• snooggums@midwest.social
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    5 months ago

    Nah, we still make compact cars similar in size with the same safety features to econoboxes from 40 years ago. Like houses, people want more room in their vehicles than they had with the smaller cars plus some other misinformed choices like thinking bigger and taller means safer.

    Plus along with the older small cars we also had the giant boats that got single digit mpg. It wasn’t like they were all small in the past.

    • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
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      5 months ago

      “with the same safety features”

      Eh, no, cars from 40 years ago wouldn’t pass current safety tests

      Cars of the same size weight a lot more now than they used to back in the day and safety features is one of the main reasons.

      • snooggums@midwest.social
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        5 months ago

        Here is the same thing I posted, but reworded slightly to be more clear.

        We make some cars now with modern safety feature that are big and some that are just as small as the econoboxes from 40 years ago. A Honda Fit for example is just as small, but with modern safety features.

        I said nothing about weight.

        • zout@fedia.io
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          5 months ago

          In 1984 the smallest Volkswagen was the Polo, weighing 685 kg. Now it is the Up, weighing 991 kg. That’s 45% more weight. Now you specifically didn’t mention weight, but all that weight has to go somewhere, especially considering most materials mostly got lighter.