I have to drive a freaking pick up truck for professional reasons and even I loathe the freaking thing.
Too long, too wide, too tall, too everything and anything for any road and I drive in country roads.
The craze for ever growing vehicles is going to extremes.
Tax and penalize these cars until it hurts.
Most of my friends that are in the trades prefer small vans over pickup trucks. They can fit more tools, better organized, and easier to secure. Pickup trucks are very niche vehicles.
Unfortunately, to my knowledge, there are no
risenraised vans or with 4x4 traction, which I often require to reach some remote locations, especially with rainy weather.But I would gladly trade it in for a small van.
Either that or a 1990’s 4x4 FIAT Panda, with a roof rack.
Pretty sure mercedes has some vans like that. I know of a company that build them into off road & off grid camping vans and they do rock climbing, or whetever one would call it, in them. They are still quite long and big but not like the sheer stupid toys that a modern pickup is.
There are, not sure what your qualifications for a “risen van” are, but Ford Transits and Mercedes Sprinters have an AWD variant. Dodge has had 4wd panel vans since the 90s, not sure if they still are, tho. There’s probably other makes out there, but that’s what I know off the top of my head. I think there’s also aftermarket companies that can mod vans into 4wd, but that’s getting a little crazy for just a basic work van.
At least 20cm of clearance from the road, awd capable, with high torque setting for rough terrain and steep inclinations, as I sometimes need to use trails not even fit to be considered goat paths.
In a van, it’s an exotic combination.
Ya, it’d be doable for sure with the craze of all the overland van-dweller builds the last few years. Ive seen plenty that meet all your requirements. But, whether it would be cost-effective or not for a work van would be the major issue, especially considering most trucks can do all that without being a special order for probably less than half the price.
Unfortunately not a lot of demand for such a thing, like you said.
Years ago i was in a spot where i needed the same as you for basically all the same reasons. The old van kept getting stuck everywhere, and then it actually got rolled from hitting a patch of black ice one winter, so it was totaled. These high-top vans had just started coming to market which was great, but I couldn’t convince the boss to spend the extra money for at least an AWD version, nevermind the higher ground clearance or low-torque options. I still got that thing stuck so many times…having a high-top I could stand up in was nice though.
Anne Hidalgo does some very cool stuff.
Just SUVs? Why not Lamborghini, Ferrari, Bently, or all the other luxery vehicles? This seems pretty arbitrary at first glance. I don’t know french car culture very well but aren’t SUVs more of a middle class thing?
Could it also be to do with the increased lethality of SUVs? A study in Ireland shows 11.5% of pedestrians hit by an SUV were killed versus 4.5% for a car.
No law is perfect and there’s always an edge case to provide a reason for doing nothing. This is definitely a step in the right direction to stop the arms race that purchasing larger vehicles has become though.
French car culture isnt much different than European car culture in general, for the sake of the topic here. Small displacement engines (1.6, or 2.0 liter usually) and small footprint because of space. Scooters and pedal bikes are super common around places like Paris, tho…parking, gas, weaving through the congestion, etc. However, some of the wagon variants of cars and these luxury cars you mention sometimes have a much larger footprint than small and mid-sized SUVs. Unless overhead clearance is an issue, like in parking garages, i don’t quite understand the reason for singling out SUVs here.
This, of course, is all stated with European sized SUVs in mind that share the same small displacement engines as other cars. Not the giant American sized ones that have much larger engines where emissions issues now come into play. However, all those luxury cars usually have even bigger engines and sometimes the loud exhaust as well…sooo…🤷
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Paris intends to triple parking charges for large sports utility vehicles (SUVs) in order to push them out of the city and limit emissions and air pollution, the mayor has said.
“It is a form of social justice,” Anne Hidalgo announced on Friday of the plan to deliberately target the richest drivers to tackle the climate breakdown and air pollution.
Paris will hold a referendum on 4 February asking residents to vote for or against a specific parking tariff for heavy, large and polluting SUVs.
David Belliard, a deputy mayor of Paris for the Green party, said: “SUVs cost between €6,000 to €7,000 more than a standard car and all the studies by car firms show that they are bought by the wealthiest people with high incomes … This measure, if applied, will be directed at the richest people in order to finance the transformation of our public space to adapt to the climate crisis, so it’s a form of social redistribution.”
Under Hidalgo, Paris has for years raised pressure on drivers by increasing parking costs and gradually banning diesel vehicles, while expanding the bicycle lane network in the congested capital.
The French motorists’ association, 40 millions d’automobilistes, denounced what it called an “unjustified” clampdown and restriction on liberties.
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