[ QUOTE ]
rscanady said:
They are utilitarian. No way you are gonna seat 7 and still be able to pull a trailer or boat over a dirt road in a toyota camry!
[/ QUOTE ]
The thing is how many SUV drivers really do those things on any kind of regular basis, if at all? Most of the time it's just the driver either commutting or buying groceries. For those rare times you may need hauling capacity or space to seat 7 why not just rent an SUV and drive something more economical the rest of the time? Do you own a moving truck just in case you move, for example? I can see someone who hauls trailers, goes off-road, or carries a lot of things on a regular basis owning an SUV, but that fits maybe about 0.1% of SUV owners.
[ QUOTE ]
powernoodle said:
Plus, I have seen my share of terrible vehicle accidents and I'd rather have my kids inside a vehicle that weights 4500 lbs rather than a 2300 lbs compact.
[/ QUOTE ]
The problem with this line of reasoning is twofold. First, weight does NOT equal safety. A 1700 lb Indy car can crash into a wall at 200 mph and the driver can walk away. Why? Because of the body design and restraint system. Restraints in production cars are crap compared to what exists in race cars. You want safety then push the automakers to put five point harnesses and roll bars in every vehicle. You may well cut the annual death toll by 95% if everyone used them. Weight is a panacea. It makes you think you're safe when you're not.
Second and more importantly, the weight disparity between SUVs and lighter vehicles kills more of the people in the lighter vehicles than it saves in the SUVs. Think about that for a moment. The automakers are condoning murder under the false pretense of safety. In any other business the executives would be hauled off to jail for doing something like this. Besides being immoral it's also sociopathic. The mainstreaming of SUVs is one big reason I long ago lost what little respect I had for automakers.
There may be valid reasons to own an SUV for a very small minority of people just as there are good reasons for even heavier vehicles like buses and 18-wheelers to exist. However, they should have remained relegated to a niche vehicle but weren't thanks to clever advertising.
BTW, nothing said here should be taken as a personal insult to any SUV owners here. Fact is a lot of you were duped by the automakers so I can't blame you. They could have come out with any number of more sensible, more economical, less dangerous vehicles to do exactly what most SUVs do. They chose not to because the CAFE, emissions, and safety exemptions for SUVs gave them a larger profit margin. To make it even worse, they chose to use an inefficient boxy shape, probably because it's cheaper to make than something more streamlined.
As for the "it's my money, I can do what I want with it" line of reasoning, that's fine for things like flashlights that don't affect me personally but with gas guzzlers I breath the junk coming out of the exhaust plus they may be affecting our long-term climate. Push for either all-electric SUVs, and/or just ban them completely from large cities, and then I'll have no real objections.
Just a question for all you SUV owners-what will you do when gas hits $10 per gallon which it will within a decade thanks to dwindling supply and increased demand from countries like China (and likely $25 per gallon the following decade)? The 15,000 miles I quoted earlier will cost you $10,000 per year for fuel, assuming 15 mpg. Think about it for a while. The situation I mentioned is real. It won't go away with wishful thinking, nor will a bunch of dinosaurs suddenly die to give us more oil, nor will the government give SUV drivers gasoline subsidies. We are running out. 2005 is likely the year of peak oil production. We will never produce as much oil as was produced this year. That means the price will only go one way. Wasting it both drives up the present and long term prices which in turn increases the costs of goods across the board. Yet another hidden cost of owning a gas guzzler. I really can't single out SUVs as the only culprits here. Fact is most cars, especially those made by American automakers, get horrible efficiency compared to what's possible. For a yardstick 80 mpg is easily reached, up to 150 mpg is possible in a driveable vehicle, assuming we decide to stick with fossil-fuel engines. EVs offer the possibility of using no fossil fuel at all so IMHO they're a better alternative.
