this post was submitted on 23 Jan 2024
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What's fucked is it wasn't even the consumers who caused the trucks to get bigger. It was poorly thought out emissions taxes. The US decided to tax car makers more for high emissions cars, but didn't tax more for large truck emissions... So the car makers decided to make the light trucks bigger instead of trying to make the emissions better. People wanting luxury is a factor, but it's not why they are nearly semi sized these days.
Just look at the first image, the truck on the left is from the Japanese market where they taxed car makers less for cars and trucks under a certain size, those trucks are used in greater abundance than American style trucks as it is more versatile. If they had the option, I'm sure a lot of consumers would choose the smaller truck. Leaving the big trucks for status symbol pricks and people who actually need a big truck for towing.
I wish that 20 years ago, we had a serious discussion about emissions requirements. Catalytic converters increase CO2 output through a variety of direct and indirect means, but they reduce all other types of emissions. It would have been nice if we could have had an adult discussion about letting off some of those requirements in order to reduce CO2.
Not much point now.
Honestly I think they made the right call wrt catalytic converters. The stuff that they turn into CO2 is a much more potent and urgent threat than the CO2.
The CO2 problem should have been solved with fuel efficiency, but as we've discovered here, it wasn't. After realizing the unintended consequences of their laws, they refused to go back to them and admit there was a problem, because admitting means they were wrong and they can't have that.
(Also passengers cars aren't really the problem. At least they're small fish, that we've been tricked into focusing on so that the real polluters can avoid scrutiny).