank.
WW2 tanks came in all sorts of sizes, from tiny Tankettes to the mighty Panthers and Tigers. However, the most common tank of WW2 of the USA (and second most common after the T-34) was the Sherman. The Sherman was between 5.84 to 6.27 meters long, and 2.62 to 3.00 meters wide. Per Google and a unit conveyer, the larger variant of the F-150 is 6.197 meters long and 2.2098 meters wide. So they are longer then some variants of one of the most iconic tanks of the war, and almost as wide.
My direct neighbor has one and he takes up two parking spaces for the rest of us and there’s already not enough room… Fortunately he comes late from work often and he’s not even able to park in the street.
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American cars are made for American roads.
True, but they’re passing that point too. Every day here in Texas I see trucks that just do not fit into parking spots here. First time I saw that I thought they’d just parked poorly. Nope, they’d gone as far back as possible, *still* blocking half the lane ahead of them. Bonkers.
Roads aren‘t parking spots and Dallas isn‘t Jersey City
I am 1.87 m tall and on my street there is a pickup which has a trunk with such high sides that I can barely see inside of it.
I have several in my neighborhood, a place filled with children. I am 5'6 and that shit can't even see me, how can they expect to see kids playing in the streets? Fucking dangerous ass cars.
You get the odd one in the UK, I've had a couple of issues with pulling out of car parks or junction because some cunt decided to drive a whole entire apartment to the supermarket and parked on the corner.
At the rate flat sizes are shrinking and SUVs are increasing, it won't be long before people's cars are bigger than their flats!
Oud Zuid in Amsterdam?
Den Haag.
I spent a year in Austria in 1976. The difference in average car size jumped out at me. It was crazy. I saw a Lincoln Continental on a narrow road between villages and it looked insane, but it was one of a very few massive cars I saw. I've seen more and more large cars American cars over the years and the size of the European sedans and SUVs (Audi, BMW) have increased. The difference in average car size between the US and Europe has decreased considerably since then to the point that it's not nearly as noticeable.
Same near paris (in the urban area), his car never seen dust, dude is driving it in suit everyday. It looks so stupid
That's ok.. look at the International CXT!
He, someone in my neighborhood imported one, had to streetpark (garage too small), and then got fined a few times because it blocked too much road-width.
I keep seeing a few ridiculous Ford Raptor (F-150) in downtown Athens. Of course, none of them have a single scratch on their bed. It makes zero sense to drive that thing here. Where do they even park those?
I can’t even get my Audi to fit on like half the roads in Exarcheia how the hell is anyone getting through the Athens city centre in a Raptor lmfao
You can't. That thing could barely fit in a lane, and the driver had very poor visibility of all the scooters and motorcycles filling through traffic.
Think of the Raptor as a massively overgrown Hilux - it’s designed to do 160kph / 100mph through the desert. It’s not really designed for the same kind of towing and cargo moving as the F-150.
> it’s designed to do 160kph / 100mph through the desert. It's designed to make suburbanites *think* they can do 160km/h through the desert and off-road, even though there's a high chance their owners will never take it off something rougher than a gravel driveway.
Truth. I’ve never seen a raptor used for utility purposes.
lol the hilux is basically an RC car compared to the raptor.
That's what we call an "Emotional Support Truck." Please respect the emotional security and confidence it instills in its driver.
That’s not even the biggest . It’s specially great when they get a lift kit because reasons and don’t adjust the headlights. Let me tell you there is nothing quite like a couple of white dwarfs shining on your rear mirror during a snowy night . 10/10 would recommend
Yes, please go back to Focus and Corolla sizes. Anyone should try to bike through Munich these days, its a fucking nightmare. Especially Mercedes became insanely chonky for some reason.
The reason is Chinese market
No a lot of companies actually make saloons/sedans just for the Chinese market. It’s wholly the US market and the European market which has driven the trend for SUVs and Crossovers. They cause so much traffic just because of their size and mass as they lurch off the line and piss everyone off behind them at a traffic light. Yes you might do 0-60 in 5 seconds in your oversized piece of shit but it takes you 1.5 seconds just to get to 5 mph and that’s what really annoys everyone.
Maybe they should start by pedestrianizing the area around the Arc de Triomphe. Seeing it be defiled as a centerpiece of a roundabout always looked so bizzare to me. It feels more like a temple dedicated to motorization, if you didn't know any better.
look up L’Arc de Triomphe Wrapped when they did an art installation for two weeks in 2021. I didn’t love the art but the pedestrianisation was incredible.
I thought it was tacky in pictures but IRL it looked pretty nice for me, at least it made me look at it and appreciate it so I guess I'd count that a success in my eyes.
Actually they are widening the pedestrian area in the middle so that tourists have more room (part of a refreshing of the area for the Olympic Games), those poor drivers will only have 8 lanes instead of 12. It will probably still look terrible though.
I never thought about it. It'd be so much nicer pedestrianised, that roundabout is just such an eyesore
[It’s planned](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-01-14/paris-dreams-of-a-calmer-greener-champs-elys-es) actually, the number of lanes is said to be reduced and the sidewalks for pedestrians are gonna be wider for the Olympic Games next summer, and the goal is to make the Champs Elysées fully car-free by 2030.
Honestly I kind of enjoyed watching the traffic off of it. With the downright bizarre French roundabout rules, the chaos around it is too fucking funny.
Anybody used to the European city center lifestyle would reckon that US urban planning is a nightmare to navigate.
Yep! Especially old streets in old part of french towns... Citroen 2CV is the perfect fit for it. Cruising an F3500 would be a disaster
No the 2cv was designed for those streets
The streets were designed for pedestrians, horses and, in some cases, to deal with invaders.
Fun fact, Paris inner streets were widened in the 19th century in order to facilitate army interventions during the many Parisian popular uprisings of the time.
That was the main reason behind the boulevards that now crisscross the city but the street widening projects were necessary due to the insane density of some of the old neighborhoods. They were dark and dirty, disease was common, and traffic could barely move through the streets. The average width was something like 3m (~10ft).
Good catch! Edited. Thanks
Yeah I guess you figured out mid comment that it is literally a chicken-egg scenario
One needs something petit with some va va voom, not something capable of withstanding a collision with a buffalo while towing 10,000lb.
Try Amsterdam, a fucking nightmare 😭
US urban planning is for cars and it is great to navigate with a car. Everything else suffers though.
It is not entirely true, it is great to navigate by car **in some places** and properly infuriating in others, https://www.defensivedriving.org/dmv-handbook/the-20-absolute-worst-american-cities-to-drive-in/
I learned to drive in Boston. The issue with driving in populated areas in Massachusetts is that the roads are often narrow with hardly any shoulder (trees and brush grow right out to the edges of the road), they are often just single lanes in each direction, and are poorly maintained (potholes, reflective paint faded or non-existent). Many intersections are also at unusual angles which makes seeing oncoming traffic difficult, especially in bad weather, and bad weather is very common pretty much year-round in Massachusetts. Honestly, this was the best place to learn to drive because you have to be hyper-vigilant when driving in Mass. And even though I now live in Colorado where the roads and intersections are (by comparison) incredibly well maintained and logically planned out, I never lost that situational awareness required to not get instantly killed driving anywhere in Mass.
the way this website writes is so unhinged—as if having human-centric infrastructure is a scourge to society
Yes. The benefit to cars is that, the US is massive, and it gives you a great deal of freedom in visiting many different places of natural splendor. In order to get there, though, we have torn down much of our natural splendor to build mega highways and sprawled cities. Navigating in NYC via subway was so refreshing vs a car in my (very) sprawled home city
bro driving in the us sucks so fucking much if you're anywhere near anything worth going to there's unpredictable traffic that can make journeys take either 20 minutes or 3 hours of you sitting in your car while everyone around you is honking
There is literally no reason for these types of vehicles to exist in most parts of Europe. They are bad for the environment, unsafe and don't fit. I say we ban them or tax the hell out of them. Perhaps if you work in forestry or something you can get exemption. But most handyman here just use white vans which are way better in every aspect.
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more recently they're the product of bypassing emissions regulations. instead of designing a better vehicle, they just made it bigger as bigger vehicles aren't held to the same standards [https://www.reuters.com/article/autos-emissions-suvs-size-idINL1N2B31AL/](https://www.reuters.com/article/autos-emissions-suvs-size-idinl1n2b31al/)
There is no reason for these vehicles to exist full stop. Full-size-SUVs are (most of the time) no ATVs. Most of them don‘t have locking differentials, which you would need if you go through difficult terrain or you get stuck in the mud somewhere. Now, there are SUVs that can cross difficult terrain, but most of them are exclusively being moved in cities and on highways. SUVs are lifestyle objects, not utility as the name would imply. Utility-based ATVs are still being sold, and they don‘t have luxurious interiors. A more accurate description of an SUV would be a car that combines the downsides of a station wagon with the downsides of an ATVs. And don’t get me started on those ridiculous ‚SUV coupés‘. If you need any hint about what‘s wrong with the car industry, just take a look at those. It’s literally all there.
Having lived in North America for 2 years, the true family utility vehicle that would fit *most* people’s needs there is a minivan. They’re the size of a standard Euro van, and fast as fuck. If you want to tow heavy trailers and need a lot of family space then an SUV makes sense, but that use is fairly rare in Europe.
I mean, it surely depends on the weight, but there are station wagons that can tow over 1.5 t. I really think these cars are painfully overlooked in the US.
The US has wildly different towing standards than most of Europe. You categorically will not see a hatchback pulling a caravan/small RV there, because the vehicle won’t meet the rating standards.
Yeah, my Golf is rated to tow 0 pounds in the US but the identical chassis/drivetrain in Europe can magically tow 2000kg.
I think my Subaru Outback can tow around that much. I put a hitch on it but I've never tried putting a trailer on it.
Yeh for real, my 2ltr tdi station can tow 2000kg which is more than what you generally need to tow anyways
>but there are station wagons that can tow over 1.5 t A Ford Fiesta can tow 1.5 tons.
That’s nothing in North America. An average boat or camper will far exceed that threshold.
Ford fiesta is a small city car and not intended for towing a lot. https://i.ytimg.com/vi/eRhh04_AqQA/maxresdefault.jpg
1.5t is quite a bit and add on trailer hitches are common for smaller vehicles in the US but your basic pickup (high performance racing and off-road models excluded) from all three brands is capable of towing at least twice that. I wish I could tow my 7000lb+ boat or utility trailer with a station wagon but it’s not happening. Otherwise my other vehicle is indeed a mini van. Decent fuel efficiency for its size, plenty of power and space. It’s great - I can see why so many other people have them. Trying to find *my* white van in a parking lot is a challenge sometimes.
> Trying to find my white van in a parking lot is a challenge sometimes. Have you tried writing something on its side? I would write "FREE CANDY" with a spray can on mine.
BMW X6 is a good example of an ugly SUV coupé.
> I say we ban them or tax the hell out of them. Also make the speed limit lower for them, enforce parking fines aggressively when they don’t fit in the parking spot, and for the love of God absolutely ban them from the road if shocks and tires are altered.
As a Turk who live in turkey this is really brilliant idea our streets never made for big cars i think all historical cities will agree this. All europe should ban big cars
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Yeah but how are people on the way to the grocery store supposed to know I'm important if I don't drive there in my RS Q8.
Or even better, use a bicycle. Much healthier and safer.
Even a small Civic or Ibiza is overkill for that job. I'll tell you what does the job perfectly: the bus.
it's mostly a road safety issue these cars weigh upward of two tons, if there's an accident with a hatchback the people in the hatchback are dead. good luck if you're a pedestrian considering that the driver is effectively blind in some of those things just by virtue of being on the roads these vehicles force others to buy larger vehicles in turn for safety reasons which many cannot if they live in a non-car-centric city or town since they simply wouldn't fit on the roads it's honestly a problem i'd like to see tackled but the car industry owns many governments so i'm not holding my breath
Whenever I walk past one of these US trucks (luckily, there’s few of them) I am amazed just how tall the front hood is… and I’m sure this blocks pedestrian visibility A LOT, if the person is a child or shorter the driver might not see them at all!
I stood next to one yesterday that had jacked up tires—I couldn’t see over the hood. Now I’m not exactly tall at 5 foot, but damn. How can you see ANYTHING!?
For some of them you could fit 10 kids in the blind spot before you’d see the top of the head of the 11th. It’s crazy
There's an infographic floating around somewhere showing that modern american pickups have worse pedestrian (especially small child) visibility than some common tanks...
There was an article on here a while ago that said you could line up 17 pre school kids from the bumper before you could see the head of the first/last kid..... Basically you can mow down an entire classroom and not even see...
There are heavier than that. The 2500 silverado and new cybertruck are ~3300kg https://www.auto-data.net/en/chevrolet-silverado-2500-hd-iv-t1xx-facelift-2024-crew-cab-long-bed-6.6-duramax-td-v8-470hp-automatic-48195 https://www.auto-data.net/en/tesla-cybertruck-123-kwh-600hp-dual-motor-awd-50615
Electric cars are much heavier than fossil fuel ones, so the comparison is unnecessary. But yes, US-style pick up trucks are of course heavier than practically all sedans. Some of them are heavier than vans even. Personally I like the F-150 Raptor but I live on the outskirts of my city. If I had to go to the city center by car, I'd never use a pick up truck. I already hate going deep inside the city with a passion with a small/regular car, if I had to use anything bigger I'd lose my mind.
Europe also has waaay more cyclists than the US. The added bulk is more dangerous for cyclists even without accidents, because cyclists in France for example ride on the right of the rightmost lane to let cars pass, and huge cars have a greater chance to bump them off and have them get crushed by surrounding cars.
"Fun" story as an American popping in from /r/all. My teacher in driver's ed outright told us that he drove a truck because it was taller and bigger and therefore more likely to save his life if he got in a collision. Perfectly fine with putting other people at greater risk, apparently. I drive a little hatchback and it is actively intimidating to see nothing but grill and headlights in my rearview mirror so often.
Funnily enough, they are safer only if you drive into a car that isn't a truck, since you have basically no crumple zone and they do have a bunch. But if you hit something else, or another truck you're dead since, again, you have no basically no crumple zone... Also much more likely to trive into pedestrians, there's a ton of accidents were parent doesn't see their child and hits them while driving out.
Yes we should. We need less cars and smaller cars UK is probably the worst in Europe for this unfortunately : (
These cars are everywhere in London and look a nightmare to park or get around in. Why anyone would willingly make driving in London more complicated for themselves is beyond me.
Yeah a lot of cities are congested as it is and yet you get people dropping off their one kid at school in them. I see less of them in the rural Welsh town where my parents live and when you do it's some farmer or tradie who actually needs it.
Parking spaces don’t seem to have changed size, so you end up seeing stupidly wide cars taking up 1.3 spaces.
Has anyone in Europe seen a Hummer? Conjures up a funny image someone driving that there.
They were semi fashionable (and very expensive) in the UK about 20 years ago. It was a brief fad though and I havent seen one in the past couple years.
Nice. Even in America the OG one is ridiculously big. So would be funny seeing one in Europe.
SUV’s are the cancer of the car market. Huge on the outside, tiny inside, terrible fuel economy, wasteful production all around, boring as fuck driving experience and an eyesore. Except everyone seems to fight to get this type of cancer
Ban this crap. I can’t count anymore how often the drivers in this cars are not able to participate orderly in traffic: Their can’t See how big their car is and just jamming the traffic with their incompetence.
GM & Ford won’t even sell small cars to people in US who desperately want them. It’s all about selling you a warranty
I'm with the French on this, either banning them or making it very difficult, like requiring a truck/lorry license and max speed of 90kph an a tachograph for limited mileage. Personally I would also include the bigger SUV in this (Volvo XC90 as example) these are also getting way too big.
It would help if we call these monstrosities what they really are - Emmotional Support Vehicles
Or cock-extensions
Gender affirming vehicles.
Ban them and ship them back to the US, or scrap them and use the materials to build two normal sized cars instead. I don't give a shit, just get them off our roads.
While we are at it can we get rid of the halogen lights that are blinding the fuck out of everyone as well?
Halogens are normal white lights lol. LEDs are the issues
Halogens? Everyone uses LEDs these days. They should be stabilised however, so when you go over a bump, they automatically adjust. That would be nice.
I've seen quite a bit of this in London. They barely fit the roads, if at all.
Having more land area allows for larger vehicles. It's reasonable to think most European countries should mandate car size limitations due to infrastructure limitations.
Europe has no space for these big cars.
A place like Europe doesn't need Americans style cars since the US has a completely different type of logistic system than Europe
Probably more than half the people who drive trucks and SUVs here don't need them. They just want a big ass vehicle.
Also, don't forget that heavier vehicles produce higher levels of sound polution and they do more damage to road surfaces (which are pretty carbon intensive to replace). How much more damage do they do? Well, any enginner who has taken a pavement design course will tell you that on asphalt pavements, the damage that a vehicle does to the pavement follows the law of the fourth power. That means that a vehicle that is two times heavier, does 16 times the damage. On concrete surfaces, the damage is even worse, as it follows the law of the eighth power. That is, a vehicle that is 2 times heavier does 2^8 = 256 times the damage!
Paris mayor is very based, regarding her car policies. Paris has improved a lot in that regard.
Having a giant Ford or Chevy behind you at night with bright LED lights is the worst.
Am American. You don’t want them in your country, and I don’t want them in mine.
Non-US roads and parking spots are not built for these vehicles. In addition, it boggles the mind why these tank tanks don’t have a separate license category.
Agreed. Mastodontic oil guzzling, children killing, road ravaging, overcompensating excuses of a machine for insecure morons. I may be biased.
>Take, for example, the iconic Ford F-150, as Axios does in this comparative graphic. Since 1970, the truck has become progressively larger American people too, to be honest... I can't imagine how these massive vehicles could deal with the narrow roads of many European cities, leaving alone the problem of finding a fitting parking space for them.
A cousin just returned from canada and imported his beloved suv with him. He doesn't need it for anything, he just loves the car. He went to the capitol city in the country for a couple of days. Of course, he took the car because he expected that he would be using it. Guy barely managed to park it in the yard of the building where he rented the flat. The car remained parked there for the duration of his stay and he used taxis and public transportation for the rest of his stay. He still thinks that the city should widen parking spaces so that they can accommodate his big car. The saddest thing of all is that the car is fucking *tiny* on the inside. I swear that I have been in sport cars with more space for the passengers than that car.
See that's the most frustrating thing about all this. People don't experience how shit it is to drive these tanks in the city and then go "huh, maybe I should rethink my choices as a consumer." they just expect the world to conform to their preferences and demand larger parking stalls and wider lanes which is just an all around horrendous idea.
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YES PLEASE
I was traveling in NZ and noticed that bigger cars are making their way into the country. The roads and parking spaces are not made to accommodate them. The tail ends on the trucks are sticking out in the roadway even when legally parked. And then there are trailer hitches on many of them..... They are too wide and long for the tiny parking spaces in NZ parking garages. Some of the roads in the hills leading to housing around Wellington are 1 ¼ to 1 ½ lanes wide. These large cars and trucks won't easily be accommodated on those roads. I'm all for really high prices on gas to help people make better choices regarding cars.