It looks like Americans still love their big trucks and SUVs — at least, that's what Edmunds.com's research suggests. In the past year, people who traded in hybrid or electric cars replaced those cars with fully gas-powered cars nearly 75 percent of the time.
That shift is most likely because of how far our gas prices have plummeted in recent years. Hybrids might get better gas mileage, sure, but as soon as gas prices start to fall, sales of large cars begin to go back up.
An Edmunds.com staffer puts it this way: "This trend is not an indictment of the quality of these cars. ... This is an economics trend, since today's low cost of gas no longer makes it worth paying the price premium of hybrids and EVs," aka electric vehicles.
But even though people are opting out of hybrid and electric options, they're still choosing SUVs that are more fuel-efficient, with only 1.4 percent of hybrid and electric trade-ins going toward large gas-guzzling SUVs.
And even though some people might worry about the environmental impact of this new trend, a look at modern SUV fuel-efficiency ratings show it's not as bad as some might imagine. A study by TrueCar.com found a sedan and small SUVs only average about 2-miles-per-gallon difference.
Admittedly, that's still a far cry from hybrid and electric cars, the latter which can average 100 miles per gallon or more. But it's also a far cry from the mid-'90s when SUVs got — if you were lucky — about 20 miles per gallon on the highway.
This video includes clips from Toyota Motor Sales U.S.A.,Ford Motor Co., American Honda Motor Co., Nissan North America, FCA US, General Motors and KERO and images from Getty Images. Music provided courtesy of APM Music.
