The $25k car is going extinct?

Because a big part of owning a vehicle is summer roadtrips, ski vacations, visiting family, moving stuff. An SUV is simply more convenient. I've also found road maintenance is getting worse where I live, it's almost necessary having an SUV or truck just to navigate the suburbs.

Also the (semi) compact crossover has kind of killed the compact car. You get more space, better ground clearance, for a decent price.

What you don’t mention are the increased negative externalities of your larger vehicle, including a higher chance of killing people, more road space used for parking, worse visibility for others, etc.

That's a big part of it for you perhaps, but not for everyone?

> I've also found road maintenance is getting worse where I live

Well, bigger cars are a factor that makes the roads degrade faster.

IME it's a big part of it for a lot of people. People don't buy a car for what they do with it every day, they buy it for what they do with it a few times a year. If you have a boat on a trailer, you buy a vehicle that can pull the trailer. If you drive to the mountains in winter a few times a year, you buy a higher clearance AWD vehicle so that you can skip chain control.

You might say that this irrational and that people might be better off renting something on the occasion that they need to tow something, or go on a long road trip, or fit more than five people in their car. But people are irrational and they really do make these choices!

But mentioned: the increased road damage by heavier vehicles.

The Forth Power Law. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_power_law

I think that's more relevant with really large vehicles. An SUV is generally somewhere in the range of 1.5-3 tons whereas a loaded semi truck can weigh up to 40 tons. If a road is designed to handle 40 ton vehicles then i have a hard time believing that 2-3 ton vehicles make much of a difference compared to a 1.5 ton vehicle.

A semi truck with a trailer will distribute those 40 tons over a larger area due to more and larger tires, but I am assuming that it still impacts a larger ground pressure on the road than a personal car - at least when loaded.

In addition, renting a large car for a few days is really expensive. If you have to do this 5-10 times a year, over 10 years of ownership, I'm not so sure that buying small and renting large make sense financially. Not to mention the inconvenience and loss of flexibility from having to collect and drop off a rental car, which typically isn't exactly right around the corner, especially in rural areas.

I'm currently in the Czech Republic where the roads are about 100x better than my city of 1 million+ in Canada... No, it's an issue with our government.

I'll be sure to let my elderly mother know she's making society worse by going with the HRV instead of the Civic.

In a world where ~half of all SUVs are some poof-ed up variant of a compact car a nuance free opinion like yours is just insufferable.

It's not so much ground pressure as axle group loading.

You can think of roads as basically retaining walls as they're a hard compacted mass of stuff "floating" in otherwise fairly fluid ground. Sure, high point loads can damage the top surface (not really a problem since anything on tires is fairly low point load) but it's the overall weight you're asking it to bear that causes the pressure to just kinda mush the wall over.

Yet you suffer it.

And yes, your mother is more likely to kill someone in a larger, heavier, vehicle. I don’t see how anything you said refutes that.

99% of people with an SUV will never use the "sport utility" aspect of it, and they could do all of the things you listed better with a minivan (Sienna/Odyssey/etc).

But the driver would have to sit lower in a minivan. Which is what SUVs are really about, the ego boost one gets from sitting higher up (and the associated feelings with being able to not have to settle for a minivan, and being able to waste a little money).

Most SUVs (crossovers) have the same or smaller footprint than the equivalent sized sedan.

Keep in mind nowadays most SUVs aren't trucks with the cab extending to the rear instead of a bed. They're cars that are slightly lifted with a taller profile. As an example, I have a Hyundai Elantra, which is longer than the equivalent Hyundai SUV (Tucsan)...

It's not like she bought a 4Runner or Suburban. She bought a Honda compact car that's been stretched on the vertical access.

We all spend the 2000s listening to the "they're less safe because they roll over more" screeching broken record and while statistically that was true to an extent nothing really came of it, everyone decided that yeah they do but they like the tradeoff. You just sound like a 2020s cover of that. Why ought I to take your hand wringing seriously?

Because I’m expressing myself politely and clearly without resorting to childish attacks?

They should drive a goods vehicle then. The one time I have driven a Transit van (a Ford model popular in the UK) I was looking down on cars and SUVs - even a Rolls at one point. It was amusing (and a lot easier to drive than I imagined).

Man, I really hit that one out of the park with my choice of the word "insufferable"

These typical crossovers that most people buy are more or less a direct replacement for the sedans they used to buy. Sure they're probably statistically worse at the margin but people derive a bunch more utility out of them than the sedans they replaced, which is why the form factor is carried over as best they can to the compact and subcompact hatches (impreza, c-max, etc). You have every right to tell people they ought not to be doing what benefits them because of some nebulous change at the margin that's only visible once you apply a bunch of statistics, and I have every right to call you a moron over it. But what do I know, I drive a minivan.

Modern SUVs are closer to cars or minivans than the body on frame 4x4s that SUVs started as...

I don't follow this logic at all. We have a Model Y SUV. We use the space of its hatchback and frunk frequently, and it's much more efficient to drive than a Sienna or Odyssey. There's no logical reason to conclude a minivan would be better for our purposes.

Nothing my family couldn't do with plain Honda Civics. If you want more space in the back, there are also long versions of VW Passat and various Skoda models. Heck, SUVs usually have way less trunk space than those - they're just taller than your average sedan, but not any longer. You can see outside just fine, and get around with 5-6L/100km efficiency.

A VW Passat is a pretty long vehicle, a Škoda Kodiaq is actually shorter. Less length = easier to park, especially in Europe.

And I'm old enough that I used to do everything with a beater compact car (Saab 900 Turbo, was lots of fun) when I was young, it was fine, ish. Now I have a family, and if I want to bring along the in-laws as well it's more efficient and generally easier to bring 1 large vehicle versus 2 small ones.

A model Y is not anywhere near an SUV, regardless of classification for tax purposes. It's also not comparable because it is all electric.

The form factor of a typical SUV, such as an X7 or Land Cruiser or Explorer or Suburban, is inherently more wasteful than a minivan. The only thing those offer 99% of people is that they allow the driver to sit higher up, and be able to say they are not driving a minivan. Otherwise, the minivan provides more utility in every way.

>summer roadtrips, ski vacations, visiting family, moving stuff.

All of this stuff (in the manner 99% of people use their vehicle, i.e. not climbing rocky terrain like in the commercials) is easier to do in a minivan than an SUV. And I'm sure an electric minivan would be better than an electric SUV, except at signaling you can afford to forego the extra utility.

The Model Y is commonly understood to be a SUV. You can't just make it not so because it doesn't fit your narrative.

Also no, an ID Buzz in an electric minivan, and I wouldn't inherently say it's better than an electric SUV. It gets pretty poor range and efficiency, and so a smaller SUV like a Model Y can make more sense if you don't need that extra storage capacity.