Unless you live in the snow, desert, or on a farm, you don't need a two ton tank. Urban SUVS accelerate climate change, are a danger to cyclists & pedestrians and increase traffic congestion, as well as being conspicuous consumption.
The majority of British motorists want an outright ban on highly polluting vehicles, such as 4x4s and SUVs, to stop them from entering well-populated areas like town and city centres.
According to a survey of 1,000 UK drivers, 59 percent said they would support a ban on larger vehicles like 4x4s, SUVs and other large vehicles. A further 39 percent would support the mandatory introduction of Clean Air Zones in every town and city in the UK, as has been seen in the likes of Bath and Birmingham.
Rapidly increasing the number of electric cars on the road in place of conventional cars is a key part of reaching net zero emissions by mid-century. At the same time, SUVs require larger batteries to power them, so a growing electric SUV market would impose additional pressure on battery supply chains and further increase demand for the critical minerals needed to make the batteries. Addressing those risks ahead of time is possible through a number of actions: downsizing of the average car size; increasing battery swapping; and investing in innovative battery technologies. Those strategies would keep in check the investment requirements for developing the cobalt, copper, lithium and nickel resources needed to satisfy the increasing uptake of EVs.
Guerrilla climate activists Tyre Extinguishers have claimed their “largest ever night of action against SUVs”, with 900 of the vehicles targeted around the world.
“Last night (the evening of Monday 28 November and early morning of Tuesday 29 November), citizens in eight countries deflated tyres on nearly 900 polluting SUVs,” the activist group said in a statement.
“This is the biggest coordinated global action against high-carbon vehicles in history, with many more to come.”
The latest communique from the Tyre Extinguishers suggests its campaign of clandestine climate action against the urban owners of 4x4s is still going strong, nearly nine months after the first reports of actions in the UK.
They have called for a ban on SUVs in urban areas. Until then, they have said: “We want to make it impossible to own a huge polluting 4×4 in the world’s urban areas.”
Climate activists have hacked billboards as part of an international protest against car adverts.
Billboards in Easton and St Werburghs in Bristol have been replaced with spoof adverts targeting car companies.
The Brandalism group claimed the hacking and local activists are calling for Bristol City Council to cut air pollution by restricting car adverts.
SUVs ARE AN environmental and social scourge. Whether we ban them in urban areas outright, as is being proposed in Germany, or we introduce new forms of taxation to regulate their weight, height and width, something must be done to stop the trend of excessively large passenger cars dominating our streets.
Recent figures show that 58% of all new car sales in 2022 were SUV type passenger vehicles. While those who buy them offer justifications such as the comfort of driving with greater visibility and a sense of safety, in practice it is the relentless advertising spend per vehicle that is driving up sales.
Estimates vary across the EU, but in France, in 2019 it was estimated that over €2300 was spent on advertising each individual SUV (a sum which would buy you a second-hand diesel car quite easily).