I am not a car person. Until we moved back to LA in 2015, the only time I'd ever been a car owner was 12 months in 2006-7, when I moved to LA for a Fulbright chair at USC and bought a used Hyundai Elantra to get to the university in.
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When we moved back here in '15, we bought a used Prius. Both cars were fine - they got us around, took us to the beach, and were good for grocery runs.
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But two years ago, I did a consulting gig that came with a one-year lease on a luxury SUV. I admit, I was curious about what life would be like behind the wheel of a land-yacht.
It was terrible.
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It was terrible.
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The car handled like a tank, had multiple, massive bind-spots, and while it boasted a massive touchscreen with seven millions features, they were impossible to access, switched themselves off and on at random, and were a huge distracted-driving risk.
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It looks like my lux SUV experience was par for the course. @andyjayhawk reviewed the new @Cadillac Escalade for @TheVerge and the thing sounds like a lumbering murdermobile.
theverge.com/2020/10/19/215…
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theverge.com/2020/10/19/215…
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It's the largest SUV Cadillac ever made, 18' long, 6.5' high, with a grille "like a sheer cliffside, obstructing my view several feet out in front of the wheels."
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Last year's (smaller) Escalade has a blindspot so huge that "It took 13 children seated in a line in front of the Escalade before the driver could see the tops of their heads."
Here's Hawkins's 3-y-o standing in front of the new Escalade's grille:
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Here's Hawkins's 3-y-o standing in front of the new Escalade's grille:
https://twitter.com/andyjayhawk/status/1316038292769566723
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The Escalade is a true road-hazard: at 6.75' wide, it barely fits in a highway lane (or a driveway).
As bad as it is to be in a car that gets hit by one of these things, pedestrians fare even worse: peds murdered by SUVs have soared 81% in ten years.
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As bad as it is to be in a car that gets hit by one of these things, pedestrians fare even worse: peds murdered by SUVs have soared 81% in ten years.
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Not surprising: these things are so tall that they strike the head or torso, and they have so much clearance that they trap their victims beneath them.
The Escalade tries to make up for this with a cluster of cameras and haptic feedback mechanisms (my SUV had this too).
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The Escalade tries to make up for this with a cluster of cameras and haptic feedback mechanisms (my SUV had this too).
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I found those mechanisms helpful, but agree with Hawkins: "When you need a suite of high-definition cameras and other expensive sensors to safely drive to the grocery store, there might be something inherently wrong with your design."
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GM (who make the Cadillac) is phasing out ALL car models EXCEPT SUVs for the US market.
SUVs are the second largest cause of the global rise in carbon dioxide emissions over the past decade.
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SUVs are the second largest cause of the global rise in carbon dioxide emissions over the past decade.
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We barely drove our free SUV - a couple trips to the beach, some grocery runs. When the lease expired last month, we bought an all-electric @Kia that we run off our rooftop solar.
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The Kia is frankly great. It has fantastic handling, and dashboard controls based on buttons and knobs that you can find without taking your eyes off the road. We still barely drive it, but when we do, it's 1,000 times nicer than the SUV.
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My only complaint is that Kia's leasing department insisted on using my home address for correspondence (I only give out a nearby mailbox as a precaution against doxing, SWATing, etc), and now I'm getting TONS of junk mail from people they've sold or given my name to.
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