Sport Utility Vehicles often annoy drivers of passenger sedans, the lights of these trucks are shining directly into the side & center mirrors of the lower vehicle, glare blinding the driver with reflection of the truck or SUV headlights directly into the sedan driver's eyes.
That makes these lifted high vehicles unfair & unsafe because to maximize useful lighting in front of the truck, the headlights need to be located near the road surface & aligned correctly to throw light onto the roadway ahead. This means the automakers that make & sell SUV & Trucks are guilty of illogical headlight designs that not only do not improve public safety but are actually a hazard for the aforementioned reasoning.
Sometimes the laws are the problem. In the USA automakers are legally prohibited from using lasers for headlighting, even though sending diode laser output through phosphor lenses can project more light further with less glare to oncoming motorists in what is a substantially improved solution to vehicle forward illumination that BMW commercialized as an optional upgrade know as Laser Lighting, which can throw more light 3X further with 500% less glade via active blanking using forward camera face detection of the oncoming drivers window, so the LCD can blank out portions of the forward illumination that would glare blind oncoming motorists, also so the system can throw even more light further down the road with camera ADAS that can highlight animals or pedestrians further in the road with color blinking then in a HUD projected to the inner side of the front window so the driver gets a highlighted view of hazards on the road in a highly visual easy to spot at a glance visual ADAS system upgrade ;)
Toyota Hybrids prove that 35 to 70 miles per us gallon of gasoline are possible with strong hybrid drivetrain technology that they have been mass producing in Japan for more than 20 years in tens of millions of Hybrid & plug-in Prime versions of their popular vehicles that sell well worldwide. If you are into haute culture comfort Toyota makes Lexus branded luxury versions of their vehicles with heated, ventilated & air conditions perforated hand stitched luxury leather seats 52 way adjustable with pneumatic lumbar support & message functions.
You get the industry leading 22-layer paint job on Lexus, oil-based urethane with UV protection, so much gloss when its polished you can use the surfaces of a darkly painted car like that as a pseudo mirror for on-the-fly hair adjustments or clothing tweaks. Sunburst Orange on the 2015 Mazda Miata my favorite car color, though I really like white gloss since it does not stick out at all or very bland looking since I don't' want attention from unsavory peoples when driving in traffic with random strangers, some of whom are likely serial killers or psychopaths.
ADAS are advanced driver assist technology that enhance safety, like automatic emergency braking, lane keep assist or active cruise control. These features require more chips which is also why the chip shortage caused production stops at many automakers during the covid 19 supply chain disruptions. A modern automobile contains more than 100 computer chip & miles of wiring to all the sensors & modules & motors & relays & devices, heads up displays, LCD dash or mid dash touchscreen interface with Apple Car Play when you connect your phones charging cable to the USB-A outlet in the lower middle dash area. My Toyota Corolla Hybrid LE from 2022 features a lot of these chip driven functions & features. No doubt any Hybrid vehicle from Toyota contains more chips than other ICE gasoline-typical conventional cars that get 40% less fuel economy. I save enough money on fuel getting more than 55 MPG in Hybrid Corolla to more than pay the entire price of the car. I can easily get more than 65 MPG & over 70 MPG if I try hypermiling on purpose in Eco Mode.
Vehicles that have higher mass tend to handle worse, higher ground clearance results in more corner roll, tipping, tilting, loss of control, poor corning performance, longer braking distance, produce more tire wear faster which also emits more microplastics, the tires for SUV also cost more than tires for a sedan.
A typical full-size SUV gets around 10 mpg city or 18 mpg highway, where a similar sedan gets 24 city & 36 highway MPG, so the SUV not only costs more upfront but also ends up using more fuel & creating more emissions during its useful working life as a vehicle on roads or offroad use. For a single occupancy commuter vehicle even a 350cc displacement engine motor scooter in fair weather conditions sufficient & those get around 80 mpg on regular unleaded fuel. Some suggest that a crossover utility vehicle like the Tesla Model Y battery electric are better, but they suffer from limited range per charge which decreases as the battery ages in both years and cycles, & EV notoriously fun to accelerate with very little noise producing face blurring 0-60 MPH in under 2 seconds in performance versions of BEV from Tesla, but this kind of instant torque also burns away tire tread rapidly similar to burning out by revving the engine & dumping the clutch rapidly in a manual transmission sports car fueled by gasoline with a high performance tuned piston engine polluter.
In some cases gas powered Hybrid cars have lower total emissions than conventional gasoline fueled cars, because the HEV can turn the engine off when stopped, when going down a hill, & going down the hill makes the HEV motor system charge the battery, so then when you accelerate in the HEV the battery energy saved during regenerative braking can be used to help the vehicle accelerate while the engine uses less fuel & does less work, & your pedal modulation affects that ratio or the net system power output such that hypermiling much easier in a typical HEV like a Toyota Prius or the Corolla Hybrid or Hybrid Rav4 or Hybrid Camry to name a few examples.
Wayne Gerdes famously teaches people how to get 40% better fuel or energy economy in almost any road passenger automobile of most kinds, by simply thinking with safety focused predictive driving technique to keep the vehicle inertia, to feather the pedal gently & modulate it in order to maximize fuel economy, using the ECO dash feedback information to inform further reduction in fuel use to maximize fuel economy which lowers fueling costs & reduces emissions, while also making the brake pads & rotors last longer, making the tires last longer, and in general does not take more than a few dozen extra seconds to get to your destination not in a hurry by leaving 5 minutes earlier, thinking ahead for this, and try your best to not be wasteful. There are other ways to blow off steam that drive your vehicle like you stole it fast, you can work out to burn off steam for example.
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