Suvs Are Taking Over The World

From Beijing to London, everybody wants them. This is bad for pedestrians and bad for the climate.

It used to be that cars were small; in Europe, they were tiny, which was actually a good thing on the narrow roads in old cities with no parking. But now, according to Hiroko Tabuchi in the New York Times, everybody everywhere wants an SUV.

It’s odd that it would become an international phenomenon because in Europe, the roads are still narrow, gas is still expensive and parking is still hard to find. But people love them and are now loving the big American pickup truck.

The new European SUVs are different from the ones in the States because they have to meet higher standards for pedestrian safety, which makes their front ends much lower. The most popular is the Nissan Qashqai (how do you pronounce that) which is really a pumped-up car, more what is called a Crossover Utility Vehicle. I doubt most Americans would look at that and even consider it an SUV. They have to meet all the fuel and safety standards that cars do.

Jeep Cherokee ad for the new family car/Promo image

In the USA, SUVs are considered light trucks, which historically had less stringent rules. That’s why we got them in the first place, as a way of getting around the fuel efficiency standards of the seventies. Tabuchi notes that the manufacturers used this loophole to “turn the truck into America’s new family car.” Now they rule the road, and we are going to see more pedestrians killed, more greenhouse gases emitted.

Tabuchi points out how hypocritical the car makers are, talking clean tech and electric cars and then:

Of course, all of this is really terrible if you believe that we have to actually do something about climate change. About the only good news is that once again, it is the kids that will save us, as the number of young people with drivers licences continues to decline. That is about the only thing that will save us from being buried in SUVs and pickups.