AutoblogGreen

Some hints for GM:

De facto peak oil is real and imminent, whether you believe it is caused by geology or OPEC deciding they like high prices. Therefore, cheap gasoline is history.

The market for pickup trucks will dwindle to the commercial buyers. SUV's will all but disappear. Minivans will still have a role in the market, as the only people who buy them need (or think they need) the utility of all that space; no one buys a minivan to follow a fashion (like SUV's) or to look tough (pickups).

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SUV's aren't going anywhere, they just get a smaller market share and split the family market with minivans. If I needed that many seats I'd buy an SUV over a minivan anyday.

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Oil is REALLY costing the US well over $10.00/gal once you include military and healthcare expenses. How can we even put a price on the human and ecological suffering oil brings. A few get rich while others suffer and die in agony.

How high must these costs go before people learn to distinguish between Needs and Wants? Are we as a species REALLY that SELFISH? Are our egos so fragile?

Shame on humanity, shame on our “leaders” for being so inhumane.

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I find it interesting that SUVs and pickup trucks are so out of style so quickly. Those people I know who owned these huge SUVs a couple of years ago would not be seen dead in one today. So, why did they need an SUV two years ago but now a Honda Civic? They watched and listened to the SUV ads on TV and believed that bigger is better and that they needed 4 wheel drive. They bought it all - hook line and sinker.

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Full-size trucks for commercial use will not be going away.

Though interestingly, for those who need enclosed cargo space the minivan is much cheaper and usually offers more interior room, once you remove or fold-flat the seats, than most truck-based, full-sized SUVs (cargo vans offer more space but at a substantially higher cost)

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@ RICH:

Most people who buy these SUV's are egocentric, small penile people...women or men. Same goes for the similar douches who drive arount German latte-mobiles with 400HP...it's no different. They are in the same boat to me.

There are ALOT of insecure, lonely, empty people out there my friend. Automotive marketing departments know this full and well...just look at the ads Chrysler puts out for their Minivans...it starts by showing a family in a living in a house...all of them bored and not talking to each other. Then the surroundings change and they are in the Minivan with the kids playing, the parents talking, everyone happy....do you see the message they are giving? You are a nobody without a car...you can't have a healthy family without sitting in a car and driving around. Couldn't they have just gone out to the nice backyard and sat and had a nice time?

It's easy to dupe people in this country...it's filled with idiots.

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Suv will be here in 2050 its all about what percentage of people will be buying them

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There is presumably an irreducible need for large pickups in commercial applications but the numbers sold will no doubt ultimately be far lower than they are now when so many are bought as personal transportation--assuming fuel prices stay high. Big SUV sales will decrease but most of those sales will likely migrate to smaller SUVs so big ones will generally be replaced by smaller ones and not some other class of vehicle. Migration to smaller vehicles is due almost entirely to gas prices rather than any big increase in green guilt. Those of the greenish persuasion should be cheering every price increase in motor fuels for it looks to be accomplishing more than any PR campaign to vilify large vehicles ever has.

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