Slashdot Log In
The SUV Is Dethroned
Posted by
kdawson
on Tue Jun 10, 2008 12:37 AM
from the four-dollar-stake-through-the-engine dept.
from the four-dollar-stake-through-the-engine dept.
Wired's Autopia blog documents what we all knew was coming: rising gas prices have killed off the SUV. Auto industry watchers had predicted that the gas guzzlers in the "light truck" category would lose the ascendancy by 2010; no one expected their reign to end in a month, in the spring of 2008. Toyota, GM, Ford, and now Nissan have announced they will scale back truck and SUV production and ramp up that of smaller passenger cars. Of course there will always be a market for this class of vehicle, but its days on the top of the sales charts are done. "'All of our previous assumptions on the full-size pickup truck segment are off the table,' Bob Carter, Toyota division sales chief said last week during a conference call with reporters. Translation — we have no idea how low they'll go."
Related Stories
[+]
Hardware: Efficiency? Think Racing Cars, Not Hybrids 1320 comments
Gordonjcp writes "A renowned racing car designer has said that car manufacturers should be looking at making cars lighter to improve efficiency, rather than adding complex drive trains. In this article on the BBC News website, Professor Gordon Murray explains that a weight saving of 10% in a normal car would make more difference than switching to a hybrid engine and motor combination. Could this be the next nail in the SUV's coffin?"
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Good riddance! (Score:5, Insightful)
Still, I have to see it to believe it. The current generation of SUVs will inevitable end up in the hands of young drivers. Those will be even less aware of the extra dangers a SUV presents while being in traffic. The SUV craze will have a significant impact for the years to come.
I urge anyone who owns an SUV and/or considers buying one to read "Big And Bad" by Malcolm Gladwel [gladwell.com].
Re:Good riddance! (Score:5, Insightful)
Fortunately, these young people will not be able to afford to drive these out of their driveway.
Any SUV owners reading this? Look forward to watching the second hand sale value of your vehicle plummet even while fuel costs rise to the point where you can no longer afford to drive your (now) useless vehicle.
Don't like it? Bad luck. You can't say you weren't warned.
Parent
Re:Good riddance! (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd like to drive a hybrid, but the premium is too high for it to make sense. I would consider trading off for a 4cyl car, but again, mine is paid off. Suppose I'll drive it until it dies.
And heck, gas would need to get a lot higher than it is for it to be worth financing another car when you factor in a monthly payment.
Parent
Re:Good riddance! (Score:5, Insightful)
The importance is, for most owners, a necessary expense. The SUV is essentially a face-saving minivan. Guys and girls who wake up one day realizing that they have 2.5 children and a hockey game or ballerina class to chauffeur around on saturday mornings need to feel like they haven't yet abandoned their youthful carefree lifestyle.
The SUV is a way to convince themselves that they are something they're not.
For the record, I don't think there's anything wrong with ending up with the kids and white picket fence. I think it's a problem when you try and ignore or cover it with your choice of vehicle.
Parent
Everybody hates a truck until... (Score:5, Interesting)
Friends and family that own gas-sipping little munchkin cars are constantly enlisting my services as a man who owns a functional truck. Whether they are moving, cleaning out a basement or hauling a load of firewood, they all know who to call... the man with the truck.
I also own a 1979 Ford Bronco with a 351m bored over 20 with a 850CFM Holley Truck Avenger carburetor, snorkel and smokestack sitting on DANA-60's, 36" SuperSwampers and air-auto-lockers, lifted etc., rigged for both plow and tow. It gets about six miles to the gallon. The floorboards are above the average knee, and if I am careful, I can drive it pretty much anywhere (got to watch out for little efficient cars). It is mainly a toy, A MONSTER TRUCK!1!11!!, but once again, it has special abilities that are needed:
We have had A LOT of HORRIBLE FLOODING here in Indiana, surpassing our record from 1913. DHS, National Guard, Marines, Coast Guard and every available resource have been chucked into the disaster maelstrom that is flooded Indiana. The nearest competition for my Bronco is a fire truck or a Caterpillar when it comes to submerged mobility. That big fat bastard gleefully contributed to global warming all the way down to Franklin, to Martinsville, and to rural points south as we teamed up to get people out of the water. Nobody can see your carbon footprint under five feet of water, septic runoff and synthetic flotsam. None of the people in the little bed of the bronco seemed to mind the CO2 streaming from my exhaust stack.
Everybody hates a truck owner, until:
(a) it snows a lot
(b) it floods
(c) they are moving
(d) they drive into a ditch
(e) they need a truck but only have a little munchkin car
My father also uses his powers and torques for good in his 2004 Chevrolet Tahoe. He was down there with me, in the muck, but his new-fangled electronics cannot withstand submergence. His next purchase will he the Tahoe Hybrid, which outperforms its predecessor in torque and horsepower. These new trucks cannot replace their predecessors, though, because they are too complex and fragile.
That said, any 4WD owner that does not use his extraordinary capability as part of the solution--is part of the problem. Soccer moms must die.
Some of the rudest drivers I have ever encountered were in munchkin hybrids. The rest of them were women driving SUVs.
Parent
Re:Everybody hates a truck until... (Score:5, Insightful)
Road service is pretty much up to the job where I live. Oops, I forgot
(b) it floods
I'd rather have a boat than a truck in that case. Or a hovercraft.
(c) they are moving
Last time I moved, I rented a truck. I mean, a _real_ truck (7.5 ton). I only needed it for a day.
(d) they drive into a ditch
I usually don't. My dad does that a lot, but then again, he's got a 4WD and thinks he won't get stuck. He usually needs to call someone with a fscking tractor to pull him out, though.
(e) they need a truck but only have a little munchkin car
See (c). When I need a truck, I rent one. That's easy with all the money I save by not owning a truck. Heck, I even have money left over.
Parent
Re:Everybody hates a truck until... (Score:5, Insightful)
(a) it snows a lot
(b) it floods
(c) they are moving
(d) they drive into a ditch
(e) they need a truck but only have a little munchkin car
I'm a firm believer in using the right tool for the right job. You have to haul shit, you use your truck for work? God bless you, you're using the tool properly. You use a tricked out F-350 dually for a daily commuter vehicle? Baby Jesus himself is going to come around and spit at you.
Most people don't need trucks and SUV's are really not practical for anyone. Hell, the original hummer was good at what it was, a serious offroad vehicle. Doesn't work as well as a combat vehicle but hey, it wasn't designed for that. The new hummers are just stupid because they're designed to look tough but can't keep up with what the original hummers could do. Dumb!
Right now, I'm driving a roller-skate, one of those Toyota Yarii. Very nice. Good fuel economy, great price, huuuuuge carrying capacity for a little ol' hatchback. If I had to move a house, I'd rent a truck or buy a friend with a truck a case of beer. But I don't need one 99.5% of the time so why have one?
Parent
Re:Good riddance! (Score:5, Insightful)
Yep, you definitely need a 4WD SUV to take the highway up the mountain to the paved turnoff leading to the trailhead parking lot. And while you're taking pictures, send me one of the Honda Civic and the VW Beetle parked next to you in the same lot. (I live in Colorado, BTW. See 'em parked side-by-side all the time.)
I'd estimate that MAYBE one in 10,000 SUV owners have EVER used their vehicle under the off-road conditions for which it was originally designed. And even then 99% of the time they're back home shuffling kids to soccer and groceries from the store.
Too many idiots bought them for what they could do, someday, maybe, and not for what they "actually" do day-in-and-day-out.
Parent
Re:Good riddance! (Score:5, Insightful)
You're carrying bikes for eight people and no one has a spot for a trailer? No one has parents or friends with a house and driveway? Heck, I've seen some flatbeds where people back 'em up to the side of a garage and then push 'em vertical. Takes up maybe eight square feet. No RV/"toy" paid parking lots near you?
And a Yakama car rack with gutter posts will hold four bikes easily. (Been there, done that.) Yeah, it might cost $600 for posts, rails, and racks, but that's a darn site better than an extra $8,000 or more for a bigger vehicle. Plus operating costs.
Or a smaller truck/car with a heavy-duty trailer hitch rack can hold three or four. (Mine does three, and folds up when not in use.)
And you can buy a car for day-to-day use, and then figure out something else for those special cases. (Heck, with the bottom dropping out of the huge SUV/truck market, you could have bought a car and then picked up a used truck for a song. (grin)).
Parent
Re:Good riddance! (Score:5, Funny)
Unless you are a spacecraft engineer, and then a meter is the same as a foot !!
Parent
Re:Good riddance! (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Good riddance! (Score:5, Funny)
By your logic you might as well call a van a poorly-designed subcompact.
Parent
Two type of people (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Good riddance! (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Good riddance! (Score:5, Insightful)
If you can't see the difference between laughing at someone for losing money buying a luxury good you find reprehensible and saying you're going to be happy when you run someone over and kill them with your vehicle, then you belong with that borderline sociopath and fellow SUV owner named Soporific.
Parent
Re:Good riddance! (Score:5, Insightful)
In other words, people who need it will be those who use it as part of a transportation business, and thus have an income from the vehicle that justifies its use.
If you need one due to your environment or business, good on you. We're laughing at the suburban twats who bought them because they thought their 2.4 children were too large to fit in a normal sedan.
Parent
Re:Good riddance! (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Good riddance! (Score:5, Informative)
From Princeton's wordnet via google search [google.com], condemnable means "bringing or deserving severe rebuke or censure". GP was saying something along the lines of laughing at someone for losing money buying an SUV (when you feel doing so deserves severe rebuke)
You also question the use of the term sociopath. Wikipedia indicates [wikipedia.org] the term "sociopath" is loosely defined, and can mean, among other things, someone with "antisocial personality disorder". Let's look at the diagnostic criteria [wikipedia.org] for that one:
Parent
Re:Good riddance! (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Good riddance! (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
No good place for bikes (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Good riddance! (Score:5, Interesting)
Once, a guy in a jeep decided to play chicken with me. I wasn't aware till the last minute.
This is just a general lack of respect for bicyclists. Respect goes both ways, you know. It's a much bigger problem over here in the US where everyone guzzles fossil fuels, instead of riding bikes more often.
Parent
Re:Good riddance! (Score:5, Interesting)
Since he drives an hour and a half to get to most job sites he spends a fortune on gas. I calculated it out and discovered that if he were to scrap the blasted thing he would save enough on gas to lease a smaller car, rent a truck for the two days a month he actually needs one and still save money.
That was several months ago so the numbers have only gotten more in favor of scrapping the pickup since then.
Parent
Re:Good riddance! (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Good riddance! (Score:5, Insightful)
Nah. Unless you're hitting a bus or a large truck, an SUV will plow through stuff by sheer mass alone. If you do hit the same size as or bigger than you, then that truck frame will absorb less than a car's crumple zone and you'll get hit worse. The biggest problem with SUVs is the same one as with Jeeps in the 80's. They're trucks with a high center of gravity and people buy them for the power and try to drive them like a Porsche Boxster. Hilarity ensues for anybody not caught up or related to someone in the accident.
The real problem with SUVs in Europe is that nearly all parking is sized for cars, and often for compact or economy models at that. Some stupid (single occupant) rich bitch in a town in southern France (can't remember which one) yelled at my sister for almost opening the door of our rental car into the side of her precious SUV. There was no more than an inch or two to spare on each side of her vehicle to the edges of her parking stall in a full lot. I was too dumbstruck by her arrogance to turn the tables and ream her out the way she really deserved to be. If we had stayed in France long enough for it to happen again, that next SUV owner wouldn't have been as fortunate.
I suspect, given the same situation, other Frenchmen would have found the vocabulary. Being an SUV owner in Europe is probably more pain than it's worth in terms of conspicuous consumption and feeling above the masses.
Parent
Re:Good riddance! (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Good riddance! (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Uncle Sam is too fat. You need to trim it. (Score:5, Insightful)
If you want to cut down on corruption, simplify the laws and reduce the role of government.
Parent
Re:Uncle Sam is too fat. You need to trim it. (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Sure, government is responsible. (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's a list of government problems, mostly anti-trust issues and corporate welfare:
Regulation that makes sense:
The contnued availability of cheap cars from Japan show that the technology to do all of the above has been around for more than 30 years and it's not terribly expansive. Instead of promoting such things, government has been busy supporting companies that rip us all off. That's a crime.
Parent
Westbake == Twitter sock-puppet. (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
SUVs were always a missed opportunity. (Score:5, Insightful)
That the car manufactures executives don't owe shareholders money, much less recieve compensation at all, is an afront to anyone who's ever put in 15 minutes of honest work in their life.
Very easy to bring them back (Score:5, Insightful)
My guess is that one of these companies will get smart and soon deliver just this. It should have enough batteries to last at least 10-20 miles and 2 small generator-motors. The reason for 2 is that the likelihood of 2 motors dying are slim. And only one would be needed to cruise a truck with load. From a business POV, it would make sense to buy these if they could reduce their delivery costs or have dual use on them. From the automakers POV, the 2 small generators-motors may be the exact type that is going in their cars. IOW, fewer number of unique parts. Heck, the truck could use 2 motors identical from 1 taken from a car hybrid.
Dude! (Score:5, Insightful)
Ryan Fenton
A big "duh" to the auto industry (Score:5, Insightful)
Up here in the Great White North it's been a constant barrage of news stories: truck plants closing unexpectedly in Ontario, tens of thousands out of work. Apparently neither GM nor Ford actually anticipated a) fuel prices rising this high and b) consumers actually (gasp!) shopping for fuel economy as a result. Almost as if the 1970s never happened.
The other interesting thing is that hybrids are just about sold out entirely in western Canada. Months long waiting lists. Not so surprising, as I'm sure the auto industry never produced *that* many compared to regular cars. What is surprising is that Honda Civics are also sold out all over the place.
All of this followed by nightly news stories of these poor SUV drivers who are scrambling to replace their vehicles - only to discover the resale is next to nothing (I heard a report claiming used SUV prices are down 30% in the past month or two alone), and smaller vehicles are getting hard to find. Again, DUH. Economists, the oil industry - damn near everyone has been predicting this for YEARS. Everyone except the auto industry. I hope Ford and GM go bankrupt for their shortsightedness.
Re:A big "duh" to the auto industry (Score:5, Insightful)
Now I drive my 15 year old Civic most days, and I have my CR-V for those times that I need AWD / greater clearance / etc.
The real answer is that the American auto companies got complacent and lazy while the trucks were selling well. They made a ton of profits, built generally good products (my GM truck was about the most reliable thing I've ever owned, considering the rough service life it saw) and ignored R&D for the inevitable price spike in fuel. They're getting exactly what they deserve - years of profit-taking with little investment in innovation, and the market is now crushing them. Market forces at work, folks.
Parent
Re:A big "duh" to the auto industry (Score:5, Interesting)
I bought it for my commute. I bought it for the reliability. I bought it for low maitenance costs.
In 100,000 miles, my average gas cost is about $2.00/gallon. My old car got 22 MPG. My new car gets 46 MPG.
The fuel cost savings can be figured out by the cost per mile for the 100,000 miles driven.
At 22 MPG 100,000 miles used 4,545 gallons.
At 46 MPG 100,000 miles used 2,222 gallons.
It saved 2,323 gallons or $4646 in fuel cost.
My next 100,000 miles will be more dramatic.
The battery unlike a cell phone or laptop battery is rarely fully charged and never run flat. Battery life is not an issue. Repairs have been nil. High failure items for the most part are eliminated. The power steering is electric, not hydraulic. The mechanical portion of the transmission has a total of 7 moving parts. None of them shift, slide, or are hydraulic. Regenerative braking showed up as a benifit when I changed tires at 80,000 miles. I had 80% of the brakes remaining, unlike my wife's car which is on it's second set of brakes.
Oh, if I need a new battery, the 36 7.2 volt modules can be changed as needed instead of buying an entire new pack. If I need a pack, it's no longer 5 grand. It's much less.
At current gas prices, I plan on keeping the car till the wheels fall off.
Parent
Re:A big "duh" to the auto industry (Score:5, Interesting)
Some of the way it feels as a car is why I like it. The traction control is very good. Even though it isn't 4WD, it goes quite well in bad weather. With the electric motors in the transmission, the traction control works like anti-lock brakes in reverse. If you are into doing power doughnuts, a Prius won't do it. I know, I tried just to test it on wet grass. Cranking the wheel over and flooring it on wet grass is pretty boring. On ice, it keeps traction and pulls ahead instead of just spinning wheels. I was impressed.
If I want fun, I'll fire up the quad.
Parent
Not surprised (Score:5, Informative)
Ford saw it's SUV and truck sales drop a whopping 44% last month. That's huge.
SUVs were always mostly a waste (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:SUVs were always mostly a waste (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Toyota knew the high price of oil was coming... (Score:5, Informative)
Wait, wait, wait... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Stupid Ford (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:This is how economics is supposed to work! (Score:5, Insightful)
I get suspicious too when I hear about targeted taxes and subsidies. It's dangerous ground on which to tread. I always hope for economically sensible policies, and of course am usually disappointed. But reasonable policies that take advantage of natural market forces by making users pay for their externalities do have a place.
Parent
Re:This is how economics is supposed to work! (Score:5, Insightful)
I hate SUVs with a passion. Glad to see them go.
Parent
Re:i'll still drive my hummer (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:And may I be the first to say... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:completely missing the point with SUV's. (Score:5, Insightful)
But cmon, they are still the safest for the people inside
Really? I've driven a few. They almost universally have a large placard, big and obvious, on the driver side sun screen panel: "This vehicle has a high risk of roll over, resulting in serious injury or death." I've seen an SUV flip on the highway right in front of me when the driver attempted to pass another car at high speed. The resulting wreck was most likely not survivable.
"But it's better if somebody crashes into you." I've got a better idea. How about we stop driving like a bunch of fucking morons? Is it really that hard to NOT CRASH INTO SHIT? Maybe somebody should take your license.
Parent
Re:SUVs aren't dead (Score:5, Informative)
A crossover is build on a sedan chassis and is based on a passenger car. It is lighter, and by virtue of the car engines, more fuel efficient. SUVs are built on a light truck frame, frequently using ridiculous engines far beyond what would be necessary for that weekly grocery run.
Crossovers are the answer to people who like the style or configuration, or who might need to carry large loads from Home Depot or the local garden center, but who want better ride, handling, and fuel efficiency.
Those little Honda deals and compact SUVs were never really SUVs to begin with--that was marketing. If the market has moved on to crossovers rather than SUVs, then yes, they are dead, and a crossover is not nearly as obnoxious. It's the trendy replacement for the minivan.
Parent