Yikes, even Rivians are having similar issues, so this isn’t exclusive to these shitty trucks. Guess weighing 7,000+ LBs isn’t great for daily commuting, who’da thunk. I hate America’s obsession with huge trucks as their daily drivers. Whatever happened to smaller Ford Ranger type trucks? That way you still have the convenience of a truck when needed without the utter waste that the big ass trucks create for city driving.
Whatever happened to smaller Ford Ranger type trucks?
I could be wrong, but I heard it was emission regulations that happened.
As the emission standards became stricter, the truck manufacturers started producing bigger trucks as they had more lax emission requirements.
You’re right. But it’s more that emissions standards didn’t happen.
Cars got them while trucks got them much, much less. So they build more trucks and fewer cars.
They should just have a road tax based on weight and an emissions tax based on emissions. Not emissions per class twice removed just CO2 per mile. All vehicles.
Roads get maintained by the weight tax, emissions tax to fund decarbonisation of the economy.
But instead they’re charging me an extra $100 to renew my tags for my hybrid sedan. If i had a full electric, it would be $200 extra.
It’s partially that, the fact that instead of making the trucks more efficient they made them larger to skirt the regulation, but another factor is the profitability of larger trucks. It doesn’t cost them that much more to make a massive truck vs a reasonable vehicle but the target market for unnecessarily large trucks is willing to pay hand over fist for them and so the manufacturers and distributors make more money per sale by a large margin.
So when you see a large truck, don’t just think “someone who’s compensating” but also think “someone who got fleeced”.
The roads would be safer without massive trucks, no one should be above ridicule.
Just to be clear, small trucks weren’t good on gas either (I would know, I’ve had a bunch of them) and we’re at the point where full sized trucks and mid sized trucks get pretty much the same fuel economy. The shape of the vehicle is bad for fuel economy, it’s that simple…
The modern Ford ranger is the same size as the F-150 from 2004.
Now if you want to buy a Ford ranger size truck you have to buy the Ford Maverick, which costs ~$35,000.
It’s fucking madness and I don’t know a single company that hasn’t lost the plot.
Tbf I bought a new GTI in 2017 for 22k. I just checked and 2024 MSRP is 33k.
If you look from the 90s to today car price inflation is lower than general inflation
The modern Ford ranger is the same size as the F-150 from 2004.
Not if you’re actually honest and compare trucks with the same features (4 doors, similar bed length).
Trucks are mostly higher than they were before, but their width and length hasn’t increased as much as some people think as long as we compare trucks with the same features
2004 F150 crew cab, 5.5’ bed:
- Length: 224"
- Height: 73.5"
- Width: 78.9"
2023 Ford Ranger crew cab 6’ bed:
- Length: 210.8" (-13.2")
- Height: 71.5" (-2")
- Width: 73.3" (-5.6")
Or - hear me Out - don’t drive a Truck at all. It’s easy, just drive a car that ist meant to drive in cities, and not in a desert.
Whatever happened to smaller Ford Ranger type trucks?
Oddly enough, environmental regulations happened. When the government was pushing for fuel economy regulation, the auto manufacturers were scared. They managed to talk the government into adding an exception where as wheel base increases, fuel economy is allowed to drop.
If you don’t see the loophole in this, you wouldn’t the only one. After all, it sounds fine on the surface; large trucks need more fuel… Right? But it means that auto manufacturers pivoted to almost universally making (and marketing) larger SUVs and trucks, because their quality control can be much more lax when they aren’t trying to hit strict emissions and efficiency milestones. Their profit margins on large vehicles are much higher. Like 20-40% higher, because they’re easier to produce and sell for more. They’re able to get away with much more when the vehicle is larger, so they heavily leaned into the “larger cars are better” marketing.
Yikes, even Rivians are having similar issues, so this isn’t exclusive to these shitty trucks.
That being said, given the sheer number quality control problems with the Cybertruck I’m not willing to discount there being some sort of manufacturing defect contributing to tire problems. Like maybe Telsa didn’t give the right specs to Goodyear, or maybe they cheaped out on the materials used, or Elon got involved and demanded that ketamine needed to be mixed into the rubber or something.
Whatever happened to smaller Ford Ranger type trucks?
Ford’s compact truck is called the Maverick now. Unfortunately, it’s actually an Ute (like an El Camino) not a real truck, because it’s unibody instead of body-on-frame, but it’s the closest we’re gonna get. Honda and Hyundai also make kinda-small unibody kinda-trucks, by the way.
Really small trucks, like '80s Nissan P’ups and VW Rabbit Pickups, continue to no longer exist.
Ranger… Those things are a monstrosity.
Whatever happened to Ford Falcon Utes. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/87/Ford_AUII_Falcon_XR8_Ute.JPG/1920px-Ford_AUII_Falcon_XR8_Ute.JPG
Whatever happened to vehicles that don’t require steps to exit / enter the cab. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b3/1999_Ford_Falcon_(AU)_XR8_sedan_(2004-01-24)_02.jpg/1920px-1999_Ford_Falcon_(AU)_XR8_sedan_(2004-01-24)_02.jpg
The obsession / normalisation of huge vehicles that transport generally one person is toxic beyond belief. I feel like shit driving my 1.4L shitbox most places, sure it’s convenient but it’s not great for the environment, my wallet or my health. Can’t imagine the wasted resources from people driving their emotional support vehicles to do their errands.
Extremely heavy + low-end torque = bald tires, pronto!
But if you can afford this, you should not be cheaping out on the tires. Who would spend so much to ignore maintenance?
Who would spend so much to ignore maintenance?
I am firmly convinced the more something costs vs it’s useful value, the less the owner actually cares about it beyond the “bling” factor.
So, a $150k “truck” that is as useful as a $40k truck, likely is just owned as a “look at me, I’m rich” and the owner doesn’t care if it breaks, just that they are considered “rich” among their peers.
I am looking forward to lighter weight batteries with larger drive range that should be coming out in the near future but I’m also holding off on getting an electric vehicle until these issues are sorted out.
Plus, one of the largest sources of pollution in the form of forever chemicals comes from vehicle tires so we definitely need to fucking work on that.
I’ve always been told Charles Goodyear was a really great guy and a hard-working inventor and I feel like he would be rolling over in his grave to know that the reason why so many fish are dying out is because of his invention.
Some of these tires outlast the truck, so there is that
My first thought when I hears that was, oh, that’s not bad, that’s about what I get out of a set of Pirelli Angel STs. …Except that’s a sport touring motorcycle tire. I usually go through at least one set of tires each year on my motorcycle, but it’s been three years or so for the tires on my car.
Okay, so, the curb weight of a Ford F-250 is 7400#, while the curb weight of of Tesla Cybertruck is 6900#. That’s a 500# difference, with the Ford being heavier. If it’s the weight alone, then the Tesla should have better tire life than the Ford, and I strongly suspect that’s not the case. Perhaps Tesla is spec’ing a softer compound tire in order to actually use the enormous amounts of torque that is available to it?
I know that off-road tires tend to die fairly quickly when used on the road–softer compound + less contact patch at any given time–but it doesn’t appear that they’re using off-road tires on the Teslas.
So what’s going on here? Why are they burning through expensive tires so fast?
I am not from the US, and was surprised to see the number (hash) mark used to denote pounds, not just a number.
BTW, next year it will be 50 years after the metric system was stated as the preferred system for weights and measurements for US trade and commerce by law. Still not quite there yet, it seems.
I’m not sure what the Cybertruck uses, but they do make tires meant specifically for EVs. They tend to sacrifice some traction for increased range. Also not sure if that affects durability but it is a factor that may be worth considering!
About double the torque and horsepower, and it’s all available from standstill.
I suspect a set of motorcycle tyres is also a smidgen cheaper than a set of car tyres.
If you want more life out of a tire, you need to manufacture it with a harder compound, but you sacrifice dry performance. If you want better dry performance from a tire, you need to manufacture it with a softer compound, but you sacrifice treadwear.
So this was basically the trade-off made to get off the line faster, which is really pointless in real world use. Seems like a common thread with this thing.
Dry performance is also handling… If you don’t want those 7k pounds “trucks” driving off the road when taking a curve then softer compound it is.
Yes, once you have inertia built up, you need friction between the vehicle and the road (via the tires) in order to come to a stop, or change direction. A 7000 lb vehicle is always going to eat tires.
