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What Europe should do, is ban those anti-social SUVs altogether. And tax the ones already there to a high amount. Say 80%. But offer an incentive to lower that tax to 40%, if they switch to scooters, ebikes, and bikes, and let the car be scrapped and its metals reused for those purposes. They then can get a scooter/ebike or whatever for free, together with 10+ years of warranty.
This will offer a lot more job availability in Europe. That’s only better for the former owners of those roadkillers.
It’ll be especially dangerous since they’re gonna have slashed tires so often.
I can’t wait to see one get stuck trying to fit past my house. I can assure you my brick wall is cheaper to stack back up than your bodywork is to replace.
A lentil placed under the cap is a more efficient method of disarmament.
Depends on the end goal. Those 18" tires on most trucks aren’t cheap, especially if you have to swap one out every few months
I suppose. It takes bringing a knife though, which is less convenient than a lentil
I always have a pocket knife on me. Why are you carrying around beans?
To be clear, I have not disarmed any vehicles, so I don’t carry any lentils
Sorry, what? A lentil like the bean? How does that ruin a tire?
Placed under the valve cap, it will press on the valve and let the air out, leading to a flat tyre.
Ahh, ok. So flattens it, not quite ruins it. Gotcha. BRB gonna go prank the roommate
You place it between the valve and valve cap so the air slowly leaks out
Using scissors/wire cutters on the stem, or just stomping on the stem if it’s on the lower half of the wheel at the time, works too, but isn’t as expensive to fix as the tire.
we can only hope
Maybe burning the trucks will help with the tyre thing? It’s a long shot but I think it should be tried…
Yeah, no thanks.
lol and that’s one of the smaller truck models you’ll see in the states 🫠
Good luck dealing with the shitheads who buy these. They’ll whine and cry about not having space, x, y, z… I am surprised none of the EU brands have a popular small truck. Closest thing appeared to be Ford Rangers.
Well, they can always get a cart attached to the back of their car.
Much lower costs, fewer energy costs, and so on. And removable.
Lower cars also have the benefit of actually being easily to get into. And they’re safer for the car driver, too.
Well naturally. I’m a truck owner and I have no idea why you’d opt into on over there… hell if I could find a decent car or wagon that had a 7pin and could tow 4-5k I’d be about it. Closest are Subies but towing with a CVT … Ehhh.
Time to slice some tires…
Yep a real full size truck you could probably take that car and put it in it its bed. With room to spare.
Yes, no tanks.
Why have they caved? These vehicles aren’t appropriate here.
As someone from the US, they’re mostly not appropriate here either. They rarely get used for anything except driving to/from work. They are more like massive uneconomical vans with four luxury seats rather than work trucks (again, when they nearly always have a driver and no passengers).
That being said, my fiancé lives in the Philippines (Specifically in Manila, the most densely populated city on the planet), and every time I visit it’s clear the same stupid oversized trucks are everywhere and I doubt anywhere in the EU will be different.
Just like requiring seatbelts to be a rule, you need to put rules in place so the idiots don’t destroy everything, that’s pretty much advanced modern society.
Yeah there are a fuckton of “real men” in Europe, influenced by the firehose of toxic culture coming from the US. I agree 100%, governments need to prevent selfish idiots from endangering others with their bad choices.
Those ‘real men’ are showing how tiny their dicks and how fragile their egos actually are.
REAL men bike, show off their muscles, and are kind on the road. Dare to show some kindness to everyone, and that is the true manship.
I agree. Rangers and Amaroks and a few others are everywhere. But CTs are an especially stupid step up.
Pavement princesses.
They probably figured that they can sell trucks but nobody is obligated to buy them. The taxes are on weight and prices for fuel are not compatible with gas guzzlers. The really heavy ones need a different driving license. Also in places the tax exemption for cargo didn’t work anymore.
Man I sure do love when people with money can pay to inconvenience everyone else
these vehicles arent appropriate anywhere. the EU caved because it’s not sovereign, it does as it’s told.
EU works for lobbies. Not Europeans.
Examples?
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These vehicles are not really made for European infrastructure. Especially in older Cities or towns they are sometimes wider than the road itself. I guess it would be fine if people would have to have a C-Class license.
But have you considered bulldozing all the historic architecture to accommodate American manufacturers’ god given right to sell product?
RAM pick ups are not type-approved to be sold on the EU market, but are imported under IVA, ostensibly to be sold on a one-off or ‘individual’ basis. Already, the IVA rule, intended for niche uses, is being roundly abused by German and Dutch Type Approval entities, which approve 69% and 30% of RAMs respectively, said T&E. Imports of three other pick-up trucks – the Ford F-150, the Chevrolet Silverado and the GMC Sierra 1500 – have skyrocketed from 157 in 2019 to approx 1,700 in 2024 [1].
The EU Commission’s proposals to close the IVA loophole tabled in early July are now at risk from an EU-US trade pact which states that the EU and US “intend to accept and provide mutual recognition to each other’s standards” for cars.
And to compete our domestic car industries will probably start making similar models :/
As these vehicles aren’t officially sold in EU by their brands, they don’t enter the pollution calculation of their average fleet. I doubt that they will produce even more similar models adapted to and for the EU market.
One-up it entirely and make a ‘thinner’ pickup truck that does comply with EU roads and usurp the Chrysler dogshit entering your nations.
Let the Germans make it.
Solicit your vehicle taxing authorities to raise taxes on these huge vehicles so it’s cost prohibitive.
Hopefully insurance will be prohibitively expensive as well where there so dangerous.
In the netherlands road tax is paid depending on the weight of the vehicle (and some more factors). Also, a standard drivers license B is for cars with maximum weight 3500kg (unladen weight plus payload).
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Do they really think US style trucks will sell well in Europe?
Yes I do. Selfishness is not an American only trait.
Too bad. I wish the US had EU and JP sized cars
I mean, selfishness is one thing, but these things literally won’t fit in most parking spaces and even a number of garage spaces.
You can technically buy a bus, too, but most people don’t think it’s practical.
The race to size already happened in Europe once, when 4x4s started getting marketed to scared housewives under the pretense that they were safer, if that sounds familiar. I know a few people who were tempted.
Then they looked into it and got over it pretty quickly.
I’m sure you’d see some (I saw my first local Tesla the other day, the guy had blacked out the badge to avoid having it vandalized). I’m not sure we’re going to see a race towards Europeans as a group buying humongous, impractical, extremely expensive cartoon trucks.
Yes, they don’t belong here.
That angle almost helps its case because that’s mostly large cars for the EU parked rather loosely in a spacious spot (guessing those two things are related). The Mercedes kind of breaks the illusion that it makes some sense.
That thing would take two spaces and definitely go past the max length in the average underground parking lot.
Have you seen people driving SUVs a lot? Those things generally don’t fit in parking spots, doesn’t stop people from trying and happily occupying two spots.
Large SUVs? Not many, no.
My point exactly.
And the ones that I am familiar with out there, mostly from people who used to like cars but now have too many kids to fit into a hot hatchback, tend to fall into the “compact SUV” subsegment, which totally does fit in parking spots and meet current EU regulations.
Also I wouldn’t underestimate the size of the US monstrosities. Made me look it up. The most popular American pickup is 20 cm wider and a whopping 2 meters longer than the most popular EU SUV. I had to double check that, that’s a tall NBA center longer. You could park a whole Smart FortTwo behind your SUV and still almost fit in the footprint of a Ford F150.
You could also buy both the SUV and the Smart and still have money left over before you can afford the Ford. And that’s not accounting the US prices may not be listing taxes.
Seriously, regulations aren’t the only reason car tastes have diverged. It’s not like Ford doesn’t sell cars in Europe. A nontrivial part of this has been Trump and his idiotic followers making shit up to justify things they don’t like.
Well, if they pay for two…
In my city, there is no public spot above ground left where you don’t have to pay for parking.
The underground parking lots I’m frequenting, however, will not accommodate any SUV, period. Meaning maybe you can wiggle your way in, but you physically won’t get out. It’s a crowded continent…
My neighborhood is relatively new. Trucks don’t fit in garages here, so they park them on the driveway.
In rural areas, the parking spaces are extra big. In the city? They’ll happily take over half the sidewalk or multiple spaces. Did I mention they leave their metal hitches always installed?
We need to implement a law in the US where size of shadow cast from 8 angles determines your vehicle class and minimum tax. I am an adult. You can barely see my head above the roof of a pickup.
Don’t fit yet. The US is just way ahead of Europe in bulldozing the city to make room for more cars and now oversized trucks. All Europe has to do is start knocking down anything in the way to widen lanes and make bigger parking spots.
Yes, it can happen here if the people let it.
I lived through the same thing in the US and the results are horrifying.
Have you spent the last 10 years under a rock? Everyone drives an SUV nowadays
Everyone is driving compact SUVs or “crossovers”. That’s the biggest segment in Europe, as far as I can tell with some googling. The second biggest is even smaller SUVs.
Admittedly, what I can find also says that big SUVs are growing faster than compact and small SUVs. But still, large SUVs are like 3-5% of the market.
Why the “compact SUV” is a thing when a T-Roc is the exact same size and pretty much the same shape as a Golf GTI is anybody’s guess. I don’t sell cars for a living, you’d have to ask Volkswagen what the difference is supposed to be.
So no, not living under a rock.
@Eyekaytee @Sunshine Believe me, there are enough Ameriboos here in Europe (especially in positions of power) to make this a real problem if this is allowed to be normalized without some major consumer or other type of backlash.
Yes. Their market is fascist fucks. Look at the political parties.
what in the flying fuck
Why would any auto manufacturer make cars under European safety standards any more if this goes through?
@Sunshine make them undrivable.
We are already in a situation where they have to stop in the village centers to let people move out of the way for the extra wide load. I do not move. I don’t think anyone should
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The Japanese ones are good for workers, not parents that need to take the kids to school across a few fallen leaves in autumn.
Up to member states means they probably won’t do it, since it’s a matter of national politics and popularity…
So as I understand this - which seems to be totally at odds with everyone else commenting - this will actually make it harder for people to drive these things on the road in the EU. Currently you can import those things without them being subject to EU categorisation and safety requirements if it’s a one off (to quote Not Stanley, “I ain’t no serial killer! I killed a bunch of people but they were all one-offs!”) but now these will be categorised and controlled the same as EU vehicles instead, and subject to the same standards for safety, emissions, licensing etc. It’s worth keeping in mind that even in the US these aren’t categorised as cars, so why would they be in the EU? So someone with a car license (normally limited to 3.5T GLW) couldn’t drive one, even if they pinky-swore that they wouldn’t fully load it as is the case at the moment.
The EU has different licenses for cars and trucks? Cool!
I’ve always found it weird that a standard license here lets you drive anything from a teeny tiny SmartCar to an F350 pulling a massive palace-in-wheels, or a near bus-sized motorhome (provided it doesn’t have air brakes and is under 4600kg).
Wait. Are you telling me that the American “if you can parallel park, here’s your driver license” license allows you to legally drive trucks and other heavy machinery?
Not “trucks” as in a commercial transport truck (often called “rigs” to differentiate), but a large pickup-truck pulling a fairly massive travel-trailer or 5th wheel, yes.
See here for a reference on the various options, most of which are drivable under a standard license. The big difference tends to be when you get into things with air brakes, which requires a special endorsement or the truly huge sizes. Most of the restrictions are based on the towing/hauling or hitch capacity of the vehicle pulling them though, as opposed to the license of the driver
https://www.rv.com/rv/rv-classes-explained/
Also, this is in Canada but my understanding is that the US is much the same
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