Things in America that Go Bump in the Night… and Daytime Too

 

Things in America that Go Bump in the Night… and Daytime Too

Like Big Pick-up Trucks and SUVs

Americans are railing at higher prices at the pump, though they have moderated of late. Yet we pay less than the $7.50 to $8.25 a gallon in Europe by a long shot. And even electric trucks in the United States are really heavy, with some of those larger electric trucks tipping 9,000 lbs. But like many reluctant gun buyers – “hey, I hate guns, but there are so many out there, I need one to protect myself” – Americans are prone to buying bigger cars simply to be safer as they drive in a world of lots and lots of bigger cars. The September 5th The Economist calls our startling higher death toll from car crashes “car-nage”… with good reason, as I will point out later.

But this consumer preference has had an interesting impact on the US car market. Writing for the May 13th FastCompany.com, David Zipper penned a piece under a title that says it all: Detroit killed the sedan. We may all live to regret it. “[In early May,] General Motors announced that it would end production of the Chevrolet Malibu, which the company first introduced in 1964. Although not exactly a head turner (the Malibu was ‘so uncool, it was cool,’ declared the New York Times), the sedan has become an American fixture, even an icon, appearing in classic films like Say Anything and Pulp Fiction. Over the past 60 years, GM produced some 10 million of them…

“With the Malibu’s demise, GM will no longer sell any affordable sedans in the U.S. In that regard, it will have plenty of company. Ford stopped producing sedans for the U.S. market in 2018. And it was Sergio Marchionne, the former head of Stellantis [which now owns Jeep/Dodge/Crysler], who triggered the headlong retreat in 2016 when he declared that Dodge and Chrysler would stop making sedans. (Tesla, meanwhile, offers two sedans: the Model 3 and Model S.).” As all-electric cars were stumbling around looking for charging stations, the number of small cars did not increase, but hybrids have now become the new chic.

Zipper continues: “Where does the shift from sedans toward SUVs and trucks leave everyday Americans? With a strained wallet, for one thing. With its MSRP starting at $25,100 the Malibu has been one of the most affordable U.S.-produced cars, costing barely half as much as the average new vehicle, which exceeded $47,000 in February (the Malibu is also at least a few thousand dollars cheaper than the Bolt that will replace it at the Kansas factory).

“Especially when factoring in higher interest rates and spiking insurance premiums, cars are becoming a financial strain for many Americans. According to the federal Bureau of Transportation Statistics, the average annual, inflation-adjusted cost of owning a vehicle and driving it 15,000 miles hit $12,182 in 2023, an increase of over 30% in just six years.

“Over time, the elimination of sedans leaves the Big Three vulnerable if consumer preferences shift away from enormity. ‘Legacy car companies haven’t done a great job of thinking long term,’ said Alex Roy, a cohost of the Autonocast podcast. ‘Gutting lineups is probably good for manufacturing efficiency, but not having one vehicle in a given product segment is short-sighted.’”

Not to mention that by comparison to car crash fatalities in Europe, with bigger vehicles, American roads have become literal killing fields: “THE NEXT time you are stuck in traffic, look around you. Not at the cars, but the passengers. If you are in America, the chances are that one in 75 of them will be killed by a car—most of those by someone else’s car. Wherever you may be, the folk cocooned in a giant SUV or pickup truck are likelier to survive a collision with another vehicle. But the weight of their machines has a cost, because it makes the roads more dangerous for everyone else. The Economist has found that, for every life the heaviest 1% of SUVs or trucks saves in America, more than a dozen lives are lost in smaller vehicles. This makes traffic jams an ethics class on wheels.

“Each year cars kill roughly 40,000 people in America—and not just because it is a big place where people love to drive. The country’s roads are nearly twice as dangerous per mile driven as those in the rest of the rich world. Deaths there involving cars have increased over the past decade, despite the introduction of technology meant to make driving safer.

“Weight is to blame. Using data for 7.5m crashes in 14 American states in 2013-23, we found that for every 10,000 crashes the heaviest vehicles kill 37 people in the other car, compared with 5.7 for cars of a median weight and just 2.6 for the lightest. The situation is getting worse. In 2023, 31% of new cars in America weighed over 5,000lb (2.27 tonnes), compared with 22% in 2018. The number of pedestrians killed by cars has almost doubled since 2010. Although a typical car is 25% lighter in Europe and 40% lighter in Japan, electrification will add weight there too, exacerbating the gap between the heaviest vehicles and the lightest. The Ford F-150 Lightning weighs around 40% more than its petrol-engine cousin, because of the battery that moves all those lithium ions from cathode to anode.” The Economist. By the way, that Tesla Cybertruck is 7,000 lbs., and the Hummer EV is 9,000 lbs.

I’m Peter Dekom, and with the proliferation of AR-15 style assault weapons and oversized passenger pick-ups and SUVs, we know one true thing that Americans seem to do best: killing each other and ourselves.