2024-02-10 07:00:13
These are the best-selling vehicles in Europe. The biggest ones too. SUVs – for Sport utility vehicles – made a sensational entry into the French automobile market around ten years ago, to the point of becoming essential: 47% of registrations in 2023 concerned SUVs. Eight out of ten SUV drivers are urban dwellers.
Problem: these vehicles emit 10% to 20% more greenhouse gases than a conventional car, according to the environmental NGO WWF who wrote a report on this subject. For the High Council for the Climate, they are the same “incompatible with the ecological transition”.
Other problems: the congestion of public space caused by these imposing vehicles and security. According to a study carried out by the insurer AXA based on its statistics, they cause 25% more accidents.
For all these reasons, several cities want to ban them. On Sunday February 4, 2024, 54.55% of the 78,121 voters who participated in the ballot organized in Paris expressed themselves in favor of a surcharge on thermal vehicles over 1.6 tonnes and electric vehicles over 2 tonnes in the capital. . In Lyon, an identical surcharge will be applied in June. Other cities, like Marseille, are also thinking about it.
Read also: Paris wants to charge for SUVs: are these vehicles really more bulky and polluting?
“I don’t have to justify myself”
Enough to make the owners concerned cringe, like Emilie, 53, resident of the 16th arrondissement of Paris and who owns a BMW X5 hybrid, a car weighing more than 2 tonnes and almost 2 m wide. “I chose a hybrid on purpose to be eco-responsible and now we have a reputation as polluters and pretentious people,” scolds this singer, mother of three grown children. For her, this car is even ” a way of life “. “I don’t have to justify having an SUV, she warns. But I use it to carpool with musicians and their instruments or to go to my country house, to bring back plants…”
However, she ensures that she limits her car trips in the city as much as possible. “I’m not a masochist, when I go to Paris, I try to take the metro but when I go to the Philharmonie, I’m not going to spend an hour and a half in a traffic jam on the ring road in a small Smart! »
Because what she also appreciates about her vehicle is its comfort. “It’s a luxury car, it’s like a living room, a small house, she assures. I have a beautiful sound system, of course there is a lot of coquetry, but I fully embrace it. »
Read also: How the French automobile fleet has increased by 30% in 30 years
“No one wants a minivan anymore”
In the opinion of dealers themselves, the SUV is…
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