It’s time for Americans to embrace small cars

Enlarge / Americans bought Renault 5s in the past, can we dare dream they might buy Renault 5 EVs in the future? (credit: Jonathan Gitlin)

America needs to end its national love affair with massive cars. It's unlikely to have escaped anyone's attention that our cars, trucks, and SUVs keep getting bigger in each successive generation, a problem exacerbated as most automakers abandon smaller cars entirely in this market.

It's easy to see why carmakers and car dealers like this problem—it's not that much more expensive to build a large car compared to a smaller car, but you can charge a lot more for the bigger one, meaning more profits for them. It's just the rest of us who suffer.

Bigger vehicles cost more, are less efficient, and while they better protect their occupants in a crash, they're much more deadly on the receiving end. Heavier vehicles also wear out roads faster, though the difference between a small sedan and a large electric SUV amounts to very little when compared to the effect of a garbage truck rolling by each morning.