Why do people buy SUVs?

[MuskIsACnt]

I need a new car and I’ve always had a small car but it seems every other car now is an SUV, so I’m wondering why and whether I need one.

The boot space is often the same as smaller cars, they’re more expensive and arguably harder to park. Am I missing some great benefit that I should be considering? Or does driving a big car just make people feel big (I used to drive a Luton van and that made me feel big)?

1. It’s about want vs need - business use and disability adaptations are needs. Convenience, or liking a high driving position is not.
2. Some SUVs are not as dangerous for pedestrians and are not gas guzzlers. The car tax system already classifies vehicles and charges according to set criteria. This could easily be modified so that owners of the most damaging kinds are penalised financially.

Whilst raising the cost of fuel hits our pockets I think a tax on usage mentally affects people more.
So how about both as I would want people to realise each year when they get their bill how much they’ve driven in a year and for those that drive the most to really realise that their level of usage is higher than the average.

And in towns / cities. Risk management is the thing.

We bought one for my very elderly parents to be able to get in and out easily. We my DH and l )were their full time carers .

Agree about the need and I would say driving essentially on flat roads in towns for a healthy adult reduces that need.
However in bad weather conditions a 4x4 is often the only safe means to get about.
I recall non 4x4s careering down roads in icy conditions hitting parked cars and even crashing into our local curry house not that long ago.
Sometimes, driving the safest vehicles are more important for everyone.

Our Honda crvs have boots like a tardis. We also have the large tyres 4x4 and heavy diesel engines, helps with clearance off the ground and also sticks to the road better. We live in rural Scotland. Lots of snow (currently snowed in) and even in summer, a lot of mud. We also transport animals and tow.

Seating position is high up which I like as I'm short. DH likes it as it's very upright and he has a v bad back. Our previous saloon gave him all kinds of horrible pain. The large dog can fit in the boot and couldn't travel in a boot in a standard hatchback [or saloon obviously] with one of those rigid hat rack lid things. She's a nightmare inside the car and usually filthy on the way home so the boot is essential.

We also got one as it has pop up boot seats and it was a way of avoiding needing a second car to deal with frequent visitors.

It is a tank to park though not as big as a Range Rover thankfully. I dream of a smaller car but ours is so practical for lots of things we'd just end up with two.

Because I enjoy driving them

All high end SUVs cost over 40k new so fall into the higher road tax band for minimum of six years. Although I bought my SUV second hand I still have to pay £600+ a year in road tax until it is six years old.
Even if you pay 15k for a 5 yr old car, if it cost over 40k new you have to pay the higher rates. So they do come with additional costs.
However mine does 40mpg so is cheaper to run than previous cars.
I did consider a hybrid but dealer advised against it since the extra weight of the battery means they drink fuel. And unless you keep the car for 8-10 yrs you never reach carbon neutral.
We don’t do high mileage but when we do long trips they are 200miles+ so the range would extend journey time significantly. In addition the destinations we regularly visit are not well served by charging stations. It’s a clean modern diesel. Also we no longer fly abroad and haven’t done for the last 10yrs so have a low carbon footprint.
It always makes me chuckle when friends extol the virtue of electric cars when they holiday abroad 4-5 x a year. No fuel is carbon zero.

I can assure you it is not! Not in most cases as SUVs for disabled people who can't/struggle to bend, is a lifesaver! I cannot get into a regular height vehicle. I once asked Motability what percentage of their 60,000 vehicles were SUVs and they said about 90%!

My SUV is NOT a status symbol and is not a 4x4

DISABLED PEOPLE! That is the point of SUVs without 4x4. Higher up and easier to get into.

Winter/all-season tyres combined with four wheel drive is the best option. The extra mass of the four wheel drive system is all close to the ground and may even result in a lower centre of gravity than an equivalent two wheel drive vehicle.

@MuskIsACnt makes a good point re EV SUVs- they are really the only “big” electric option, there are very few electric estate cars, although more are coming by I the market so hopefully there will be secondhand ones soon.

we don’t have a SUV - we do have a petrol estate car because bike mad family members means we need a big car. Looking to move to electric it would be cheaper to get SUV than estate at the moment.

(although the hate the SUVs get doesn’t get applied to estate cars, which have a similar width and length, just not height. The petrol options aren’t seen as “gas guzzlers” even though the fuel consumption on most estate cars is comparable.)

Boot space. People are such dicks now that they piss me off pretty much every day so I need plenty of boot space.

I reckon the negativity re SUVs is mostly from townies. Some people can’t think outside their little bubble. I couldn’t till I moved to the village I live in. Before moving in I always wondered why a lot of people had SUVs that lived here. I realised why the first winter of living here!

I live in the country. I could possibly understand some rural people needing a 4x4 depending how far north they are and how far from a main road. But the majority of SUVs I see aren’t 4x4. My village is full of SUVs, we are 200yds from an A road which is always gritted.

In 40 years of living here with a non 4x4 and non SUV I have always made the main road apart from one week when i didn’t need to leave anyway

I live in a City. There are loads of suvs here.
I am from the countryside, have lots of farmers in my family. None of them were using suvs to drive around. They used old bangers or tractors and trailers.

Aye that's a cracking policy that one.
My prediction is that £40k will never change. In 10 years time more cars will be in that £40k bracket.

I have a hybrid estate and if it's not charged then it does about 33mpg so yes, this is exactly correct. It takes 4/6 hours to charge as the internal charger of the car is 3.6kwh which gives about 100mpg for say a 100 mile journey and then you're back to 33mpg so even charged I think it's not that eco friendly.

I don't really know how you could do that though. I suppose mileage is recorded on the MOT, which the DVLA holds electronically nowadays 🤔
But fuel tax IS a tax on usage- the more you drive, the more you pay.

Nowadays most cars are SUVs even if it means a few mm higher. All cars seem bigger on the outside but smaller on the inside too. I have a mid to large estate (330e) and I can't fit my large dog in the boot and kids don't have as much room in the back as the previous versions. I only had saloons before so can't compare but back seat was bigger.

I looked at some SUVs (evoque/GLA/q3 or 4) too and they all seem hatch size but taller which was not what I wanted at all.

Another down side of any sort of tax per mile is that it hits rural people disproportionately from town people.
And it's the town and city people with the over crowded roads who you want to encourage into public transport not the country people.

Fuel is already a tax on mileage.

I agree though that this disproportionately affects those in rural areas, who often have to travel by car because public transport is pathetic/non existent.

I agree How do they assess mileage as assessing that could be open to abuse.
I do think that’s something we need to solve though.

Modern cars could probably do it so when everyone has a modern car we'll be ok. Mine tells me how many miles I've done each day and reviews it at the end of the month. I also have a profile assigned to my key so it could probably work it out. The thing is a lot of people don't have an assigned car and what about business mileage - if the company pays then great but then it will be abused by people who probably don't need the help with those already having to pay for their own cars (not BIK which is super low on electrics) and the mileage they do.