Jeremy Clarkson shares brief thoughts on Twitter/X!

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Sofaboy90@reddit

if anything the share of EV SUVs will get lower in the future as smaller BEVs enter the market. The ID Polo is coming this year, the ID.1, the electric Golf

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techieman33@reddit

It’ll get worse. A lot of people don’t buy big SUVs because of the fuel cost or environmental impact. If they can get an electric SUV they’ll be all over it.

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Ignition1@reddit

People will still get EV SUVs for practicality - rear leg room, boot space, space for child seats etc. Same reason as why so many people get ICE SUVs.

But people also buy ICE SUVs because they're big and imposing, and are a premium brand - full fat RR, GLE or GLS, X5 or X7, Q7 etc. They also come with big engines which sound good to both the driver and is intended to impress other people who hear it. And while they might do 25mpg, they have big tanks so you can comfortably travel 400 miles then fill up in minutes.

When those same cars are full EV, I think that "kerb appeal" factor will gradually disappear. Like a full EV Range Rover might carry some desirability because of the badge and heritage, and because it looks like a Range Rover, but that will only carry it so far because people will start to look at it as just a fancy shell sitting on top of the same sort of power unit that an MG or Volkswagen has but maybe with more batteries (and weight).

I strongly believe electric motors are that "equaliser" - why get a Range Rover EV when you can get a VW EV that is just as big, is just as powerful, and might look even better.

What EV companies try and do these days is go for hypercar power numbers - 1,000HP+ - because it's the only way to make them look 'premium' since having 500hp is 'meh' now - anyone can get that from an EV.

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HuyFongFood@reddit

Minivans are actually better for most of your points above.

SUVs are only good when you need ground clearance and off-road capabilities. Or you want to try to be big and imposing.

Of course many SUVs are not good off-road and I’ve seen more than a few minivans that can match or exceed those CUVs/SUVs off-road.

Gimme a full EV minivan and I’m in. Don’t need AWD or ground clearance. Just room for people and their stuff, low nose and lots of glass for safety and visibility and a comfortable ride.

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Pineapple_Spenstar@reddit

I think you just described the volkswagen id buzz

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Ignition1@reddit

That's a great car - I'd love to get one!

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Mobile-Building-9957@reddit

no it wont. People want to buy their big stupid suvs

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Zhymantas@reddit

Double whammy

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Saint_The_Stig@reddit

I'm not sure how it is in the land of functional governments, but over here the math works out to 99% of the road damage being done by big trucks/lorries/HGVs/whatever you want to call them.

It's definitely a function of weight and an SUV is definitely doing many times the road damage of a Focus, just that those big vehicles are doing many many times the damage of the SUV.

That said the increase in the average weight of cars into SUVs is causing collisions to be worse especially with pedestrians and such. The government needs to actually start taxing heavier vehicles their fair share for the damage they do, and if you get pissed your SUV pays 10x as more then maybe you shouldn't buy a big ass SUV instead of a car.

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MassiveSalamander903@reddit

The difference between a Volvo XC60 and a Ford Focus can be as little as 200kg hardly a massive difference. The difference between a focus and a Hyundai i20 is more.

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techieman33@reddit

I’m not going to do the math because I don’t care that much about it. But there probably isn’t a lot of difference between small cars and big suvs. Between the bigger and wider tires having a bigger contact patch, and the longer and wider wheel base I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that the actual pounds per square inch put on the road isn’t all that different. It will vary car to car but I would bet that you could find some hatchback with little donut tires that that would actually put more pressure on the road surface than some suv with wide tires.

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MoneyBadger14@reddit

Why would SUVs pay 10x more when they weigh 2-3x more?

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Successful-Ad-9634@reddit

What Clarkson misses is that there are 10x SUVs compared to EVs in the UK.

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greenrangerguy@reddit

Dude what the fuck has happened!! It used to be most cars were little hatchbacks. Clios, Corsas, Fiestas, Puntos etc. Now it's SUVs EVERYWHERE! What the fuck has happened?

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theskywaspink@reddit

Marketing. That’s what Australia is like now even though it’s mostly flat.

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FailFastandDieYoung@reddit

Australia makes sense because the land use of road infrastructure is big and wide. You don't feel a larger vehicle has any downsides.

UK has narrow roads and tiny spaces for parking. It's going to frustrate you every time you drive.

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Shadowrenderer@reddit

You’d be surprised how many Aussie road are stupidly narrow. We definitely have the space but we don’t use it in many cases.

Granted that’s mostly older, suburban roads but newer housing developments often go with narrow roads as well. They even forget about on-street parking… what if you have visitors?

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theskywaspink@reddit

We don't have narrow roads like the UK. Through the country areas in the UK its less than 1 single lane shared for back and forth between 2 cars. Imagine Hosier Lane being a two way street.

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tiagojpg@reddit

People have been sold a false sense of safety, thinking higher driving position = safer. Oh and I need space to carry 3 supermarket aisles worth of shopping bags. Just in case.

Hard to understand how most people can’t fit their kids’ stuff in the back of a new Megane or a Golf, but my parents drove me around in a 2 door ‘95 Micra and then my sister and I for 20 years in. 2 door ‘99 206 1.1i.

I’m perfectly fine in our ‘17 Clio. A 300L boot will fit my daughter’s nicely foldable trolley and 4-5 big bags of a supermarket trip.

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FindingE-Username@reddit

Our family car when I was growing up was a Ford KA! Wouldn't work for a big family but worked for a small one.

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FailFastandDieYoung@reddit

Aren't most roads within UK cities 30mph? I don't see why anyone would need a car larger than an Octavia estate, it's not like any collision is going to be horrific.

Plus the UK has one of the lower crash stats of any country in Europe.

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AceNova2217@reddit

For my entire childhood (am gen z fyi), the largest cars in my family were Ford Focus Estates, and a Skoda Octavia Estate. Never needed anything larger, and we often used our smaller Astra to get around anyway.

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ECompany101@reddit

The yankification of the UK

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WySLatestWit@reddit

Don't blame Americans for the UK becoming equally as stupid.

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WySLatestWit@reddit

How did it take the UK this to finally buy into the "bigger is safer" bs that Americans bought into in the 80s, and how did they not look at America and see it was a lie?

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grubas@reddit

Because it's psychologically terrifying to be in a coupe surrounded by SUVs and CUVs. You cannot see or be seen.

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PoolRamen@reddit

- Tax structures favouring PCP/leases on electric tanks in particular, and tanks in general, you will own nothing and be happy in your rented tanks that you refresh every contract period and pay forever as long as you have a job

- Roads are getting worse, so I'll get something that can in theory deal with potholes, resulting feedback loop begetting more tanks

- Perceived safety

- Commanding view + obvious social factors

I'm a sports sedan / wagon leaning but in recent years even I've switched my general pottering around vehicle to 3-rows as a partially defensive measure since my area is particularly infested with tanks driven by women who shouldn't be in them

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Nervous-Power-9800@reddit

I've got an estate, I like being able to throw things in the boot or drop the seats down to carry long things, try and put 5 adults in it though, it's a bit cramped.

SUV solves that by being roomy. I'd buy a P460e Range Rover Sport tomorrow if I thought it would

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Kolipe@reddit

America is doin the ol reverse colonization. You will get giant suvs driven by the tiniest women who can't see it of it and you'll like it.

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Jammybeez@reddit

Personal Contract Purchase (PCP)

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ImmediatePiano6690@reddit

Allowing people to live in a false reality.

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Dan1elSan@reddit

If it drives, flies, floats or fucks. Rent it, don’t buy it.

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Ignition1@reddit

While I agree to an extent with some big-ticket items, for cars it's different.

The default argument is "it depreciates so no point 'owning' it".

However bankers make billions in free profit from interest rate payments by people leasing / borrowing. It's a win-win for them.

Even though a car depreciates - an individual is far worse off leasing multiple cars over 8 years than you are just buying one and keeping it for 8 years. Worse still - once you lease, you are locked into the cycle - high monthlies = less to save, meaning you are more likely to lease again because you don't have the capital to buy it outright.

Example: I bought a Golf R for £28k back in 2016 and kept it for nearly 8 years, sold it for £16k as a part-ex. So it cost me £12k over 8 years obviously excluding maintenance etc (which you still have to pay with a lease anyway).

That's £125 a month. Versus leasing a new one every 3 years for £300 a month, which would have increased to £400, maybe £500 a month with car prices and interest rate increases.

My advice is always - start off with a used car, part-ex up to a better used car, keep doing that until you've saved enough capital to get onto a hire purchase deal or can buy a car outright. It takes years but you will be better off than people PCP'ing an X5 when they're 28 and then being locked in the rat race.

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Dan1elSan@reddit

I agree it completely depends, EV’s on salary sacrifice with low BIK can be quite cheap and often include insurance, maintenance and tires. You can end up with a new car you’d never be able to buy for little cost.

For info I own my own car I was being a little facetious

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J3roen16@reddit

Americanization, car companies make way more money selling you SUV's so they market them as more practical even though their not

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Open-Dragonfruit-007@reddit

The Volvo XC90 is undisputedly a huge SUV - with a curb weight of just over 2T (2089KG) while the smaller Tesla Model S sedan has a curb weight of 2.2T. Heck even the Model 3 weighs more than a small SUV (1.8T)

Like for like the EVs are going to increase road damage as EVs become more popular and more sold. They have a larger mass compared to ICE vehicles on the same size contact point on the road. Don't get me wrong, I am not anti-EV, I want to see an EV future and technological advancement. My only annoyance is the hipocracy where government will pick a topic which makes no sense and then blame it on a specific demographic of cars, all to manufacture consent to get more taxes. And although many will support additional taxes on large vehicles, it never stays this way, it eventually comes down the tree towards the every day working mans car like a small hatchback EV. Effectively making it another poor/working man tax which doesn't affect the rich (or goverment SUV like Sadiqs Range Rovers)

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Camoxide2@reddit

A Model 3 weighs roughly the same as a petrol BMW 3 Series.

A Model Y is significantly lighter than a petrol BMW X5 but roughly the same weight as a BMW X3

It's not that EVs are heavy. It's new cars that are heavy.

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Fearnlove@reddit

EVs are heavy for their size, but for balance the Model S is discontinued and rare as hens teeth, the base Model 3 (the most common?) actually weighs 1.6T.

That’s a good 600kg less than Jeremy’s Land Rover Vogue at over 2.2T

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Simoxs7@reddit

TBH it doesn’t help that most EVs also are SUVs. At this point I unfortunately only see that a government tax might get manufacturers to build smaller lighter EVs.

Like its crazy how much more range you can get from the same drivetrain and battery if its just a sedan. These EVs could be so much more efficient (and therefore better for the environment) if manufacturers would just lower the frontal area but right now people want SUVs and probably only tax on larger heavier vehicles would cause them to consider other car types.

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Sofaboy90@reddit

If we would all use public transport instead of cars, the roads would also be much better off, Jeremy indirectly promoting green policies? lmao.

on a serious note, what many people ignore is the hidden costs of co2 which we can calculate. basically the amount of money you have to invest to combat the consequences of global warming. and this calculation leaves fossil fuels in a rather bad and significantly more expensive light. The co2 saved by BEVs would comfortably pay for more regular road repairs or entirely new roads that handle more weight better, ofc dont mind the fact that roads are also used by large and heavy vehicles like cargo trucks.

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Craneteam@reddit

Also the size of SUVs add to danger they pose to every around them. The blindspots alone for some of the larger models is absurd

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Robynsxx@reddit

And frankly a lot of big SUV drivers think they own the roads due to the size of their car and drive dangerously as fuck.

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Lord-Megadrive@reddit

The amount you see driven without the driver doing any observations, they just plough on forwards, usually with their either tilted back or looking at a phone. Also it seems that most of these cars also don’t come with indicators or dipped beams.

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SnooStrawberries2342@reddit

They're an absolute nuisance on narrow country roads with their lack of spatial awareness. Often seems to be me scraping the bushes in my small car while they enjoy breathing space on their side.

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No_Base4946@reddit

See this is why I drive an old Range Rover with a lot of scrapes from actually using it to, you know, drive off road, what it was intended for.

There are a lot of very narrow single-track roads here barely wide enough for one car, but there are a lot of people with very small cars and no spatial awareness who seem to think they're driving a tank transporter or something.

No problem though, I just get over to the left and make the bushes a bit smaller with my front bumper.

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SnooStrawberries2342@reddit

Fair comment, plenty of people with small cars can't drive them properly either.

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Simoxs7@reddit

The funny thing is that SUV drivers always tell me they bought one because they’re more aware of their surroundings because of the higher seat position… my experience tells me otherwise…

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PaulVander@reddit

I drive buses and believe me, they treat every road user like that. It boggles the mind that they'd rather risk a head on with a bus than just move and maybe clip their mirrors.

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Robynsxx@reddit

My mum always used to say that a lot of the big car drivers were school mums who needed the big SUVs to have confidence and deal with the chaotic school drop off.

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El_John_Nada@reddit

Understandable: less risk to damage your windshield when you hit a kid with an SUV.

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voicey@reddit

Volvo xc90 was touted as most safe 'car' but seems to give the owners an 'im safe fuck everyone else' attitude

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Simoxs7@reddit

Yeah its safe for the people inside everyone outside better get out of the way.

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Jimmie-Rustle12345@reddit

What he’s really missing is that SUVs are regular cars both do minimal road damage compared to lorries and buses. Road damage increases to the fourth power of axle weight.

SUVs are a scourge because of their poor safety, rollover, visibility, stopping distances, and unnecessary mass. But not really road damage.

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paulskinner88@reddit

For the short-lived period where that changes over, yes. But we could plan ahead for when that swaps round now, instead of ignoring that as a future problem?

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Surprise_Donut@reddit

what about in London

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Beartato4772@reddit

And that a city ev like a Dacia spring still weighs less than a third of a diesel Range Rover.

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tiagojpg@reddit

Would be fun to see Clarkson drive out in the morning to check on his cows in a Dacia Spring haha.

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Buster1878@reddit

And what does he get chauffeured around in . How many tons of metal?

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dazedan_confused@reddit

They're only heavy when Jeremy sits in them.

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wimpires@reddit

EV's are generally heavier than ICE cars. But not stupendously so.

BMW iX3 - 2,360kg (109kWh battery, 470HP, 4.9s 0-60) £73,715

BMW X3 - 2,055kg (1kWh, 398HP, 4.6s 0-60) £61,255

So yes it's heavier but a 15% increase in weight is focusing on the wrong thing. Petrol ICE cars are still over 2T and plenty of EV's are lighter than that, for example Tesla Model Y 1,891kg or Alpine A290 1,479kg. The Ford Puma, one of the best selling car (ICE) is in the UK is around 1,300-1,400kg. So a Renault 5 is not far off and both are more than a BMW i3 with it's Carbon Fibre tub.

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nobodyspecialuk24@reddit

And, for some reason, petrol heads have only just started to care about him much cars weigh, and how increases in weight affect our roads.

An XR3i weighed around 1,100 kg

A Focus ST weighed around 1,600 kg

No problem with that increase of weight, of course, it’s only a problem when the weight increase is because of an engine that doesn’t go vroom vrooomm.

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TheBBP@reddit

Road wear increases to the fourth power with weight. ( a 10 ton truck puts the same wear on the road as 10,000x 1 ton cars.)

Using the two BMW x3's you compared, the EV causes 1.73x the road wear as the ICE. (yes, almost double the road wear with only 305kg difference)

Though if you compared a SUV vs a Hatchback the road wear difference is significant a VW ID-4, 77kWh EV at 2,219kg causes 33x the road wear vs a VW up! at 929kg

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xxNemasisxx@reddit

Okay but SUV's like BMW X5 weigh almost 1000kg more than EV's like the Renault 5. So it does seem like the issue is SUV's? Including SUV's that happen to be EV's that are ridiculously heavy

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TheBBP@reddit

Okay but SUV's like BMW X5 weigh almost 1000kg more than EV's like the Renault 5. So it does seem like the issue is SUV's? Including SUV's that happen to be EV's that are ridiculously heavy

The current model BMW x5 hybrid SUV is 2,295kg, the Renaut 5 EV hatchback is heavier at 2,441kg.

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xxNemasisxx@reddit

Renault 5 EV weighs 1372kg? Not sure where you got your figures from but you need to look a bit closer pal

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TheBBP@reddit

From their website - https://www.renault.co.uk/electric-vehicles/r5-e-tech-electric/specifications.html

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xxNemasisxx@reddit

Renault does specify a kerb weight, it's 1372 like I said, and even the gross weight isn't as high as you initially put... https://www.renault.co.uk/electric-vehicles/r5-e-tech-electric/configurator.html

Also the argument is that SUV's are worse than EV's not that SUV EV's are worse than SUV's which is obviously true. But the real issue is SUV class vehicles. But you clearly have an agenda so no point arguing

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TheBBP@reddit

But you clearly have an agenda so no point arguing
says the person with the EV agenda.

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xxNemasisxx@reddit

You got caught spreading false information, happens. Just move on

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Sofaboy90@reddit

I think the difference is larger with economy cars because premium vehicles have bigger and heavier combustion engines (the weight difference between a BMW 4 and 6 cylinder is rather significant). The X3 and iX3 example you m entioned is about 350kg but take a VW Golf for instance, with a 1.5 TSI its about 1350kg, an ID3 with the large battery is 1815kg, so a 450kg+ difference.

Particularly those economy wagons like the Golf wagon are insane in terms of how little they weigh compared to the space they offer.

However the premium cars due to Co2 regulations, start to sell more PHEVs and they have to use large batteries in order to get the full tax benefits in certain markets, so some of the newer cars like the M5 or the new RS5 are incredibly heavy

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mrdungbeetle@reddit

Another example:

Tesla Model Y (the best selling EV SUV) - weighs 4,150 lbs.

Honda CRV Hybrid (which is smaller!) - weighs 3,900 lbs.

It's really not much.

The lack of space in a dense city like London is a far greater problem than the additional weight. Cars should be taxed based on their dimensions.

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nobodyspecialuk24@reddit

I can’t believe cars weighed the same as they did in like 1990 right up until the EV was invented and never got any heavier until then.

Or have they been getting heavier for a while now, but because people have an irrational hatred of EVs they have decided the increase in weight they bring is bad, while the increase in weight their ICE car has compared too older cars is fine.

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Dismal_Foundation_23@reddit

Even if he is correct about EVs also being heavy, that is kind of irrelevant unless they are also large vehicles because they come with far less downsides than large petrol or diesel suv, not to mention those stupid pick ups that seem to be creeping in from the US.

A large petrol or diesel SUV is -

- Potentially heavy and damaging the road more.

- Bad for pedestrians in accidents because of the high front.

- Generally less stable due to high centre of gravity, so more prone to rolling.

- Will likely have bigger engines so more polluting and worse for air quality.

- Take up much more space on the road so don't fit in narrow streets, multi-storey car parks, conventional parking spaces etc. etc. less room for cyclists pedestrians. Because of their size they are also naturally harder to drive as there is less margin for error due to their size.

Overall the vast majority are too big and most of the people driving them don't need them, and many more can't even drive them, the amount of these things you see terribly parked.

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ScottOld@reddit

I can go to my local morrsions and every parking space has 4 indents in them from vehicles parking.. I don't recall seeing indents in car parks before these obese blobs were everywhere, so maybe they have a point

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mesonofgib@reddit

My solution to the whole EV / SUV thing is to have two components to vehicle tax: one for the weight of the vehicle (literally £0.xx per kilo) and then another for emissions (£0.yy per gram of CO₂). So if you've got a heavy, polluting car you get rinsed by the DVLA; if your car is heavy but electric (or very light but petrol) then you pay a kind of normal amount of tax, and then if you've got an electric motorbike you basically pay nothing.

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jrjreeves@reddit

SUVs are extremely popular with women I find. My wife has one.

I drive a Leon which isn't any smaller really, it just doesn't have the ground clearance the SUV has. That's why I think they are so popular at the moment because they look bigger than they actually are, a lot of them.

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Embarrassed-Row-3696@reddit

Given the Batteries double the weight of these vehicles. Why am I paying road tax in my lightweight car?

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feckarse-drinkgirls@reddit

Idk why they just don't tax evs on weight, not the stupid pay per mile thing that they've got coming

Just make EVS cheaper to tax than a normal car from about 2.5t down

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nugeythefloozey@reddit

Idk why we don’t tax all cars on weight. The amount of road wear doesn’t change with engine type

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Ayfid@reddit

The cost of all externalities is much higher for an ICE than an EV, though.

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Sofaboy90@reddit

If I had to guess, it would be that manufacturers would save weight by sacrificing safety and materials that last longer to achieve lower weight which isnt really desirable either. Its the same mistake as taxing engine displacement, yes you make manufacturers create smaller and potentially more efficient engines but at the cost of reliability, so is it really a net win at the end when small engines die sooner than bigger ones?

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Jammybeez@reddit

I always thought it should just be weight x power.

All the little exceptions, exemptions and discounts just lead to the government changing their mind a few years later when tax receipts fall.

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sidneylopsides@reddit

Road wear from cars is basically negligible, even heavier cars, it's not even taken into account in road design. It's HGVs that they design for.
One 44 tonne HGV causes the equivalent wear of 1m Qashqais, and even if you go up to heavier 2 tonne car, the HGV is still almost 235,000 times more damaging

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tommyduk@reddit

It does, though; EVs offer road-ripping instant torque.

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ian9outof10@reddit

This would be a good idea generally, as EVs are better and more efficient when they are light. We should be pushing toward weight reduction, rather than massive fucking vehicles everywhere.

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ImBonRurgundy@reddit

I don’t know why call out suvs specifically - there is no clear definition of what that even is.

Why not just say “heavy vehicles damage our roads more than lighter ones, so I’ve asked tfl to look into the effect etc etc”

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Ignition1@reddit

Even small EVs are heavy - my ID3 58kw is 1.8 tons. The 77kw version is 1.9 tons!

A BMW X5 with a 3.0 6 cylinder engine is 2.2 tons.

That's just 4 medium sized adults to make a 'small' ID3 77kw the weight of an X5 m40i.

Moving up to the ID4 77kw - you're at the weight of a much bigger X5 already.

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Camoxide2@reddit

The old standard range Model 3 was 1.6 tons.

The new Renault 5 is only about 200KG heavier than the Clio so the manufacturers have been getting better at keeping the weight reasonable.

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techtornado@reddit

That’s the main issue, EV’s don’t weigh any more than gas cars in every category

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Ignition1@reddit

That's pretty much true tbf.

The small EVs are heavy compared to a similar sized ICE, but once you get to the big SUVs both ICE and EVs are the same.

A BMW X7 is 2,568kg. A Kia EV9 is 2,674kg.

EV is heavier by just over 100kg, but that's nothing overall.

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Several_Bluebird9404@reddit

Clarkson is funny, but he's full of shit.

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NecronomiconUK@reddit

Was funny, long ago

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FxStryker@reddit

I'm just going to say -

VW Golf 3500-4000#
VW ID.3 3750-4250#
GMC Yukon Denali - 6000#

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Roushfan5@reddit

What a deceptive ass comment.

First off, your numbers are completely wrong. A Golf weights 2900-3400 lbs. A ID 3 weighs 3900-4300 lbs. The heaviest Golf is 500 lbs or 20% lighter than the lightest ID.3. Even at your fake numbers, the ID3 is 10% heavier. which I consider fairly a pretty substantial delta.

Then you compare them to the largest, full size luxury SUV sold in America. As if every soccer mom is gonna trade in their Yukon for a compact German sedan.

Lastly, a Denial can weigh anywhere between 5631-6100. The Cadillac Escalade IQ (an SUV of similar size and capabilit weighs 9000-9350 lbs. An eye watering 3,000 lbs heavier and an increase of 35%.

If we can say SUVs are tearing up the streets, I think it's more than fair to say that EVs are also tearing up the streets.

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Nghbrhdsyndicalist@reddit

That’s kind of disingenuous.
An electric SUV is still a SUV and just like the heaviest ICE Golf is slightly (100 kg, not 200+) lighter than the lightest ID.3, the heaviest ID.3 is still lighter than the lightest Touareg.

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Roushfan5@reddit

How is it disingenuous to compare a ICE to a EV in the same market segment?

Why is it fair to compare the heaviest golf to the lightest ID3 when almost no ID3s are actually going to be the lightweight trim?

If you have to make you comparison so specific or unfair to try and win this argument I feel like it proves the point. I wish EV enthusiasts would stop dying on this hill when it’s so obviously wrong and shouldn’t make a difference if we adopt EVs or not.

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Nghbrhdsyndicalist@reddit

Because all the actually problematic EVs are SUVs. The opposite isn’t true.

SUVs are the problem.

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Roushfan5@reddit

Which would be a valid argument if people traded in their full size SUVs for compact EVs that weigh less. However, if anything, it's my experience that the lower costs to run and green image of EVs makes people MORE likely to buy heavy trucks/SUVs not less.

https://fordauthority.com/2025/12/most-ford-f-150-lightning-customers-are-first-time-pickup-owners/

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WangDanglin@reddit

Do they sell Yukons in London?

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FxStryker@reddit

Alright, then do a Range Rover. 7500#

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Dhyan_95@reddit

No no no !! ..

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tiagojpg@reddit

Bruh and here I am in my diesel Clio weighing 1100kg (2400#).

I loved seeing you use the pound sign for pound weight hahah, I’m using it now.

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greenrangerguy@reddit

Damn, 6000 hashtags, that's pretty heavy.

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liccleoldme@reddit

The ‘mayor’ uses a large landrover around London…

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Zealousideal-Air574@reddit

Why you using “” are you saying he’s not the mayor. 😂

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liccleoldme@reddit

You know why

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Zealousideal-Air574@reddit

I don’t ?

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ian9outof10@reddit

Yes, he does, and with good reason. Firstly, it’s still a vaguely British brand. And secondly, it’s not his car - it’s a police vehicle and armoured because some people can’t be trusted.

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liccleoldme@reddit

Or he’s alienated and pissed off so many people that he needs that. In any case sounds like one rule for him and another for everyone else.

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Jimmy_Tightlips@reddit

I thought Khan said London was safe

Boris Johnson used to cycle around London on his own...

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ian9outof10@reddit

Yeah, and what’s the big difference between Boris and Sadiq I wonder, something that might make one of them feel less safe than the other.

London is incredibly safe, that doesn’t necessarily mean politicians get to wander around unprotected. Especially not when they get routine threats and the police provide protection.

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Jimmy_Tightlips@reddit

Are we forgetting how hated Johnson was by like half of the electorate? Places like Reddit in particular were absolutely convinced that the man was effectively the second coming of Hitler himself.

If Khan would be at risk travelling around on his own then Johnson almost certainly was as well, and yet he did it anyway.

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ian9outof10@reddit

Yes, but the half that hates Johnson doesn’t behave quite the same way as the segment that hates Khan.

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TinMachine@reddit

Don't think this was true of his mayor era tbh.

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Slyspy006@reddit

No, then he was just regarded as a buffoon.

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Grouchy-Ice-2985@reddit

Johnson deserved every bit of hate he received and more, but the difference is that the people who hated him weren't likely to assassinate him.

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stzef@reddit

Khan takes the tube around London.

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tiagojpg@reddit

Security-centered vehicles tend do be bigger.

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SoggyWotsits@reddit

Give him a classic mini and make him wear a helmet.

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mobsterer@reddit

they really should know that the roads are made with HGVs in mind and also still have the same maximum weights as normal cars.

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Haenkster@reddit

AFAIK the damage is mainly done by "pressure per square" (i.e. a SUV with broad tires might do *less* damage than a small car with small wheels) and pure weight and frequency of load. A 30ton truck will probably do more damage than 1000 cars.

So I don't trust the broad statement of "SUVs are damaging the roads". That being said, SUVs are not made for inner city traffic, and (depending on the town) mostly not even for city use at all.

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sidneylopsides@reddit

I started looking into this yesterday after reading another article. Road wear is measured using the 4th power, and in the UK at least, roads are designed around HGVs. A 44 tonne HGV causes 1,000,000 times the wear of something like a Skoda Octavia of Nissan Qashqai.

Road design doesn't even take cars into account as they're such a small factor.

Interestingly, a single bus would do vastly more road damage than every passenger getting out and driving their own car instead.

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Sofaboy90@reddit

Interestingly, a single bus would do vastly more road damage than every passenger getting out and driving their own car instead.

I can believe that. Here in my city we have some very large buses and there are some roads that only buses are allowed to enter. You can see it on the road what the busees cause when they are parked at a station thats combined with a traffic light. They literally sink into the ground over time as the road gets very uneven and they have to entirely resurface it every few years. Meanwhile the lane next to it where buses do not park but drive through along regular cars, no such thing to see.

ofc this is no rant against public transport at all, its great to have it, all power to public transport, its just interesting reading you guyses comments and learning how road wear works and me putting things together with my experiences.

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Zeraora807@reddit

further evidence, look at any used bus stop and you can see dipped holes and pressure carved trenches from where a bus normally stops

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No_Base4946@reddit

> Road wear is measured using the 4th power

The paper that's from is actually comically incorrect though.

It assumes that the only effect on the amount of pressure a vehicle puts on the road is its weight.

It does actually say several times throughout that paper that they know their model is inaccurate.

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Malvania@reddit

4th power of weight per axle, to be specific

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FishUK_Harp@reddit

Due to the use of tracks, a Tiger Tank has a lower ground pressure than the average car.

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fitterking3000@reddit

James gin is only made in Britain and Australia or have i missed something ?

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WySLatestWit@reddit

Asian Parsnip surely isn't made purely with British produce. Asian spices.

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Craneteam@reddit

I honestly didn't think about that. I thought it was just a funny joke

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AndrewCoja@reddit

While it probably is just a joke, Clarkson can't sell a lot of things because they have ingredients that aren't from Britain. It makes sense because the government wants to promote British stuff, but also kind of dumb that a bunch of seemingly common items can't be sold.

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Bsquared02@reddit

I don’t think it’s a matter of “can’t”, but they are earnestly trying to make sure everything used in that kitchen and pub is of high quality and comes from the UK to back up their message.

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3xc1t3r@reddit

It is funny that. For every country the local produce is the highest quality.

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SuspiciousLettuce56@reddit

Ketchup was the weirdly eye opening one.

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Bsquared02@reddit

Fun story about that, a British condiment company actually managed to produce a 100% British ketchup for use at the Farmer’s Dog that was of similar quality to Heinz

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ian9outof10@reddit

And at eye-watering prices too

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fitterking3000@reddit

Ah yep, of course, thanks!

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Individual-Nose5010@reddit

Pure whataboutism from a man with no argument left.

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Glock359@reddit

What Khan forgets is he himself is damaging the roads with his armoured range rovers x3. So kettle pot black. Let’s see him explain that. The real problem is councils spend the money meant for roads and pocket the difference in bonuses and wage rises.

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EpicFishFingers@reddit

Such journeys by the Mayor of London and his security detail are far more important than some parent picking up their only child from school in a BMW X5

Effective security dictates cars that are as hefty as those readily available to the public space he can't be boxed in by school-run SUVs and shot in the face.

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sir_sri@reddit

And how much does a bus, streetcar or delivery vehicle weigh? How does the damage they do scale with mass and velocity? How much damage is done by snow clearing equipment, farm vehicles, poorly designed roads (for thermal expansion and contraction)?

Yes, bigger vehicles are probably adding some wear, and absolutely battery heavy construction equipment could be a real problem in future. But to be realistic, most road problems stem from very large vehicles and essentially design and maintenance problems related to water and weather.

I am in Canada, but by far the biggest culprits for us are snow clearing equipment, freezing/warming. It's not that everything else doesn't matter, but big heavy vehicles are the thing that actually triggers most of the problems. It's hard to plow roads without accidentally creating a pot hole and drainage under or within asphalt causes all sorts of problems.

A 15000 kg bus, or a 5000, 10000 kg salt spreader or plow is doing a lot more to the road than a 2500kg Bentley SUV. Even if the SUV is a lot bigger than a vehicle 30 years ago.

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Beartato4772@reddit

Per passenger a bus weighs less than a car.

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sir_sri@reddit

Right, but road damage scales at least with mass per axle^2 and some studies have it as high as mass per axle^4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_power_law

So a bus does a lot more damage to a road, than even dozens or hundreds of cars, and a heavy transport vehicle can be thousands of times. That doesn't mean you shouldn't have or use buses, but when you're talking about road maintenance, the core problem is water either cracks the road or damages the structure underneath, and then a big vehicle comes along and breaks the already damaged surface.

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sidneylopsides@reddit

A single Routemaster causes the same amount of wear as 1500 2tonne cars, so if the maximum of 87 passengers all got out and drove, that's still 17 times less road wear than a single bus.

Change that car to an Octavia and it's 80x less.

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Slyspy006@reddit

Yes, but the road surface doesn't know that and physics doesn't care.

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Beartato4772@reddit

The road surface and physics absolutely knows the difference between a single 11 tonne bus and the 80 2 tonne cars it replaced.

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schlomping@reddit

Have you maybe thought that there are a tad more cars being driven around than buses/trucks. And that the heavier the cars are compared to 20 years ago, the more damage will be caused over time? Youre not wrong per-say but youve just completely negated that fact

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sir_sri@reddit

Well because the core factor is the water damage and then the first visible point of failure is caused high load from a heavy vehicle. But the underlying cracking is a water problem.

Just about everything else is secondary. Everyone could drive around in 3000kg suvs, or only take public transit and potholes would still largely first appear because water had either weakened the structure under the road or expanding and contracting cracks it, and then something big breaks it.

The UK has a problem of frequent freeze-thaw cycles, which is ironically worse than much of Canada or scandanavia, which freeze and usually stay that way for months. And the frequent rain causes constant damage to the underlying structure of the road.

And European roads, particularly in older cities, are just hard to build properly. After all, cities are built on existing infrastructure and building a new road on top of an older road does not lead to ideal drainage.

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McKendrigo@reddit

Yeah, must be all the massive snow plows that drive around London all day.

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sidneylopsides@reddit

A single Routemaster will cause around 1500x the wear of a single 2 tonne car. Based on the 4th power law used in road wear calculations.

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andysniper@reddit

What an absolutely terrible take.

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KeyNefariousness6848@reddit

Jeremy is a gift the human race doesn’t deserve.

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88flapjack@reddit

Savage! Hah

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Simoxs7@reddit

I mean it doesn’t really help that most EVs available today are SUVs or Crossovers.

But even without considering the damage to roads its also problematic for the parking spaces in the city.

The issue isn’t farmers and hunters using an SUV where its meant to be used but the issue is soccer moms in the city driving an SUV despite a hatchback being entirely adequate for their needs.

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Fluffy-Astronomer604@reddit

Clarksons Range Rover is the same weight as Tesla.

Silly old man shouts at clouds again.

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