Comment by red-iron-pine
19 hours ago
arguably the biggest driver is simply the cost of oil. crumple zones made of styrofoam and plastic bumpers arn't making things heavy.
e.g. https://www.forbes.com/sites/samabuelsamid/2019/01/03/new-ve...
19 hours ago
arguably the biggest driver is simply the cost of oil. crumple zones made of styrofoam and plastic bumpers arn't making things heavy.
e.g. https://www.forbes.com/sites/samabuelsamid/2019/01/03/new-ve...
That article is being disingenuous and wrong. It's comparing the lightest possible Civic configuration with the heaviest possible Accord of a different body type.
The 2000 Accord sedan is 2,712lbs, not 2,987lbs (which would be the wagon).
The 2019 Civic sedan is 2,743–2,923lbs depending on equipment/trim.
So yes, the Civic compared to an older car of similar size did get heavier.
The Miata proves that cars don't have to be heavier, but the Miata also took advantage of much more aluminum compared to the older models. Maybe mainstream cars should also switch to use more aluminum to keep weight down, and you're right that the reason they don't is because oil is cheap enough where weight isn't a priority enough to use more expensive aluminum instead of steel.
A 2000 Honda Accord and a 2019 Honda Civic have nearly identical dimensions. Car models generally get bigger with each generation over time.
> That article is being disingenuous and wrong. It's comparing the lightest possible Civic configuration with the heaviest possible Accord of a different body type.
Good to know.
> So yes, the Civic compared to an older car of similar size did get heavier.
If the minimum is 1% heavier and the maximum is 2% lighter then I would not say "did get heavier".
You can only make the argument that the Civic is "2% lighter" when it is being compared to a wagon; apples to oranges comparison that invalidates the whole comparison.
They picked that specific year Accord because it's the same size as a sedan as that specific year Civic sedan, so it makes no sense to then compare the weight to the much larger Accord wagon variant. You might as well compare the sedan to a crossover to argue that the sedan didn't get heavier.
The range is 1% heavier to 7% heavier comparing the sedan to the sedan. Both ends of the range are heavier, so "did get heavier" is an accurate statement.
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Another thing not mentioned by this poor article (everything forbes does these days is hot garbage), is that vehicles which are heavier do damage quartically proportional to their weight - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_power_law
So the ever increasing weight of cars, trucks, SUVs, and especially semi-trucks is also responsible for our roads being shit, full of potholes, and expensive to fix.
Exactly because of the fourth power low, almost all of the road damage comes from the heaviest vehicles: class 7 and 8 trucks as well as buses etc. Even the heaviest passenger vehicles are negligible by comparison. And the weight of semi-trucks hasn't been "ever increasing": normal maximum weight has been fixed at 80,000 pounds for decades.
In some areas the roads are shit due to weather conditions, mainly frost heaves. This has little to do with vehicle damage.
Surely they do damage proportional to the fourth power of the contact pressure on the tire contact patch, not the fourth power of the overall vehicle weight, right? So adding axles or wider tires etc mitigates this.