What is the SUV?

And why is it still around? 10

Why isn't it the 21st century's spray-on deodorant?

Let me explain, and meet me after the jump.

When the first scientific evidence came out about the damage CFCs were doing to the ozone layer, one product to die a more-or-less quick death in North America was the spray-can deodorant. Environmentalists successfully convinced the public that ending all life on Earth as we know it was maybe a steep price to pay for avoiding roll-ons.

There was no real attempt to find a replacement for spray-on deodorants, though replacements for other aerosol CFCs were quick in coming. Overall CFC use continued to rise, though much slower than it had before.

Eventually -- after a painfully slow wait -- the governments of the world finally got together and put in a tough international measure to restrict the emission of CFCs, which is finally showing results, albeit slower than we had all hoped.

But the spray-can deodorant was probably the first "win" by the environmental movement to characterize consumer choices as a sign of needless waste and destruction.

What does this have to do with SUVs? Very simple, actually. These vehicles are hugely destructive. They are one of the primary reasons why American average fuel efficiency has stagnated, and they cause more than their share of deaths. (One gruesome statistic: if you drive an SUV, you are far more likely to kill your own children accidentally.) Yet in a breathtakingly cynical maneuver, the automobile industry has marketed these rolling coffins as "safer" for family driving. There are a number of reasons for this, but the two biggest are probably a) their higher profitability for Detroit versus small cars, and b) the "light truck" category was protected for years by a steep tariff that kept foreign competitors out of the SUV business.

There is, to put it simply, no compelling reason why the "light truck" category of vehicles deserves any special treatment by government or society at large. (Pick-up trucks are almost as useless. 90% of people who own pick-ups never put anything in the back. Think about that.) Yet the green movement has singularly failed to brand these monstrosities as the kind of absurd extravagance we can no longer afford when, say, the Arctic is disappearing. SUVs sales have finally -- finally! -- begun to sink, but this almost certainly has more to do with high gas prices than any enlightenment on our part.

This -- like CAFOs -- is really something we shouldn't have to try too hard to organize against.

Want to hurt terrorists? Stop SUV sales, and we'll use less oil. Want to stop global warming? Stop SUV sales, and it will help (though not enough.) Want to make our streets safer? SUVs kill far more people than accidents with normal cars. Everyone should, potentially, be able to find a reason to stop these things.

And if you're far-sighted enough to want to build a different automobile infrastructure (plug-in, ethanol, hydrogen, whatever) consider this: the laws of physics still apply. Moving more mass takes more energy, period. If we're getting our fuel from electricity (hydrogen or plug-ins) every extra pound of mass on our cars means more power plants, and more time to build them. If it's ethanol, ever extra pound means more biomass grown, harvested, and turned in to a liquid -- probably at some environmental cost.

Every SUV on the road -- no matter how it's fueled -- puts off the day when we have a sustainable economy. They need to go.

So what's stopping us?

John McGrath is an intinerant student and sometimes reporter currently living in Toronto, Canada. He mainly writes about Canadian and International Politics from an energy and climate perspective

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  1. Kit Stolz's avatar

    Kit Stolz Posted 3:08 pm
    14 Sep 2006

    Is the SUV becoming uncool?I haven't seen the latest stats, but in Southern California, I do see signs that SUVs are not as popular as they used to be. Lots more sitting by the road with For Sale signs on their windshields. Lots fewer of those ridiculous four-wheel drives jacked up to preposterous heights. Lots more hybrids, small cars, motorcycles.

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  2. bottleman Posted 1:59 am
    15 Sep 2006

    low mileage and moms, all aroundOk, yeah, SUV's suck.  But I wonder if they are primarily to blame for reduction in automobile gas efficiency.  In the past decade or two even the mileage of SEDANS and small cars has flattened: check out ads for sedans touting "25 mpg highway!" -- ridiculous considering what my Toyota pickup got in 1979, which was above 30. My guess is that engineering improvements are going into power. I'm sure someone has data on this.
    So why aren't SUV's the spray-on can of the 00's?  There's a powerful maternal pull towards SUV's, as a documentary on PBS demonstrated in a profile of hifalutin marketing researchers.  After a whole bunch of fancy metapsychoanalysis, they concluded: Make cars bigger and bulkier.  Women and moms will feel safer in them.  It's kind of like walking around with a big big dog.
    Which isn't to blame one sex or the other, just this: that instinct for protection, whether it's justified by safety data or not, can easily overrule altruism.  It's even more powerful than the urge to destroy underarm odor.
    bottleworld.net

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  3. atreyger Posted 3:02 am
    15 Sep 2006

    SUVsJust curious about how true is the statement that 90% of people with pick-ups do not put use them for their purpose. I mean it might be true that 90% of trips made by pick-ups are not with the original purpose in mind, but I'm not sure that only 10% of people actually use pick-ups.

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  4. GreenEngineer Posted 4:31 am
    15 Sep 2006

    SUVs = uncoolI've just recently started seeing two distinct billboard advertising campaigns that reflect this sentiment.
    One is part of PG&E's "Flex Your Power" conservation campaign.  It shows a incandescent and a CFL bulb side by side, with the labels "SUV" and "hybrid".
    There's also the ads for AMD low-power server CPUs that suggest that using their competition's (Intel) products is akin to driving an SUV.
    I find it very telling that the ad exec's believe that the public perception of SUVs has shifted to the point that these ads would be effective.  On the other hand, I live in the SF Bay Area.  These campaigns might well be localized just to this region, which is not representative of the county's sentiments overall.

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  5. kmp Posted 4:49 am
    15 Sep 2006

    I hate to reportthat SUVs are alive and well out here in Exurbia.  In fact, I have a friend who just a week or two ago bought a new (used) car, a Honda Civic.  (I was lobbying for the Prius, but she really couldn't afford it... the Civic's not a bad second choice).
    She reports that everyone in the dealership that day was inquiring about the Honda Pilot.  Offensively ugly, IMO, and gets a simply charming 19 miles to the gallon.
    You really don't see many cars that aren't SUVs on the road up here, merely an hour from Manhattan;  it is totally depressing.

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  6. Biodiversivist's avatar

    Biodiversivist Posted 5:16 am
    15 Sep 2006

    More powerful than the urgeto destroy underarm odor?
    Pretty bold statement there :=)
    Following up on Bottleman's idea, air bags are a very light way to protect people and are even more effective than "tons of steel" ... why does that sound familiar?

    In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Help acquire and protect ecological hotspots, give to a conservation organization: http://www.saveourbiodiversity.com

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  7. redjenny Posted 6:30 am
    15 Sep 2006

    SUV's and ImageSafer is part of it, but the other part is the whole image of the SUV. Like  a tough truck, but comfortable... Look at their names to get an idea of how the industry is positioning their SUVs. (Take an Expedition... to the nearest starbucks. Or how about an Excursion... to your kid's school)
    Read The Rebel Sell for a great analysis of how the 60s counterculture consumerism is at the base of this. The desire to be "different" that is supposedly countercultural actually drives the capitalist consumption machine.

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  8. Mike Frew Posted 8:27 am
    15 Sep 2006

    ...stigmaImage is a powerful thing Red Jenny.
    In July our good Gristmillers posted about a Greenpeace ad that ridiculed SUV users.
    Although the ad is in a UK context, it highlights the power of social stigma (and humour!).
    I've posted a few SUV pieces from a New Zealand perspective if you're interested... It seems that over here Hyundai are leading the way with "green" (ahem) motoring.

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  9. Tod Posted 2:53 pm
    15 Sep 2006

    Yet, sales ARE declining quicklyThe existing SUVs are not going to simply disappear, so it may be hard to see that sales are rapidly declining and sales of smaller, more fuel-efficient cars are spiking. In truth, the SUV is dead already. Every automaker knows it, and every dealer is scrambling. So never fear - we may move slowly, but we have finally moved. The real trick is to convince Honday, Hyundai and Toyota to stop crafting gas-guzzlers themselves. The new Accords? Terrible mileage. Even the hybrid Accord gets no better than 40mpg. And the Prius? We can do MUCH better. Let's demand much, much more from the next-gen vehicles and put the SUV-anger behind us. . .they're already ghosts.

    "Because the world doesn't matter if you don't have the strength to go ahead and choose something that's really true." - Julio Cortazar, Hopscotch

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  10. John McGrath Posted 2:14 am
    16 Sep 2006

    energy- vs fuel-efficiencySomething a few people have mentioned:  SUV's are not alone in the fuel-efficiency problem.  I absolutely agree, and there's an important trend in cars since the mid-1980s.
    While there's been a number of innovations and improvements in engine design and body construction, all of those improvements have gone towards improved acceleration and speed, not better fuel efficiency.  This is true for SUVs and Sedans, as people have said.
    Linda McQuaig has a good way of putting this:  The end point for this kind of trend is not cars that weigh nothing and run forever on fumes.  Rather, the end point is 18-wheelers that run like F1 race cars.  McQuaig calls it the "out of my way, fucker!" mentality of car design.
    As for directing our vitriol specifically at SUVs, I'd argue it's a way of attacking exactly that mentality in it's purest form.

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