Why some people drive pickups and SUVs

[Just_a_fan]

I have not opened this thread to generally criticise people who have a good conscience about their personal choice of transport. Everyone who has good reasons to use these vehicles has my personal blessings to carry on- as they would anyway. I mainly wanted to create a bit of awareness with people who never thought about their choices and how they are perceived by other participants on the roads.

No, you opened the thread to moan about something you personally don't like or see the need for. Your choice of "humour" and words such as "vanity" and "foolishness" show that perfectly.

For you, the use of a pedal cycle, motorbike and small car works well, as does public transport. Great. For others, those things don't work well. For example, for many public transport is either non-existent or very fragmented.

I'm actually a bit surprised how many people down vote my musings and I believe that there is a big dose of bad conscience involved if people cannot deal with the realities and have a proper discussion where they can make their points in writing.

They down voted you because you basically insulted them and their choices.

Down voting opposing opinion because you don't agree with the writer is poor style in my view.

Insulting people's choices is poor style in my view.

As usual Tomba gave us a very nice and comprehensive comment how the continental European countries view this issue and deal with it on a fiscal basis. =D> Kudos for that. I could not have put it any better.

Yes, continental Europeans have a certain view on how things should be done. Other prople have different views on how things should be done. For example, Germany is shutting down nuclear power and hoping to meet its electrical generation needs in other ways. Many other countries realise that nuclear power is just about the only way to meet current and future power requirements without risking covering the world in useless wind turbines, for example. Quite how all the electric vehicles that some foretell will be charged without massive increases in power generation is one "elephant in the room".

Does my own choice of a 4x4 mean the world is at risk? No. No it doesn't. Not even a little bit.

If you want to actually control CO2, and that is still a debatable issue as CO2 is just one cog in a very complicated system, then every person should be given a carbon allowance. You choose how you use it. Want to drive a 4x4? Fine, use up more of your allowance (although new generation 4x4 are almost as good as cars in this). You choose how you spend your allowance and I'll choose how I use mine. That would be a truely democratic way of approaching it - so Europe will never do such a thing as they don't really understand democracy; they just understand federal bureaucracy.

[Pup]

In my country 99.9% of all SUV owners live in City and only uses the SUV because it´s a status thing.
Manufacturers do not even build the cars for going off-road. They are built solely for driving on tarmac.

If you need a car to do proper off-roading, not just muddy roads which can be driven on even with supercars then buy a proper off-road vehicle.
Those will actually cover ground unlike the X5/6, Cayenne, Q7, etc.

Depends on what you need. In my case, I don't need true off-road capability, but I do need some amount of suspension travel and I certainly need to avoid getting stuck just by putting a wheel in those inevitable job-site mudholes. And even on dry days, the 4WD keeps me from the occasional spin on gravel, which is something you want to avoid when the idiot window guy has just unloaded $50 grand worth of glass right on the access drive. Helps, too, on steep gravel drives. But if it weren't for the need for added headroom, I'd be fine in a Subaru or something similar. I've yet to figure out exactly what need is being met by pseudo-SUV's like the X6, so I guess we all have our personal hangups about what other people drive.

Frankly, I've run into more pickup and true off-road owners who have more car than they need more than I do the urban SUV owners. Just last week on vacation, my wife and I were being shuttled up a admittedly-bad mountain road to do some bike riding. On the way we came across a group of ten or so Jeep Wranglers, and our driver told us that they were part of a Jeep tour that comes through once a week. Apparently the road that we were on was the pinnacle of their experience for which they paid $$$ to go test their off-road capabilities. And we pass them in a ratty old Ford passenger van. Same thing when I was in South Africa once - the guy we stayed with took us out on these nicely groomed gravel roads in his Defender all the while doing his rant about how silly Americans don't know what it's like to really need 4WD, etc. (Off-topic rant: it always amazes me how freely foreigners are willing to insult Americans to their face. It's not as if I weigh 300lbs, carry a big mac and a gun around with me while wearing a Bush '04 t-shirt. You'd think the very presence of a thin, active, liberal american would challenge their prejudice just a bit.)

I like my X5 because it's has pretty much exactly the capability that I need, plus it's comfortable enough to use as a daily driver and not something I'm reluctant to ask a client to sit in. Plus it handles better than most cars, and really isn't that big, at least by today's standards. And it's stood up to ten years of abuse and still looks nice and drives well. My only problem is the price, and when it comes time to replace it, I think I'll look at an X3 or similar, or maybe buy used. Actually, I'm really interested to see what the new Tesla SUV will be like.

[WhiteBlue]

I'm actually a bit surprised how many people down vote my musings and I believe that there is a big dose of bad conscience involved if people cannot deal with the realities and have a proper discussion where they can make their points in writing.

They down voted you because you basically insulted them and their choices.

Down voting opposing opinion because you don't agree with the writer is poor style in my view.

Insulting people's choices is poor style in my view.

Perhaps you get a bit easily insulted and a bunch of others with you by thoughts that are perfectly legitimate and are shared by many as the quotes in this thread show. If the shoe doesn't fit don't put it on.

When Pup mentioned that I had a bit of an unbalanced view in my opening post I have changed my position. That did not stop the heavy car fan brigade to down vote the other more balanced posts as well.

The discussion reminds me of the issue of non smoker protection which is conducted by smokers with a similar emotional involvement that the gas guzzling fans show here. Is it also a kind of addiction to select transports which are designed for other purposes to cruise to the coffee shop or the next bar for a show off. Do you deny that those things do happen?

I'm perfectly fine with the proposal that people should have their personal carbon budget. I would have no problem with that. But I would doubt that the more wasteful countries would set the cap at a point where the whole world would enjoy a sustainable development for everyone.

Incidentally most countries that have wasteful use of energy in mobility also waste a lot of fuel that goes into heating/cooling of buildings and into the electricity generation. The mobility use btw is much smaller than the other two sectors.

To all the fans of nuclear energy I would recommend an excursion to Chernobyl or Fukushima. The damages from such a catastrophic failure by far outstrip the cost of converting the national energy economy of a mid sized country to run on 80% renewable energies until 2050. That btw is the plan in Germany and we are well on our way to achieve it. The target wasn't selected willy nilly. We need to achieve it in order to fulfil our commitments from international treaties and to do our part to contain the projected heating of the atmosphere to a reasonable degree.

To rely on nuclear power is contra productive to our goal. You basically cannot have renewable generation capacities above 40-50% of your demand and keep a must run base load generation capacity from nuclear and slow coal fired power stations. If you do keep those inflexible capacities they cannot work economically with the volatile nature of photovoltaic and wind generation. From a certain percentage of volatile generation you are committed to invest into short term storage such as redox-flow-battries, big water pumping reservoirs or longer term storage such as power-to-natural gas technology. You also find that you need to push combined heat and power generation which isn't feasible with coal and nuclear GigaWatt installations. You need natural gas powered CHP plants of small, medium and mini size to do that and those plants need to have relatively large heat storage reservoirs to enable you to run the power generation in the off periods when wind and sun is down. We have wonderful scientific studies on that which the general public in Germany only took to heart after Fukushima. Much of the technology we are developing will become nice exports for countries which still have no focus on the use of renewable energies and will find themselves in difficulties soon.

[SectorOne]

In my country 99.9% of all SUV owners live in City and only uses the SUV because it´s a status thing.
Manufacturers do not even build the cars for going off-road. They are built solely for driving on tarmac.

If you need a car to do proper off-roading, not just muddy roads which can be driven on even with supercars then buy a proper off-road vehicle.
Those will actually cover ground unlike the X5/6, Cayenne, Q7, etc.

Depends on what you need. In my case, I don't need true off-road capability, but I do need some amount of suspension travel and I certainly need to avoid getting stuck just by putting a wheel in those inevitable job-site mudholes. And even on dry days, the 4WD keeps me from the occasional spin on gravel, which is something you want to avoid when the idiot window guy has just unloaded $50 grand worth of glass right on the access drive. Helps, too, on steep gravel drives. But if it weren't for the need for added headroom, I'd be fine in a Subaru or something similar. I've yet to figure out exactly what need is being met by pseudo-SUV's like the X6, so I guess we all have our personal hangups about what other people drive.

So basically the only real reason you are driving a SUV is because you need added headroom?
And you haven´t understood the X6 which is a X5 with a different roof on it

Unless people are logging 3.5 ton trailers everyday there´s way better cars for the job.
Similar cars to X1 for example.
Lots of suspension travel unless you are doing the Dakar rally. 4WD, can go up hills and over gravel easily.
And you´ll save an enormous amount of money.

I can definitely understand pickup owners.
Those cars actually have a unique purpose (unlike as i said before, logging 3,5 ton trailers)
A Panamera can tow 2.5 ton so a car of that class with a good engine is also capable of towing some heavy stuff without any
problems.

[bhall]

Oh, irony, I love you so much.

To those who tearfully lament the wastefulness of SUVs and the idiocy of their owners, I think it might be a good idea to find a hobby other than Formula One. There's nothing environmentally-friendly about a mass-marketing exercise in which companies, whose livelihoods inherently depend upon polluting the world around us, expend massive amounts of electricity and fossil fuels to power wind tunnels and CFD supercomputers to design and construct racecars that are hauled around the globe, along with hundreds of personnel and hundreds of tons of equipment, in dozens of fuel-thirsty trucks and aircraft 20 times a year to put on a show in front of thousands of people who all wasted varying amounts of resources to watch cars drive around a loop.

[Richard]

If my wife's "Ertarz penis" (needed for work) is evil for it's fuel consumption (35mpg) and being clean without scratches, then my two seater convertible (20mpg) is the devil incarnate.

Ergo ban fast cars because they are worse than an SUV. That'll be popular on here!

Of course we need to factor in the mileage. The two seater is only a weekend car running up 1000 miles per year, and is tucked up in a garage all winter.

I commute to work by train.

I often cycle to work in the summer along a canal with kingfishers and past flowering meadows with butterflies.

We have a little Fiat Panda for our winter run about. =D>

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.

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The Panda is 4wd.

[Pup]

So basically the only real reason you are driving a SUV is because you need added headroom?

As opposed to a heavy duty 4WD car with decent ground clearance, like an Outback or similar? Yes - no need even for either the 'basically' or the 'real'.

And you haven´t understood the X6 which is a X5 with a different roof on it

I understand the difference, which is why I don't understand the utility. But like I said, it's a personal hang-up and I'm sure there's a market or else they wouldn't still be making it.

Unless people are logging 3.5 ton trailers everyday there´s way better cars for the job.
Similar cars to X1 for example.
Lots of suspension travel unless you are doing the Dakar rally. 4WD, can go up hills and over gravel easily.

There's no magic here: apart from manufacturing differences, ground clearance + headroom will give you a car of a certain height. When I bought my X5, the X3 and X1 weren't around and cars like the Outback were a good bit smaller than they are today. These days, there's not much difference from what I can tell - the new X3 is practically as large as my older X5. An outback is maybe 2" shorter than my car at most?* At that point, we're splitting hairs over what gets called a car vs an SUV, imo. So, like I said - when it comes time to replace my X5, I'll check out my options just like I did when I bought it. Hopefully, that won't be for a while.

One note about ground clearance - a few inches can make a big difference. You won't go very far taking something like an X5 on the Dakar, btw, nor over rocks, and the stock tires won't do much for you in snow or mud. But, pop a standard car over a 6" curb that has a mudhole on the other side, and you'll instantly feel the need for higher ground clearance. I think my car has a bit over 8" clearance, and I really wish I had a bit more. You might not need that, but I often do.

When I was growing up, my mom shuttled us around in a 1972 Ford LTD wagon with a 460 V8. If you want to talk about absurdly big, heavy, gas guzzling cars, let's start there. At least with my X5, I don't have to duck the boom when making a turn.

* just looked it up - my X5 is 67.5" tall, and a new Outback is 65.8", so 1.7" difference between a "car" and an "SUV".

[flynfrog]

In my garage I have common ground WB. I took flawless German engineering. Tore out the worthless under-powered ship anchor in the front. Shoved in a 6L motor from a Chevy truck. Add a turbo and bam the perfect car.

[flynfrog]

http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/155193/thanks

this pretty much sums up the hybrid crowd for me.

[WhiteBlue]

In my garage I have common ground WB. I took flawless German engineering. Tore out the worthless under-powered ship anchor in the front. Shoved in a 6L motor from a Chevy truck. Add a turbo and bam the perfect car.

http://i1191.photobucket.com/albums/z46 ... fdfb1d.jpg

If that floats your boat. But why are you in the market to sell it as you said?

[flynfrog]

I have a 7.3L turbo diesel truck to tow the race trailer that hasn't left my driveway in a year and a half. My DD is a TDI Golf.

[WhiteBlue]

It sounds like renting for occasional use was a good piece of advice then. No idea who mentioned it but it seems to make sense if you use it only once or twice a year. I keep thinking of selling my motor bike as I hardly drive more than 1000 km a year. But I have grown attached to it over the decades and I see it as a collectible item now. It's not taking a lot of space in the garage though.

[flynfrog]

It sounds like renting for occasional use was a good piece of advice then. No idea who mentioned it but it seems to make sense if you use it only once or twice a year. I keep thinking of selling my motor bike as I hardly drive more than 1000 km a year. But I have grown attached to it over the decades and I see it as a collectible item now. It's not taking a lot of space in the garage though.

I no longer have a use for it. It used to get used a few times a week. Just haven't had time to clean it up and post it for sale.

[Kiril Varbanov]

The thread has gone off-road, or am I wrong?

My DD is old Honda Civic 1999 1.5L VTEC-E, which perfectly suites my need, for now. Excellent winter tires are a must. So is the AWD, as it seems - I struggled quite a lot, because as I said, the local authorities live in the 19-th century and they don't know how to clean snow. I can't afford to be late for work, hence the next car is simply going to be AWD. Likely to get Nissan Q, Subaru Legacy Outback or similar. The family likes to travel with enough stuff and I can't forbid them. The heart is actually telling me - Mazda 6 MPS, fool! But I live in my reality, where the road traps can kill a bull if he falls inside and I can't afford 11 cm ride height.

Finally, let's not forget that we all pay taxes proportional to our horse powers.

[komninosm]

Yes, continental Europeans have a certain view on how things should be done. Other prople have different views on how things should be done. For example, Germany is shutting down nuclear power and hoping to meet its electrical generation needs in other ways. Many other countries realise that nuclear power is just about the only way to meet current and future power requirements without risking covering the world in useless wind turbines, for example. Quite how all the electric vehicles that some foretell will be charged without massive increases in power generation is one "elephant in the room".

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid ... =1&theater

Oh, irony, I love you so much.

To those who tearfully lament the wastefulness of SUVs and the idiocy of their owners, I think it might be a good idea to find a hobby other than Formula One. There's nothing environmentally-friendly about a mass-marketing exercise in which companies, whose livelihoods inherently depend upon polluting the world around us, expend massive amounts of electricity and fossil fuels to power wind tunnels and CFD supercomputers to design and construct racecars that are hauled around the globe, along with hundreds of personnel and hundreds of tons of equipment, in dozens of fuel-thirsty trucks and aircraft 20 times a year to put on a show in front of thousands of people who all wasted varying amounts of resources to watch cars drive around a loop.

Nice strawman. No one is saying people who need SUVs and stuff for their job or whatever is bad. They are saying that people who just buy them to show off or to be more "safe" and have no real need are wasting valuable resources.
Formula 1 obviously is a waste of fuel, except it's not because it drives so industry innovation too. Though it's mostly entertainment nowadays. You're like people arguing against pure research

http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/155193/thanks

this pretty much sums up the hybrid crowd for me.

You do realize SouthPark had a joke about guy trying to sell Hammers too?
That is not the hybrid crowd. That's a small part of it that are douches, like every group has a few (or many). Southpark is against douches not hybrids per se.