In a lot of industries bigger isn’t always better.
I know that you can’t come up with a better example of this principle than with consumer vehicles.
While big families can get a lot of utility out of vans and SUVs, most people are wasting money on gasoline by insisting on driving these kinds of cars. Everyone’s situation is different so it’s hard to say one way or another, but typically you don’t need a truck unless you plan to haul supplies, nor would you need a van unless you were hauling multiple people at once. So why waste money on something you don’t need just because you want something “big”? It’s a strange delusion that I fail to comprehend, but I almost fell for this trap when it came to my previous air conditioner. I wanted to get the biggest air conditioner available because I figured that the biggest machine would be the most powerful. And surely having the most power a/c would always be ideal, right? That’s the problem, if the a/c is overpowered for the space it’s installed in, the air conditioner starts to do something called “short cycling.” It means the a/c gets the temperature dropped so quickly that it constantly turns on and off for short cycles. This actually wastes electricity because you have to burn energy to get the refrigeration cycle working each time, and then a lot of that energy is lost as the compressor turns off and cools down naturally. An a/c that is on longer can keep the fan blowing while the compressor cools off, thereby wasting a lot less electricity to cool your home. Thankfully, I went with a machine with a higher SEER rating instead.