What makes a family car?
Is it cargo space for everybody's stuff? Is it room for half of a lacrosse team? Is it child-quieting amenities and distractions? Or is it just an affordable car that doesn't suck down gas. For U.S. families, it's all of those things and more.
Each year, automotive publications release their list of best family cars in an attempt to define what the term “family car” means that year. Kelley Blue Book needs 15 vehicles to illustrate its ideas about family transportation. Edmunds typically consults Parentsmagazine to help thin its own list to ten vehicles, as it did last year. Each list is dotted with crossovers, minivans, mid-sized sedans, three-row SUVs and pickups that offer as diverse a mix as U.S. families drive each day.
“For two weeks’ time we drove, lived-with, folded-down-seats-of, paired-phones-to and installed-baby-seats-in each and every one of the contenders,” says Jack R. Nerad, executive editorial director and executive market analyst of Kelley Blue Book’s KBB.com. “We loaded cargo, contorted ourselves into third rows, watched movies on rear-seat screens, toted rowing teams to marinas – in short, we did everything that you and your family might do with a vehicle day-to-day. And we did all this with a certain sense of what a family needs and wants, since many of our testers are simultaneously parents of kids ranging from mid-twenties to newborn.”
However, even with gas prices nationwide averaging less than $1.70 per gallon, , accordingto AAA, there's still plenty of reason for families to give fuel efficiency some serious consideration. The Environmental Protection Agency says vehicle fuel efficiency standards have to reach a combined 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025 for entire corporate fleets. However, the average fuel economy (window-sticker value) of new vehicles sold in 2015 was 25.3 mpg, according to the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute. That's still less than halfway to the EPA and Department of Transportation's goal that they set back in 2012, though it beats the roughly 19 miles that per gallon the Department of Transportation measured for the same pool of vehicles in 1995.
We thumbed through the KBB and Edmunds list and found the ten most fuel-efficient vehicles of the bunch. They're surprisingly roomy, for fuel sippers:
Source by...https://www.mainstreet.com/article/10-best-fuel-efficient-cars-for-the-whole-family-in-2016
10 SUVs to Get While Gas Is Cheap
We know, we know: gas is cheap, and you want an SUV.
You couldn't possibly make that more clear. Average gas prices have slid below $2, according to AAA, which is why 16.7% more of you bought SUVs and crossovers last year than you did in 2015. Car sales declined 2.2% as light-duty truck sales -- including SUVs and crossovers -- jumped 13.1%. Even the old-school truck-based SUV saw huge gains, with that subcategory seeing a 10.7% increase in sales behind midsize (15.5% increase), small (8.2%) and luxury (16.7%) SUV resurgence.
However, that love isn't spread equally. Large SUVs that thundered across the landscape in the early to mid 2000s saw sales drop 4.5% from the year before. In fact, though automakers sold more than 4.5 million crossovers in 2015, sales of large SUVs scarcely eclipsed 280,000. In fact, those large SUVs, along with small SUVs(255,000) and luxury SUVs (228,000) combined, failed to match even the sales of midsize SUVs (943,000). Also, despite this year's cheap fuel and fast sales, the future of the standard SUV isn't looking all that bright.
Fleet-wide fuel efficiency standards still need to make it to 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025, as declared by the Environmental Protection Agency. However, the average fuel economy (window-sticker value) of new vehicles sold in 2015 was 25.3 mpg, according to the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute. That's still less than halfway to the EPA and Department of Transportation's goal that they set back in 2012, though it beats the roughly 19 miles per gallon that the Department of Transportation measured for the same pool of vehicles in 1995. It's also closing in on double the average mileage of the light-duty vehicles on U.S. roads in 1980.
That standard exists, because gas prices don't stay this way forever. Prices topped $4 a gallon less than a decade ago, and any number of global and economic anomalies can send them back there again. Still, if you're looking for a whole lot of space and gas money is no object, there are still some huge SUVs out there looking for a home. We consulted with the folks at Edmunds and the EPA's FuelEconomy.gov and found just ten SUVs built for soft gas prices:
0 comments:
Post a Comment