In this low-lying car I drive in
I've been noticing something lately.
When I'm sitting in traffic
I either can't see past the cars in front of me...
or the cars around me are towering over me.
And it turns out there's a big reason for that.
The production of passenger cars like sedans and wagons
for sale in the US, has been in freefall since 1975...
and in their place has been the steady growth
in the production of SUVs.
Last year, SUVs and trucks made up 80% of all new car sales.
Compare that to 52% in 2011.
The fact that Americans like big cars
probably won't shock anyone.
They are everywhere.
Even in my parking scarce neighborhood in Brooklyn.
But the reasons behind this transformation
are more than just cultural.
It all goes back to a 50-year-old policy
that would kick off a huge shift in the way US cars are designed.
So I'm driving from my home in Brooklyn, New York
to a beach in Rhode Island for a summer vacation.
And along the way, I'm going to piece together
why big cars took over America.
New York was the 45th state
to officially succumb to the takeover of SUVs and trucks in 2014
according to this Washington Post analysis.
Alaska was the first state to go big-car dominant in 1988.
So I'm wondering if you have any advice
for things they should look out for on the road.
Anywhere that you stop
count the number of SUVs versus the number of passenger cars.
Okay.
I’m in the Costco parking lot... filled with SUVs.
One, two, three...
...four, five...
...six, seven...
...eight, nine, ten, 11 SUVs in a row.
I think that is my new record.
Once you learn about how much
big cars dominate the road, it's like you can't unsee it.
People have lots of reasons for choosing a big car.
And certainly the infrastructure in the US supports that choice.
Unlike a lot of other countries
our built environment revolves around cars.
We have wide roads and wide, plentiful parking spaces
and homes with plenty of parking.
I arrived in Connecticut
a state that succumbed to light truck dominance in 2016...
and pulled into a rest stop
where I interviewed Thomas Bochenek
who was on a cross-country road trip with his wife.
It's very comfortable to drive.
Well, I think the bigger the car, the more you...
you have a feeling of security.
You know, the smaller the car, you know...
the more likely I think about getting into an accident
and being hurt.
It has no trouble pulling this almost 7,000 pound (3,175 kg) trailer.
In other countries
one deterrent for big cars is that they cost
so much to fill up with gas.
But due to low taxes on gas in the US...
fuel is extremely cheap compared to other countries.
But there's another overlooked bias towards
big cars related to why SUVs exist
in the first place.
In the 1970s
there was a shortage of foreign oil in the US.
“1973 dramatized US dependence on foreign oil.”
So the US government set rules for automakers
to start making cars more fuel efficient
to lessen our dependance on the whims of the global oil market.
By 1985, new cars had to get 27.5 miles per gallon
or roughly double their fuel efficiency.
These new rules applied to cars like sedans and station wagons
under a category known as passenger cars.
But there were types of vehicles the US government exempted
from these rules.
Things like pickup trucks
which everyday drivers weren't really driving at the time.
And the idea was if these are working vehicles
used by farmers, construction crews
companies that are hauling freight...
those vehicles need to be able to do their job
without being choked by emissions controls
and without being held to unrealistic fuel economy standards.
So passenger cars got one set of strict rules...
and this other category called light trucks...
got another set of more relaxed standards.
This regulation created an incentive for carmakers
to transform light trucks into a vehicle for everyday use.
Put in a radio, lots of cargo space
and comfy seats and voila.
That's how we got the SUV.
“Okay, girls, we’re off in our new Jeep Cherokee.”
“Behind that classic appearance, it's rugged and powerful.”
An automaker needs to spend less money
and less time on fuel economy and emissions improvement
if they're making and selling an SUV
because it falls under a category
that is less stringently regulated.
We had the Wagoneer, but it was very low volume
very bespoke, very expensive.
So only very few people bought it.
People who lived in Manhattan would go to the Hamptons
or go to northern New York State to go skiing.
And that's how the SUV started off life.
This is Ralph Gilles, head of design at Stellantis
a conglomerate of car companies that includes Jeep.
One of the early SUVs was the Chevy Blazer...
built on the frame of the Chevy S-10 truck.
This is the traditional definition of an SUV.
If it was built on the frame of a truck.
And to meet the legal definition of a light truck
it had to have some clearance angles and dimensions just right.
Taking a utilitarian vehicle and turning it into a...
almost a premium luxury device that happened to be utilitarian.
Then comes the Grand Cherokee.
The Jeep Grand Cherokee was built
the way passenger cars are: in one piece, or unibody.
These two types of car construction, frame based and unibody...
today form the distinction between traditional SUVs
and the new, increasingly popular category of crossover.
They're more efficiently packaged.
You don't have the frame.
The Grand Cherokee was part of the early success story
story of SUVs in the 90s and 2000s.
One that continues today.
This bias towards light trucks is why a company like Volkswagen
which once sold primarily passenger cars
has discontinued a lot of them today...
like the Passat in favor of SUVs and crossovers.
And they've stopped producing all of their wagons...
including the Jetta Wagon I’m in.
And a company like Ford has stopped
producing all of their passenger cars except
for the iconic Mustang.
Okay.
I'm going to see if anyone at this car dealership will talk to me.
Buick was always car, really.
That was mostly sedans.
And then just with the market shift
we actually don't even sell a Buick sedan anymore.
They don't even make a Buick sedan.
It's all crossovers.
When was the last time you guys carried, like,
a Buick passenger car?
Oh, it was like three or four years ago.
And how many did you have on the lot?
Like 1 to 100 of, you know, SUVs.
We're here to sell cars. We want to sell what people want.
If they were here, if people didn't want them, I'm glad they're not here anymore, you know?
So this chart starts to make a lot more sense.
1975 was the year these fuel economy standards
for sedans and wagons were passed...
the same ones that didn't apply as strictly to SUVs and trucks.
It's a little bit of a chicken and egg thing
because the automakers have been marketing SUVs
more preferentially than passenger cars.
They've been putting more research and development
into creating more models
that fit into the SUV category.
And they've made it so that it's an easier decision
to get into an SUV than it is to get into a passenger car.
As of 2016, our fuel economy standards shifted.
Vehicles are still separated by the stricter standard
for passenger cars and looser standard for light trucks.
But within those categories, there are more breakdowns.
Regulators multiply a car's wheelbase length
by its width to get a footprint.
And larger cars within each category get weaker rules.
That means that carmakers are not only incentivized
to phase out passenger cars in their fleet...
but they are pushed to make each category bigger.
The Toyota Camry got both longer and wider...
and the Toyota RAV4 did, too.
I've now reached Rhode Island...
the very last state in the country to go light truck dominant.
We have started the inevitable transition to electric vehicles but...
You're still talking about a larger vehicle
with higher ground clearance, that's heavier and taller.
It's still going to be less...
energy efficient.
Whether it's an electric car
or an internal combustion powered car.
One sobering impact of big cars
is the threat it poses to pedestrians.
One study found that replacing the growth in SUVs with cars
would have averted over a thousand pedestrian deaths.
People on foot get hit higher
and in more vulnerable regions when hit by an SUV...
or a truck rather than a passenger car.
Before hitting the beach, I stopped at my friend Kevin Wright's house.
He’s bucked the SUV trend and drives a Honda Fit...
a car that was discontinued in 2020.
We had our daughter about 17 months ago...
just kind of making sure that everybody has enough space
to be comfortable as well as being safe.
It gets good gas mileage and thinking about long term...
you know, climate change is happening.
What can we do to minimize
our carbon footprint as much as we can?
So we were thinking about the second car...
you know, maybe getting an SUV
in that situation, but ultimately decided to kind of go
the other direction and and got an e-bike.
You have arrived.
Even though we're in Rhode Island
which was the last holdout for SUV dominance
there are still a lot of SUVs here.
I'm curious if you think there's any political will
or urgency to change this
trend towards bigger cars.
That's you know, that's something that's—
that has environmental concerns.
That’s something that has economic concerns
with how much we are reliant on oil.
It also has to do with safety.
You know, pedestrian safety, cyclists safety.
So there is a desire among the younger
people and more politically active people to try to make it
so that an SUV is not the default
vehicle choice for American families.
The US is unlikely to become a small car country any time soon.
But this dramatic transition to big cars
wasn't just about consumer choice.
It was enabled by a policy choice.
So if we want our roads to look different...
we can try and start there.