There are plenty of muscle cars being produced by US auto manufacturers. Not to mention high powered (V10 F150 Ford) oversized pickups and SUVs like the Cadillac Escalade. American consumers and manufacturers are pursuing the consumption of fossil fuels at an increasing rate, not decreasing.
Well, just to wrap some context around that, the muscle cars are "halo" products intended for a niche customer audience. The 2024 Corvette
starts at $68,000 USD and with a few trim options it can easily hit over $100,000 with tax and fees.
The Camaro is relatively affordable, but where are you actually going to be able to drive it at its top speed? Certainly not shuttling from home to work and ferrying the kids to and from school...same for the Mustang and similar production sports cars. They aren't really practical, they're wish fulfilment. They don't make up the majority of what automakers sell.
What
have been selling in greater numbers than anything else in the past 10-12 years are fuel-inefficient SUVs and "light trucks" (read: oversized trucks), partly due to the perceived safety "arms race." It's come to the point where
some makers have all but abandoned sedans and the compact segment altogether.
Car & Driver listed the top 5 vehicles sold in the US last year as:
- Ford F150 (a staggering 750,000 of them!)
- Chevy Silverado (543,000!)
- Dodge Ram (443,000!)
- Toyota RAV4 (434,000!)
- Tesla Model Y (estimated 385,900)
So that's three massive pickup trucks and two SUVs. The F150 has been at or near the top spot for nearly two decades now. In 1990, the top seller was the Honda Accord.
As others alluded to, regulations and climate accord agreements are accelerating the rapid phase-out of ICE cars. Sure, existing cars will still be on the road for as long as they're running (or as long as oil is subsidized...), but the change is happening now.
New ICE car sales will be banned in Norway starting next year; in the EU generally by 2035, with many member states setting 2030 as their target. The US has no law nationally, but California, which effectively leads the country due to its buying power, has ruled that 35% of new vehicles sold must be zero-emission by 2026, ramping up in phases over the following decade until it's 100% by 2035.
The Biden administration has also issued an EO that 100% of new government-purchased light-duty vehicles need to be EVs by 2027, and all vehicles by 2035.
I note all this because there are some contrasts and parallels. Yeah, there's a certain slice of the market that needs or wants "big iron" bass amp stacks, or uses them because "it's expected". But I don't think it's going to be the mainstream for much longer.
To me, the switch to Class D amps, pedalboard preamps, going ampless and using IEMs isn't just like switching from ICE to EV cars, it's like switching from cars
to trains.
Instead of lugging your two- to five-ton metal box around, usually just to carry yourself, you use common infrastructure that runs much, much faster, without stops and traffic, and uses way less energy per capita.
As a player, you bring a couple of gig bags, plug into the house PA and that's it! This also presumes that venues get on board with this, vs assuming an act is bringing 10 tons of gear in multiple 18-wheelers; just like cities have started to move away from car-centric planning and car dependency.
I think there's another parallel, which is that making things lighter, smaller and more reliable means less trash and e-waste. The more we can design gear to last, be easily repaired and dismantled for recycling, the better.
