Are Cars Going To Keep Getting Bigger?

- It's no secret that

cars

have been

getting

bigger

for 40 years. My grandfather had a 2004 Ranger. Back then it was considered a compact truck and it looked that way. If you could find a new ranger now, and that thing is big. A 2000 Ranger XLT, regular cab, had a length of 187 inches. While the 2021 Ranger measures about 210 and was eight inches wider and six inches taller than my grandfather's. It may not seem like much, but it's only more than a generation. If you remember the Rangers from the early 1980s, they look like toys. In comparison, will

cars

and trucks continue to grow?

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I like it a lot. And my favorite the crop mops, single pack, sanitary wipes. These bad boys are perfect after a long day in the sun. And let me tell you, they are quite refreshing. I really like all the manscape products and guess what? I think he will too. Just visit manscape.com/donut and you'll get 20% off and free shipping to the US, Canada, Australia and the UK. Go see it guys. Your balls will thank you. I guarantee you, let's get back to the show. There are many different reasons why cars have become so inflated, but one of the main reasons is safety.

Not very sexy, I know, but stay with me. Cars have become significantly faster in recent decades and the faster they get, the safer they also need to be. We take modern safety features for granted because most of the time they are out of sight and we don't worry about them. But all those safety features need crumple zones, airbags, and safety cells. It all adds up to the size of the vehicle. In the past, security technology was relatively primitive. Hell, it took more than 50 years for seat belts to become commonplace. The cars were little more than tin boxes.

Today there are much stricter rules when it comes to

keep

ing drivers safe in the event of an impact. The cars are divided into sections, some of which are supposed to collapse, called the crumple zone, and sections that are supposed to remain intact, called safety cells. But the safety cell alone doesn't do much to stop someone in the event of an accident. And to do this, car manufacturers rely on a series of airbags. Once packaged, an air bag doesn't take up much space. But front door-mounted airbags require a deployment distance of 10 inches from the body. All of this must be taken into account when designing the cabin.

And it's one of the specific reasons why cars have become wider. A front-impact airbag is required in all modern cars for both the driver and front passenger. However, six airbags are standard; BMW's five, six and seven series offer up to 12 airbags and automakers are following suit to include knee, head and pelvic protection systems. Pelvic air bags sound like something you might have used in high school when people thought it was fun to do a little checkup. Yes, they are there. And if. Now I have stomach pain for 10 minutes. Thank you. Even things like door panels have to be installed to accommodate airbags and additional controls that didn't exist 30 years ago, but it's not just safety equipment that takes up space.

It is also new technology. Another reason cars are larger and why it costs so much to make relatively minor repairs to things like doors and bumpers is because those parts of the car today are packed with a ton of new technology that didn't exist a few decades ago. The door panels are full of Zunes, where did they go? Why can't you buy a Zune? It's because all the manufacturers are throwing them into their body panels. Cameras, sensors and housings for everything that takes up quite a bit of space wherever it is in the car, the engineers do a great job of making it as unobtrusive as possible, but they can't do much.

Accident avoidance systems, braking assistance, forward collision warnings, automatic emergency braking, pedestrian detection, adaptive cruise control. You get it. There's a lot. Each of these security systems has a sensor. Maybe even multiple sensors. Everything is regulated by a computer. The size of these sensors ranges from one to five inches, which again, one or ten doesn't take up much space, but there are at least a hundred sensors in a car. This number will continue to grow. As more features are added. Features we haven't even thought about yet, like Taco Bell's proximity sensors. How close am I to my next Baha explosion?

This is critical information. I need to know why I drive the i5 and also where the nearest bathroom is. Those are all features that took cars like the Honda Civic from being one of the smallest cars on the road to being virtually indistinguishable from other sedans and coupes. When the Honda Civic arrived in the United States in 1973, its styling was considered cute and quirky. Like me. The motto was "it will take you where you are

going

." One of Honda's 2020 Civic mottos is "the true definition of luxury...yours." That's not the only thing that has changed civically.

It's also three feet longer and one foot wider. Honda wasn't trying to compete with their domestic counterparts because they knew they were going to be smaller. For some reason, Americans don't like small cars. Well, actually we'll get to that right now. Speaking of space, what has more space and luxury than a sport utility vehicle? Not much, SUVs have been dominating the market for the last 30 years. Thanks to literally pioneering models like the Chevy blazer, the Ford Explorer, the Jeep grand Cherokee and the Land Rovers. You don't need to be-- (sad music) You don't need me to

keep

listing SUVs.

The rise of the SUV fueled competition among automotive companies to make the largest, most utilitarian and most capable vehicle available. The average size of SUVs has increased significantly since the appearance of the first models. And there is a reason for that. At least in the United States there is a mentality that

bigger

is better. Why wouldn't you want a vehicle with seven seats and a thousand cubic feet of trunk space? Outside of the big cities, the lanes are wide and parking is plentiful. If the infrastructure can support it, why not? knock you out Of course, you don't have children.

You don't have dogs. Treat yourself and get a huge car that you don't need. Quick sidebar and infrastructure. When researching this, we were comparing road sizes and found something interesting. You might think that the only thing that would never change is the width of a lane, but that's not true. City planners widened the lanes to reduce traffic. It turns out that it is quite the opposite. There is research on how wider lanes not only increase traffic, but are also more dangerous. Cities such as Amsterdam, Copenhagen and Tokyo with lane widths between 9.2 and 10.6 feet have the lowest crash death rates per 100,000 residents.

While in cities with wider lanes, the rate of traffic deaths is significantly higher. No joke, there is a concept called a road diet. I'm not sure if that would work in the US because everyone has problems with even the smallest changes, but it would probably reduce accidents. Another reason automakers are striving to make SUVs larger is because SUVs are the cash cow of lineup respect. SUVs, along with full-size pickup trucks, have some of the highest profit margins of all vehicles sold. Automakers can sell high-end luxury trim levels and charge an extra $20,000 for just a few upgrades and people will still buy them.

The 2021 Lincoln Navigator Black Label is literally $21,000 more expensive than the base model for features like automated running boards and some additional chrome trim. I'm trying to generalize a little, but I mean it's still a lot of money, compared to the razor. The low profits of a subcompact car incentivize manufacturers to make larger cars. The other thing is gas, since consumer prices are less of a concern now than they were a decade ago. The national average per gallon of gasoline in the US has not shown $3 since 2014. Hybrid and all-electric cars are expensive at least for now. So you get more car for your money with an internal combustion engine.

And that feeds back to the mentality that "bigger is better", but not to blame the consumer. There are other reasons why cars continue to get noisier, compacts, subcompacts, midsize trucks, and light trucks. A car's classification dictates what restrictions and regulations it is subject to, meaning that if you make a small car, it will be subject to stricter regulations than a larger car. So a smart car classified as a micro car has to meet stricter fuel efficiency standards and let's say, I don't know, a mid-size Honda Accord. One of the reasons a given model grows in size is to increase the size of the car's footprint, specifically the length and width.

Why do car companies do this? Well, sometimes it's easier to increase your footprint than to comply with new fuel efficiency regulations. Ironically, larger cars are subject to less strict regulations when it comes to fuel efficiency. It's an unintended side effect of a legitimate means of fighting climate change, and automakers use it as a kind of loophole, but it feeds consumer needs for something bigger, faster, better, stronger. (mumbles) Car buyers continually demand more power from cars. And as a manufacturer, it's difficult and expensive to develop new technology that meets those power demands while also meeting fuel efficiency regulations.

So it makes sense why cars are

getting

bigger, but just because the average car is getting bigger doesn't mean engines are getting bigger. Automotive companies are pushing the limits of the power that can be generated with small displacement engines. The three turbocharged cylinders are the newest in the world of internal combustion. Cars like the BMW i8, the mini Clubman and, sadly, the Ford Fiesta, discontinued in the US, have three powerful engines. The new Toyota gr yaris has the most powerful three-cylinder engine making 257 horsepower and 266 pound-feet of torque, that's crazy. So what does that mean? Well, it means we've reached a point where the old saying of "there's no replacement for scrolling" no longer rings true, unfortunately, it's more a matter of personal preference.

Smaller cars are becoming more attractive because they can get a lot more power per pound than those big old honkers. We no longer need a gigantic engine, a beta house, or a huge VA to make a fun car. Also, there could be a future where a car like the Expedition is powered by four-cylinder Eco Boost because it saves weight, it saves money, and there's a good chance the Expedition won't have to go anywhere other than flat public streets. . Will cars continue to get bigger? It's hard to say. As long as gas prices stay relatively low and consumers tell the market they still want to buy big cars.

Yes, we'll probably see something bigger than the 2021 Ford Expedition in the coming years, at least in the US. It makes more sense here than in the rest of the world. Going back to my grandfather's truck from the beginning of this episode, I would love to see manufacturers come out with a compact truck that was truly compact. The Ranger, those old Mazda B trucks, the S10, all those early '90s trucks were great and perfect for the city. There is certainly a demand for it. So if you're listening to Ford, Mazda, Chevy Dodge, make a real compact truck again.

Thanks for watching. Be kind. See you next time.I haven't seen them yet. So, no, the creepy Boost hoodie. Who is that handsome boy? Man, what a cute hoodie. We reworked the logo a bit, it's now in yellow, the skins really bring out that black, we added an arm head, so you can fly that donut flag. I'm going to be rocking mine all fall, all winter, go to donutmedia.com and get one that will probably sell out. That way he would get it sooner rather than later.