Here are my reasons - My old minivan was actually nearly 2 ft longer than the SUVs I’ve owned since and because I on the street, that matters. Aside from hauling kids ( which I no longer do ) the one advantage to my old minivan was that you could fit a sheet of plywood or sheetrock into it - I’m not sure that’s true for newer models and I don’t need that ability anymore , anyway. Why not a car? Multiple reasons - I was OK driving a car when that was mostly what was on the road but now I feel like a bug in a car, I can’t see the traffic ahead of me because of the minivans and SUVs in front of me and if I’m in a car and get into an accident chances are good that it will be with a larger vehicle. It’s less comfortable for me to get in and out of a car because they are too low and long rides ( more than 90 minutes or so) in a car are uncomfortable. Way back when I owned cars, I would rent a larger vehicle for those once or twice a year long rides- but now they are much more common.
Yeah I don’t think its a particularly controversial statement. You are more safe as a the occupant of an SUV. Everyone else is less safe. Classic prisoners dilemma.
I’d be interested to see who added this statement. It’s technically true, but that could actually mask how unsafe SUVs are to other road users, and the real difference could be greater than these numbers indicate. Plus there is no evidence presented that drivers of the different types of vehicle do drive differently. I mean the difference could be due to SUV fairies who inhabit the engine compartment of large 4 wheel drive vehicles.
I’d be interested too but I am not sure how that could be properly studied.
Anecdotally, I certainly have opinions of how people will drive based on the car they are in (looking at you, Dodge Challenger Hellcat).
I can speak for myself, and I think my experience is fairly typical. I find that being lower tends to reduce my speed. This is the effect of being closer to what is going past (the road) so it appears to be going by faster. In a taller vehicle, one sees more and therefore one is inclined to try to travel faster. Most (not all) of my stickiest bumper glue tends to be larger pickup trucks. And, of course, if everyone else is going faster, you kind of get sucked up into the flow.
In that respect, I believe that drivers of taller vehicles generally tend to drive differently. Of course, plenty of modern SUVs are not hugely taller than cars.
I won’t argue that!
Most SUVs seem to have that “lip”, where you have to lift your feet a bit higher than the floor of the car to get into and out of it. I imagine that’s at least partly due to how some SUVs were originally used - i.e. to keep mud out if you were off-roading, but I could be wrong. We once rented a Chevy Equinox that as far as I can recall, did not have this. Minivans do not have that - which makes them better for anyone with minor mobility issues.
When our minivan died at 10 years old, we got our first SUV because it was slightly smaller and cheaper than a new minivan and met our needs just fine (until the first time I drove a carload of Girl Scouts somewhere!), and got somewhat better mileage. It was slightly better for moderate cargo as well; when we got our minivan, it was before they all came with “fold away” seats, so to make room to haul anything, we had to physically REMOVE the bench seats and find a place to stash them. That’s much less of a problem these days. And a minivan with sliding doors is a hell of a lot easier to get a toddler in and out of (anyone remember when they only had the sliding door on ONE side??? We insisted on one with both side doors).
Back when we owned the minivan, we’d go someplace with the kids and it would be like a minivan convention - because of course we were usually going someplace kid-friendly and that’s what everyone had. Now that we’re past that age, everywhere we go it’s an SUV convention. A white SUV convention, at that; try finding your car in a parking lot these days without using the remote to flash the lights.
I love the additional height of either an SUV or a minivan, both for better road visibility, and (as I’ve aged) easier entry / exit. SUVs can take that to extremes though; back in 2018 I had reserved a minivan at a car rental place. While I was waiting to do paperwork, several other people came in, saying that another location said that this one might have a minivan available. The staff asked me if I could take that Ford Expedition instead (and let the other people have the minivan). After confirming it would seat at least 6 people, I shrugged and said sure.
Well, that was the extra-length version. It did indeed seat 6. Well, 8, actually, though the back seat was essentially inaccessible unless you were a monkey or acrobat. Enormous amounts of cargo room; I’ve often said that if we ever do another cross-country driving trip, I want one - we could just sleep in the back. And so high off the ground that even I could not get in without using the step - the floor of the car was basically at the top of my thigh. We were transporting my elderly in-laws part of the weekend, and had to VERY STRICTLY warn them not to try to exit the car without one of us standing right there (and we added a stepstool to the picture). Great road visibility though!
The rental place gave me that truck for LESS than the minivan price (so, about half or less its normal rental price). I would never want one as my daily driver (it wouldn’t even fit in regular parking spaces) but I enjoyed the hell out of it for that weekend.
Hmm… Not in my experience. My two Pathfinders did not have the lip\foot well. My 4Runner does not. Neither of my trucks have this. My Wifes Grand Jeep Cherokee did not have the lip. All body on frame vehicles.
My Wifes Subaru Ascent and Outback has that ‘lip’ Unibodies. Not sure if that’s the reason though.
If anything, the lip wouldn’t help keep mud out, but sure would help to keep mud in. For instance, my plow truck does not have that lip. And of course I get in and out of it with snow covered boots. The heater melts the water. I park it with the back end higher than the front end. The next time I plow, I have a small ice skating rink under the pedals. I just crack it with my boot and kick it out the door.
Since I have long legs, that ‘lip’ found in cars/sedans makes it much harder for me to get in and out.
As someone who has owned 2-seat roadsters that are very low to the ground, I didn’t find that same effect. Same with my two-wheeled vehicles. Now my full-sized Chevy pickup…I basically putted along in it. Same with our Subaru but it’s because you have no choice…they aren’t exactly built for speed.
We have loved our Subaru Forester. Yes, it is a small SUV but it does reasonably well on all our outdoor adventures. We’ve been down FS roads that require you go 1-3MPH, but it will get it done (my pickup was a better choice for those roads). It also handles very well in the snow, which is a big requirement for us where we live. We now have a Tesla MY which is just a bit smaller than the Forester, but I think we can actually fit more due to the increased storage, lack of transmission tunnel, etc. It isn’t as SUV’y as the Subaru, but we have taken it down enough FS roads now to know it can get by. For us, we have a larger dog and we camp/backpack often and a normal sedan won’t do.
Why is a car better than an SUV? Is a trunk more useful than a hatch?
I think the biggest factor in people moving to SUVs is that it’s an unintended side effect of regulation. Not just safety and emissions reg differences between cars and light trucks, but fuel economy standards that have driven up the fuel economy of trucks and SUVs as well. And now you don’t pay a fuel premium to drive them, so their various other benefits (visibility, traction, ground clearance, versatile packaging) make them very compelling.
I have a Ford Escape. I used to have a Ford Taurus, an equivalent class vehicle in sedan form. The Escape is much shorter, not needing a trunk. That makes it an easier fit in the garage and easier to manoever and park on the street. And yet it has 50% more cargo volume, and almost 4X more if I put the back seats down. The Escape is also 300lbs lighter. The Taurus uses 13.1L/100km in the city, and 8.7L/100km on the highway. The Escape is 8.9L and 6.7L respectively, so it’s much better for fuel economy as well.
In what world would I choose a Taurus over an Escape? The same is true for most sedans. They are longer than equivalent SUVs because of the trunk, and modern engines have brought SUVs up to equivalent fuel economy. So cars start to look pretty bad in comparison.
Idiotic “light truck” exceptions on CAFE standards made it uneconomical to market anything not fitting into those exceptions.
US consumers buy what they are told to.
No mystery.
For 99% of all use cases a station or a minivan is much, much more economical and practical. But somehow US consumer buy “SUVs” nevermind that those are not sporty or ulitilarian and barely qualify as a vehicle or “pickups” with huge hoods and tiny beds. — if that doesn’t tell you something about their insecurities I don’t know what to tell you.
US consumers idiotic vehicle choices are responsible for a stupid amount of unnecessary emissions and US lawmakers are not going to to something about it. So all I can do is point and laugh.
They obviously have widespread appeal to drivers. To the thousands of pedestrians and cyclists who get killed by trucks and SUVs, not so much.
Yeah, the Edsel was a roaring success. And New Coke.
The ability of companies to ‘tell consumers what to buy’ is very limited. Tesla doesn’t even have a marketing department, and they are crushing other EV makers.
Ads work best when trying to move customers from one brand to another very similar brand. So light beers spend a fortune advertising, and sneakers, and clothing brands.
But when there are real measurable differences that matter between products, all the ad spending in the world won’t make the inferior product succeed in the long run.
Vehicles of any type with hood heights 40" or more have an increased rate of fatalities to pedestrians. That includes buses, UPS delivery trucks, tractor trailers, tow trucks, and more. SUVs possibly do increase yearly pedestrian deaths by 1000 or more a year but don’t represent a majority of them. I don’t see any political will to restrict SUVs on that basis, or many other means of improving pedestrian safety either.
I agree that some SUVs, like some trucks, are massively oversized abominations that never see any of the usage they are theoretically made for. On the other hand, as was pointed out, most small SUVs are really no bigger than a comparable sedan or wagon and was probably built on the same chassis. My old Forester is effectively the exact same size, weight, and fuel economy as the Legacy wagon it was built on, with it being 10 inches higher in total due to somewhat higher clearance and a taller roof.
I think the Honda CRV is built on the same chassis as the Accord.
That Ford Expedition we had, however, may have been on the same chassis as a city bus. It definitely fell into the “abomination” category.
Old school SUVs are still built on truck chassis. It’s a very obvious difference when I drive my Forester, based on a Legacy, and my parents’ even older Toyota 4Runner, which I think was built on a Tacoma. The Subaru is better for driving around town and light dirt road and off road. The 4Runner is better for total capacity, towing, and actual 4X4 conditions. Your Expedition was built on an F-150.
I can’t see how an SUV can be more fuel efficient than a car (assuming the same engine or near enough).
Wind resistance alone should see to that (not to mention weight).
I don’t think these are equivalent vehicles. A Taurus has a. 3.5 liter engine and Escape a 2 liter engine,
They don’t? As they represent at least 50% of the vehicles in the US, so I’d be really surprised if they cause less than 50% of the pedestrian casualties
Yeah, most of the vehicles people are calling “SUVs” in this thread are not actually SUVs, they’re crossovers. IMO most crossovers are really just glorified station wagons.
Though those are even more nonsensical IMO. At least a traditional SUV can actually go off road, the reason the entire class of vehicle exists (before the auto industry decided to hack the classification system)
They aren’t though, they have all the drawbacks of an SUV (the large cross-section, the high center of gravity) without either the off road ability of the SUV or the length of the station wagon.
Both were available with several engine optoins. I took those figures from a comparison table between the two that came up on tyhe Google page when I searched for it. I’m sure you could get an Escape with worse mileage than a Taurus, and vice versa. The point is that fuel economy is no longer a deciding factor for most people, because A) fuel economy in general is much better these days, and B) the differences aren’t that great. I’m comparing to the time when an ‘SUV’ was a Suburban or a full sied Bronco or a Blazer, or maybe a Ford Explorer. Those older SUVs of the 80’s and 90’s were gas pigs - like, under 10-mpg in regular use. Now? They are all in the same range as cars, and the difference is in the engine.
Well, the Escape was 300 lbs lighter. But that comparison really showed the best Escape against a Taurus. I had a 2003 Escape with the V6 in addition to my current one with the 2.0L turbo. As I recall, that earlier one was 11.7 l/100km in the city, and 9.7 on the highway. So it was slightly better in the city, but slightly worse on the highway, no doubt due to increased drag. At city speeds, drag isn’t a big deal, but the Escape is lighter than the Taurus and has the same drivetrain, so…
In either case, gas mileage is close enough that your personal driving habits would probably make up the difference. So why buy a sedan? Aside from gas mileage, what does a sedan offer that you can’t get in a compact SUV?