Vans and minivans do everything trucks and SUVs do, and they do it better. Every time. No exception. SUVs and crossovers are just worse minivans for people who think they’re too cool to drive a minivan.
And those outside of North America largely need not apply. I wish we could just have a robust public transit system here, but apparently, public transit is antithetical to muh freedum or something. Or so they tell me.
And that’s not even getting into the point the post makes, which is that these monstrosities are getting bigger and more dangerous to pedestrians, yet our governments do nothing to stop it.
Honestly I don’t mind trucks or SUVs specifically but vechiles are getting way too big on average, I mean the F150 is North America’s best selling vechile since forever. It’s a problem of misaligned incentives.
There’s an exception carved out for large vechiles in the EPA guidelines that hold them to less stringent emissions standards which incentivizes building larger vehicles link
Large cars are also incentivized by our crash safety rating system which only takes into account the mortality rate of those inside the car as apposed to average related fatalities. This means it will prioritize safety of those in the vechile, which has led to our average fatalities increasing. link.
As an unintended side effect this also damages roads much faster because vechile weight per axel determines the magnitude of the damage a vechile does to the road. link. anecdotally this makes me concerned for the additional weight that electric cars add.
Also as vechiles get increase in weight the amount of microplastics put into the air as a by product of tire wear increase. link
As cars increase in size (and therefore weight) the downsides are exponential.