Friday, November 20, 2009

Small cars outpacing medium sized and large cars in the US

I just stumbled upon a chart from Ford stating that in 2013 there will be more small cars in the US than medium sized cars. Now, let us think about this:
a) In the last 2-3 years US people haven't really got rid of their SUVs and they still like large cars
b) It's quite difficult to make good money with smaller cars
c) From a fuel consumption point of view, being small (and light) makes less and less of a difference. We said that 100 kg mean 1 liter more of fuel consumption per 100 km in the past, today, it's more about 0.3 liter and in 4-5 years it probably will be 0.2 liters or less. In the US where people drive long distances at constant speed the weight impact might even be smaller. Aerodynamics though is still very important and better results can be achieved with medium sized cars than with small cars.
So, there are a lot of factors working against the growth of the small car segment. Let's see what will happen ...

No comments: