Lamenting the decline of the car

[drew]

Originally Posted by Acajack

I haven't had a very small car in a long time, but I've had everything from a minivan to an SUV to sedans and station wagons in the past 15 years or so.

AWD SUVs are somewhat better in the snow than sedans but for my purposes I've never found the difference to be that huge. (I always have winter tires on them as they are required by law here in Quebec, but never studs.)

The way you hear some people talk about their AWD SUVs you'd think driving in the snow with one is like driving on a sunny summer day.

With studs, it pretty much is.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by drew

With studs, it pretty much is.

Yeah, but who drives with studded tires in urban/suburban areas?

[240glt]

Originally Posted by esquire

I'm sure there are at least a few people out there who would be willing and able to pay a thousand bucks a tank. But if gas suddenly doubled in cost you can bet that a significant number of people would be rethinking their habits.

I'm sure people would. Just like if airline ticket prices doubled a lot of people would think twice about taking airline trips.

But both of those scenarios are hypothetical because energy is not expensive, so any argument about what people might do is pure conjecture at this point.

[drew]

Originally Posted by Acajack

Yeah, but who drives with studded tires in urban/suburban areas?

me.

Mandate studded tires, stop salting and just add gravel to roads. I think the world would be a much happier place (noisier) but safer. At least in climates like Winnipeg.

[240glt]

I’ve never run studded tires but my folks in BC do religiously and they make a substantial difference on icy roads.

After this year in Edmonton I’d be tempted to run them.

[lio45]

Originally Posted by Acajack

Yeah, but who drives with studded tires in urban/suburban areas?

Is that a serious question? (The answer in my case is: pretty much everybody I know)

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by drew

me.

Mandate studded tires, stop salting and just add gravel to roads. I think the world would be a much happier place (noisier) but safer. At least in climates like Winnipeg.

Yeah, I actually don't know anyone who has them here. This includes people who live in the "hills" which are part of the metro and only 5-10 minutes where I live in an inner suburban part of the city.

Places like this - you can imagine what the roads look like on a winter day like today:

https://www.google.ca/maps/@45.56408...2!8i6656?hl=en

[le calmar]

I have never seen anyone with studded tires in Ottawa-Gatineau. I didn’t pay attention to this detail in Sherbrooke but the hilly setting would probably explain that.

[drew]

Newer studded tires are basically impossible to spot visually.

If you are outside, you can hear them coming, but you won't be able to spot them.

[hipster duck]

Our roads get clobbered enough as it is. In the springtime, there are nighttime closures of many of busy highways to fill in all the potholes that accumulated over the wintertime.

I can't imagine how bad that would be if we all started driving around with studded tires. I'm sure that would easily negate any savings from plowing/salting.

[rousseau]

Would this be a more efficient means of parking? Would parking lots be a lot smaller this way?

[drew]

Originally Posted by hipster duck

Our roads get clobbered enough as it is. In the springtime, there are nighttime closures of many of busy highways to fill in all the potholes that accumulated over the wintertime.

I can't imagine how bad that would be if we all started driving around with studded tires. I'm sure that would easily negate any savings from plowing/salting.

The extension of the freeze-thaw cycle that salt allows for (leading to the creation of said potholes) causes far more damage than the light surface scratching studded tires would ever cause. The concrete surface gets all scratched up when you drive over the loose gravel with a normal tire anyway.

Not to mention the salt related damage to vegetation and vehicles.

[milomilo]

Originally Posted by acottawa

But that cheapness, efficiency and easiness is based on ready availability of cheap fossil fuels.

Right, but (and this is admittedly speculation) I expect that even if you doubled the price of fuel most food would still be reasonably affordable. It's already fairly easy to guess what food took the most fuel to get here, for example bell peppers are very pricey in Calgary, and I'd expect increase if fuel costs would impact their price more than some of the cheaper items.

The world would adjust anyway, in theory at least. The railway companies might even start thinking about upgrading/electrifying their infrastructure and providing competitive service. Although that really is fantasy.

[ssiguy]

So let's assume that SUVs are better during the snow but that doesn't help the Big 3 explain why their cars aren't selling while the imports still are. Their years of inadequate vehicles has left all 3 with a bad reputation and even worse resale so people rightfully avoid them. The Big 3 can make all the excuses they want but the reality is that they have proven they simply can't effectively compete.

Chrysler and GM are held in particularly bad light as they demanded help during the 2008 financial crisis is their often repeated claim they are 'too big to fail'. GM is now, very rightfully, getting a lot of bad press and public distain after it's announcement they are closing down their Oshawa plant...........Canadians give them a hand and they in turn give us the finger.

[esquire]

^ Even though they have all made good ones in recent years, I don't think the big 3 give a crap about cars these days because the margins are so much higher with trucks and SUVs. If they wanted to market their cars, they could. But every Focus on the Ford dealer's lot is just taking up room that a F150 could use.

[SHOFEAR]

Originally Posted by ssiguy

So let's assume that SUVs are better during the snow but that doesn't help the Big 3 explain why their cars aren't selling while the imports still are. Their years of inadequate vehicles has left all 3 with a bad reputation and even worse resale so people rightfully avoid them. The Big 3 can make all the excuses they want but the reality is that they have proven they simply can't effectively compete.

And just about every foreign manufacture is creating SUV's....well....crossovers...for the North American market. They are catering their product line to reflect the realities that the north American consumer doesn't live in some terrible crowded urban environment where the lucky ones get to drive some little econo shit box and the rest are funneled like cattle onto a train...or shudder...a bike..

I saw a Lambo SUV the other day. absolutely wild.

[accord1999]

Originally Posted by esquire

I'm sure there are at least a few people out there who would be willing and able to pay a thousand bucks a tank. But if gas suddenly doubled in cost you can bet that a significant number of people would be rethinking their habits.

Though if it doubled suddenly due to government causes or policies, you might see a new government shortly thereafter.

[240glt]

Originally Posted by SHOFEAR

...the north American consumer doesn't live in some terrible crowded urban environment where the lucky ones get to drive some little econo shit box and the rest are funneled like cattle onto a train...or shudder...a bike.. .

That's the wonderful urban utopia your idiot mayor and his urba-nazi fanboys want for this town

[Doug]

Originally Posted by 240glt

Exactly. Which also enables us to drive less efficient vehicles without significant financial penalty

I fueled up the 4Runner last night at 93.9 cents/L. It could be double that and I wouldn't bat an eye.

Triple that I might start to think about it a little.

Proving why carbon taxation is unlikely to produce positive results

[someone123]

Originally Posted by lio45

Yeah, I didn't really use the best words in my post above - when I said local would become cheaper and imported would be more expensive, my point was that local would USUALLY become cheaper BECAUSE it's (usually) emitting less carbon to reach the shelves (being at a significant advantage there), and same (opposite) for imported.

This is a misconception. Probably the #1 economic misconception right now.

Transportation has a cost, sure, and all else equal it's cheaper to consume something close to where it is produced. But all else is not equal and the transportation costs (dollars and carbon footprint) in the modern economy are a tiny portion of the total, because transport by ship in particular has become incredibly efficient. It's very easy for some other factor to outweigh the cost of transportation.

Exmaple:

Tons of CO2 emitted when manufacturing a Land Rover Discovery: 35
Tons of CO2 emitted to ship a Land Rover 20,000 km: 0.5-2

That's the maximum distance the car could be shipped. If we were talking about shipping it 200 km vs 2,000 km it would be really easy to imagine some other factor like power source having a bigger impact than transportation (one country has hydro, one country has coal). It's also easy to see why it might be good to have one big, heavily optimized Land Rover factory instead of a bunch of small ones scattered all over.

Just imagine what the math looks like for an iPhone that sells for $1,000 and weighs 150 g.

The story with food production is similar. Some places are better or worse places to grow food, and generally the big producers have economies of scale that hugely outweigh transportation. If we didn't have a global network of food shipping we'd be hugely worse off. In fact we would just not be able to support the populations that exist right now.