Have you been to Europe? Have you walked the streets of Paris?
The US was built with enough space being everywhere. American roads are wider, cities are mostly built like square-grids of roads built in a time when cats existed whereas European cities emerged in the middle ages. They’re tightly packed with little extra space.
Sometimes (very rarely) here there are old Cadillacs that can be rented for weddings. Seeing one of these cars on the street is an unreal experience. They’re just so huge. They don’t fit on the streets here - and those are cars from the 60s or 70s. Everything seems tiny compared to them.
From a European perspective it’s really stupid to build such large vehicles as driving and parking it is much more complicated when everything is build for small cars.
Now that SUVs are becoming popular here too it’s just a really annoying. Less parking space per vehicle etc.
On cities like Paris - one of the tightest city on Europe this is just annoying.
And i haven’t even written about fuel consumption.
Paris has had huge problems with smog in recent years.
I haven’t been to Western Europe but I do live in Singapore with roads that I would say are quite narrow and SUVs aren’t that rare here either. So I can’t say I really understand entirely but I think I do get what you mean.
the onyl reason they exist in the US is because a regulations loophole.
The EU doesn’t have that loophole, so SUVs don’t even have that reason to exist. Which you can see, as SUVs are super rare in the EU, while they top all car sales ranks in the US in the last couple years
I’m not really understanding, what makes the US different in this regard?
Have you been to Europe? Have you walked the streets of Paris? The US was built with enough space being everywhere. American roads are wider, cities are mostly built like square-grids of roads built in a time when cats existed whereas European cities emerged in the middle ages. They’re tightly packed with little extra space. Sometimes (very rarely) here there are old Cadillacs that can be rented for weddings. Seeing one of these cars on the street is an unreal experience. They’re just so huge. They don’t fit on the streets here - and those are cars from the 60s or 70s. Everything seems tiny compared to them. From a European perspective it’s really stupid to build such large vehicles as driving and parking it is much more complicated when everything is build for small cars. Now that SUVs are becoming popular here too it’s just a really annoying. Less parking space per vehicle etc. On cities like Paris - one of the tightest city on Europe this is just annoying. And i haven’t even written about fuel consumption. Paris has had huge problems with smog in recent years.
I haven’t been to Western Europe but I do live in Singapore with roads that I would say are quite narrow and SUVs aren’t that rare here either. So I can’t say I really understand entirely but I think I do get what you mean.
the onyl reason they exist in the US is because a regulations loophole.
The EU doesn’t have that loophole, so SUVs don’t even have that reason to exist. Which you can see, as SUVs are super rare in the EU, while they top all car sales ranks in the US in the last couple years
SUVs and crossovers are most popular cars in Europe.
Here’s a French source, coincidentally: https://www.lemonde.fr/en/economy/article/2023/09/14/suvs-now-dominate-european-car-market_6135326_19.html
Til that model y is a suv.
You didn’t notice until now?
Just looks like a slightly raised sedan to me. Shrug