Why don't Europeans buy more American cars? (TL;DR: preference for smaller vehicles, higher fuel prices, dominance of local European brands)
Why don't Europeans buy more American cars?
Those trucks are asshole-status symbols, like sports cars used to be.
Don't lose sight of the goals. The problem isn't fuel guzzling large trucks, it's cars.
Why would we need such big cars? It's just a waste of space.
No, I made a belt out of brand new SSDs. Now THAT was a waist of space.
indubitably
Ughh..
Back in my day we used planets and the void between for this kind of japery
I always heard that US cars have shitty quality in contrast to European or Asian brands.
And fuel hungry ofc. 10 L engine in a passenger car?
Nearly nobody needs them here. For what would a normal person need a Pickup truck in Europe? Except maybe for gardening businesses.
And apart from that "no need" issue, those things are way to expensive. Horrible insurance rates, high taxes, and gas guzzlers on top. With fuel prices in the 8 to 10 USD per gallon, filling up the tank of such a beast costs a fortune. There is a reason why Europeans prefer smaller, more fuel efficient cars.
And: in the US, car manufacturers have bought the law that anything below "truck" of a kind is to weak to pull any kind of trailer. Which was done to make people unecessarily buy bigger and more expensive cars.
Funny, thought, that all over Europe people use normal cars to legally and safe pull trailers that would be illegal in the US. My car can pull a 1.8t trailer. In the US, I would have to use a truck for this kind of load.
Except maybe for gardening businesses.
No. Europe has better cars for this: Pritschenwagen (who doesn't love German words? So creative ...).
Take a look at the VW crafter: https://www.volkswagen-nutzfahrzeuge.de/de/modelle/crafter.html
The council's gardening department has Pritschenwagen, too. The Pickup seems to be for the smaller jobs.
Typically I don't want to tow anything that is heavier than my car.
Conveniently my car weighs significantly more than a 6x4 trailer and I could fit everything I own in the car and trailer, with the exception of a bed and honestly I'm never moving that.
The build quality in US brands is lacking, on top of them just being too big and too thirsty.
US cars are weirdly oversized gas slurpers that have very poor safety standards.
Aggresive marketing campaign incoming..
Most people don't realize how much overcompensation for personal inadequacy those big trucks can carry.
They are also garbage vehicles, long gone are the days of American innovation or quality. The most innovative American car these days is a Tesla, and well, yea they aren't good at all, they aren't even the best american EV. Buying an american car in europe is a status symbol showing that you have more money than sense.
Those were innovative 10 years ago and haven't done shit since elon took over
That's what he does, he buys good ideas to steal credit and runs some of them into the ground.
As an Aussie, we have way too many of those emotional support yank tanks here, not only are they straight up compensation alert machine, they don't fit anywhere, overpriced and not all that capable compared to alternative vehicle designed for purpose, and build quality is kinda shit.
Can we call them fascism trucks now???
They need to exclude them from tradie tax concessions
I've had the privilege of driving Asian, European and American cars on three continents. Currently in America and I drive a European car.
While different cars for different purposes and different situations, on a general scale, European wins in the quality department, it's a toss up for reliability between European and Asian, with Asian tilting the scales, performance, again a toss up between European and Asian, and Europe tilts the scales here.
I could go on, but when I lived in Europe and having seen what America has to offer, it would mean America would have to do better, offer smaller vehicles that are practical, reliable, economical and good looking, all of which they currently cannot offer domestically.
That being said, China is going to destroy everyone when it comes to EVs. You may not like them, and they can be gimmicky but dang, those rides are sweet.
Just my opinion.
We do though. Cars have gotten noticeably beefier and taller in the last ten years. People seem to value comfort more than size, and it's an ever growing trend.
Here we don't need trucks to make tiny dick wannabees feel country on a budget. We are more refined. We have german crossovers for that.
An american pickup truck would physically not fit on the street I live on. This place was designed for horse carts, not monster trucks.
Which cars should we get? There's basically two manufacturers marketed in Denmark: Ford and Tesla. For reasons I fail to understand Ford is actually selling OK here, but Tesla ... let me put it this way, last week a major news site in Denmark ran a story about how people wanted EVs but not Teslas or Chinese cars.
Streets in the US are wider - those fat ass tanks couldn't handle all streets in my European hometown and finding parking space would be a daily challenge. Nice example to look up is Bruges, Belgian city since 1128. They've got old buildings, small streets and bridges- back when those were built nobody had the ability to imagine a driving monstrosity like a modern American car. Nobody needs this - even without the space issue. Their whole purpose is keeping fuel consumption high.
Those cars aren't made for the citys in France : they way to large to park and on small road crossing another vehicle make it very difficult.
I think they're also taxed massively in most of the EU?
And for some of the popular emotional support tanks not street legal to begin with.