Why Are There No Cars in Fallout?

It always annoyed me that people were flying around in vertibirds and zeppelins but no one managed to get a car working.

So lore wise, there have been multiple drivable vehicles, but we never get to seen them driven gameplay wise. It's cool to think that the NCR and BoS canonically use trucks to transport supplies.

There are no cars in Fallout 4 because the engine literally cannot handle going too fast or your character will fall through the map because the game cannot load the areas fast enough.

I refuse to believe that in 200 years no one messed around with a lone wanderer motorcycle

The real question is why is there zero bicycle in fallout? It requires almost no maintance plus you can easily cross almost any terrain with it

fun fact, in fallout 3, the presidential metro is one of the only ground vehicle you can see rolling. but in an interview one of the game developper explained that to get around the engine limitation they had to program the train as an NPC helmet and make that giant NPC walk.

I think another reason not really mentioned is the road conditions. The best roads we see in game are still filled with cracks, potholes, rubble. dirt. Most cars we see, with the exception of military ones are definitely not all terrain vehicles. Even if your wheels somehow survive the bumps, who's to say 200 year old spring steel suspension parts would.

Adding vehicles would shrink the feel of the map's size.

I generally headcanon that cars and other vehicles exist and major factions use them we just don't see them because of gameplay limitations. Theirs the motorcycle grenade story from the raiders which indicates they know what a motorcycle is and how it works so it's like raiders use fixed up vehicles.

I’ve also noticed a distinct lack of Horses, bicycles, or any kind of improvised form of transportation. With education in certain areas better than even pre-war testing standards it’d be no problem to repair cars.

the NCR had working trains in New Vegas according to the people in sloan, Powder gangers and quarry workers, in gameplay we couldn't see that because of game limitations Edit: the survivalist mentions that the bombs had an EMP blast too, that's a pretty good explanation on why working vehicles are rare.

Implementing vehicle physics means you have to do a lot more work on the physics engine in general, you cover much more space in a vehicle than on foot so you have to do a lot more mapping and its easier to make a space appear larger when the agent is moving at pedestrian speeds. This also affects the render engine when you have agents that move at speed. So in general you can dramatically reduce production time and costs by not including elements like this, and if done well players don't really notice.

TLDR version : many people and factions use vehicles, but it just was never put together in the games otherwise the maps would feel much too small

In Fallout 4 two raiders discuss a encounter they has with a crazy survivor pretending to drive a motorcycle by making motorcycle sounds. How could random low level raiders know what a motorcycle sounds like if they never heard it before? How could the crazy survivor know to make them if they never heard it before?

You can own a vehicle in Fallout 2, even can modify it. Use trunk for extra item stashing.

In Fallout 2, you can buy a car. It has a trunk to hold your gear and you can even get upgrades for it to improve the fuel economy. It's the primary way most players get around in Fallout 2.

Fallout Tactics had drivable vehicles. It was awesome to finally get good enough with a vehicle that you could drive circles around a deathclaw while your crew shoots out the windows.

I vaguely remember that a faction in Fallout 2 figured out a synthetic fuel and had been slowly generating a supply in San Francisco. Would be neat to see them become a fuel baron faction in the NCR

Just a small correction: a 100 year old tire would have grip, it would however crack and disintegrate upon deformation of any kind, like rolling, Old rubber becomes hard and brittle but also paradoxically "sticky"/"tacky" (because the polymers break into smaller chains and work their way to the surface) Iirc, I don't have any references in front of me so if I'm wrong please correct me

What I find confusing is that with all of the wheeled/tracked robots in storage in security roles (often hacked by the player character to render them harmless) or just wandering around the wasteland, seemingly with plentiful fusion power, that no one "MacGyvered" vehicles based on these chassis. Of course in Fallout 4 the Sole Survivor can also MacGyver a nuclear reactor out of parts he collects but can't craft a wooden wall that does not look like an attempt by 10-year-olds to build a tree fort... so there's that...