Quote Originally Posted by Fast Eddie WRC View Post
Manus are creating the 'demand' for SUVs by pandering to the human instinct that bigger is better.

(If you take two cars to a tribe that's never seen a car, they will choose the biggest of the two.)

It's a crazy situation - manufacturers should be doing everything to educate people that lighter and smaller cars are better for economy and for the planet.
It's not that simple. The main thing which goes against the small light cars is the regulations. They are the reason why people prefer to buy large cars and also why manufacturers prefer to sell large cars (manus heavily advertising large cars is a consequence not a reason). It's a paradox but it's true.

The past decades brough two main development areas - safety and emissions. Year after year the regulations have been stricter. Every single car first got mandatory ABS, later ESP, than another stuff and than another. Same goes about the development in emissions. All of that costs money. A lot of money and what is important the mandatory stuff costs basically the same money to develop and to produce regardless the size of the vehicle. So the situation got to a point where these fixed expenses got so high that it was no more profitable to sell any car under certain relatively high price tag. Here goes the reasson why the manus like large cars like SUVs because they can sell them for price which gives them good profit even when they need to cover the expenses of the latest regulations. And it's also the reason why small cars got so expensive.

It's a paradox but less strict regulations about safety and emissions could actually help if they were accompanied with another measures like weight limits. The CO2 emissions are a function of consumption and the real consumption is mainly about weight and drag. Also cheaper smaller cars would likely lead to overall younger car park in most of the countries. Novadays we have great new cars but huge percentage of people still drives 20-30 years old cars and they don't give a shit about some emission limits.