https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiGr-XqhE7w
Oversized SUVs and American style pickup trucks are starting to dominate Australia's streets - and this is causing huge environmental and safety problems. So...
Yes, this. The only reason they even became a thing in the US is loopholes in regulation. They're completely impractical too, they have as much bed capacity as a Kei truck, sometimes less. People only think they "like" them because car companies marketed them as big strong men's cars.
I'm glad this is being talked about, I've noticed them everywhere and it's getting really concerning, especially as a parent with children who could hide under those massive hoods.
I think they mean professional hauling trucks, like an F650. Vehicles used for commercial transport/utilities (i.e. US DOT, Uhaul, construction firms) are typically equipped with high-torque engines specifically engineered for towing.
This is where the issue arises: for one reason or another, some people want what they call the "best of both worlds". They want a smaller-sized truck with the same amount of power. To them, this sounds reasonable.
However to anyone into engineering, this is clearly creating a product for profit rather than practicality. It's a jack of all trades, master of none situation. A car is a tool, and a tool is created with a specific use in mind.
Sometimes I get desperate while working on my carpentry: I have to hammer one more nail in to finish my bookcase, but I don't have a hammer. I have a wrench, which will do terrible work but it'll get the job done. Yet my neighbor next door has a good hammer, I could borrow it from them for a bit. Now, what if I had to build a house? I'm not wanting a wrench then, I want my own really good hammer.
Same analogy could be made for Trucks and SUVs. I don't tow often, but when I do I can rent a capable vehicle. I don't need to own anything more than a Subaru Legacy at that point. Hell, maybe all I need is an electric bike if my workplace is close enough.
TL;DR there is no net-positive use-case for the average consumer to need a vehicle with over 400lb•ft of torque. It's just excessive.
(F 350s are far better at towing than an F650. F650s are specifically designed, sprung and geared to haul, not tow, and usually have a weaker motor than the f350s)
What? You can get a 1/4, 1/2, and full ton and they'll cover 99% of all non professional towing and be 5 mpg down on a car for the 1/4 tons.
What is being towed so often in your scenario?
no net-positive use-case for the average consumer
I'm not talking about professionals, or people who take their boat out four times a week. That is a specific need for a specific tool, or vehicle. I'm talking about people who daily drive these things to the grocery store and work. So, the average consumer.
Please don't call pickup trucks "Utes". From an American perspective, Utes are small trucks based on cars, like the El Camino or Holden Ute. They're way more space efficient and I'd imagine a lot more fuel efficient than their pickup cousins. Utes are dead in the US because they got eaten up by giant pickups, but it'd be cool if they made a come back.
Please don't call pickups "trucks". From a German perspective, trucks are way bigger than pickups (above 3.5t) like the Atego or TGL. They are way more spacious and I'd imagine a lot more useful than their pickup nephews. Pickups are niche in Germany because they are too small for most business use and worse than a station wagon for families, and I hope it stays that way.
Please don't call suburban penis replacements "pickups". From a rural American perspective, most people who drive these four door, crew cabin, near useless short bed, almost always washed and waxed, with oversized, underutilized engines driven around the city is just sad and pathetic. I saw one of these when I was vacationing in Bonn and I just laughed with my wife and went "damn, I guess male penis compensation is universal".
From an Australian perspective, presumably where OP is from, Ute apparently is slang for pickup...
As an Australian, A ute isn't exactly a pickup, although we don't use the term pickup so not exactly sure, it's like a sedan with a bed/tray. My understanding is a pickup is higher off the ground than a traditional sedan.
Think of an El Camino - that's a ute
Yeah, a pickup truck is a body-on-frame vehicle with two separate body units: the forward section with the engine compartment and passenger compartment often called the cab, and a separate cargo box that in some cases might be removed and some other body installed for specialty jobs. An Aussie ute is built with its body as a single assembly, and some might even be unibody construction rather than body-on-frame.
Utes often share styling or even components with sedans, pickups don't.
Driving a smaller SUV and the number of vehicles whos headlight are at my eye level really sucks. There's also some study out there about the unnecessary raised hood that does nothing but increase fatalities and lowers visibility of the 10 meters directly in front of the vehicle.
that looks... surprisingly acceptable in size compared to those american style bullshit vehicles appearing on the sidewalks here in europe?
Traditional Australian utes were just passenger cars with the back chopped off. So they had the same footprint as passenger cars with the same safe front style and efficient practical design. Then the American pickup trucks arrived, stole the term "ute", and now proper utes are extremely rare.
Aussies created the category of vehicles with trays. Ute = UTILITY VEHICLE. Yanks fucked it up and morphed it into "trucks" - the monstrosities of emotional support vehicles you see today.
If y'all figure out how, please let us know back here in America. A lot of us hate these goddamn things too.
Always boils down to the "If I buy a bigger car I'll be safer!" fallacy. If I buy even bigger shoes I'll be safer from injury in running! If I buy bigger and better trousers I will get less injured at work! If I buy a bigger phone I will get scammed less!
I hope people in all the countries facing their initial "Yank Tank" fevers will vote someone in that is responsible enough to reverse this process. I recently sold my 2003 "Combi"-style car because it was simply too big, looking for something smaller has me left wanting but I'll make do without a car for the time being.
What? You don't like being killed by a giant tank size vehicle? You don't want your kids being run over? What kind of person are you?
It used to be you could only back over your kids accidentally but now you can front over your kids. That's a real term frontover. It was invented for these type of vehicles by the manufacturer. Of course they know!
You're right it's a wankpanzer
Edit: deleted comment was on the lines of: "This isn't a yank tank' or something like that.
Is your objection that it is too small? Cause there are some stupidly massive pickups in IB
I love how 4mpg and safety is the hill you all choose to die on, rather than sane enforcement of laws.
Miles per gallon means nothing here, we use neither. You want kilometres per litre, litres per 100 km or some other sane world unit of measurement.
I can do math, I just don't like wasting my time dealing with archaic units of measurement.
See the difference is I couldn't give two fucks. You've gone out of your way to make it a personality piece.
Though to be fair to Australia, there is no way to make an efficient public transit system for the whole country.
Yes there is?
Basically half of us live in 2 cities as it is and we’re more urbanised than the US, UK, France, or South Korea.
Very few people live in the vast expanses of land, and rural towns are shrinking. We all live in very few cities overall. It’s easy to cater to that if we bothered to.
Nonetheless, even if we conceded that one needs a car to get by in Australia, the cars don’t need to be as large, and with such lethally poor visibility as in the US. While the US is (outside of small pockets) a dog-eat-dog society where you either project dominance or are dominated, Australia still has some semblance of a social fabric, an existent if somewhat threadbare welfare safety net and the fabled ideal of “mateship”, meaning that we don’t need our cars to look preemptively threatening.
Yes, these trucks don't do any job particularly well. They don't have big bed capacity, they have terrible visibility, they're extremely dangerous, and they're not even particularly good offroad because they're not built for that. They're built to exceed certain weight limits in the US's EPA regulations to reduce their cost. There's no point doing that then adding a bunch of expensive suspension components. You're much better off with a 20 year old Hilux in that regard. They only look like utes because you can't sell a 4 tonne family sedan, because people would notice it was useless. The tiny bed in back is a fig leaf.
Not Just Bikes covers this same misconception about the US thoroughly in a great video.
The vast majority of Australians live in a densely populated strip on the east coast. It should have high speed rail from Melbourne to Brisbane decades ago.
