Auto emissions could have dropped by 30%, if it weren’t for SUVs: report

A new report gives us a glimpse of what our world could look like if there weren’t so many big, hulking SUVs cruising around. Due to the rise in electric vehicles, carbon emissions from automobiles could have dropped by more than 30% over the past 10 years, except they haven’t – and that’s because of our global appetite for jumbo cars, the report authors say.

From 2010 and 2022, if vehicles had stayed the same size and the bloated SUV trend had never happened, carbon emissions could have been reduced by more than 30%, according to a report from the Global Fuel Economy Initiative (GFEI). Instead, automotive emissions only dropped 4.2%, essentially undoing all the good benefits of electric vehicles.

SUVs represent 51% of the new car market, and the average light-duty vehicle weight has bulked up to an all-time high of more than 1.5 tonnes. The size of SUVs is growing, with a footprint averaging around 4.2 square meters (or 13.8 square feet). Plus automakers make a huge profit from SUVs, which are sold at premium prices but have a proportionally lower manufacturing cost, so they are eager to market them to consumers.

Electric vehicles, which represent 15% of global new car sales in 2022, use three to six times less energy than ICE vehicles to travel the same distance. Markets with strong growth in the EV sector, including China and Europe, saw the largest annual energy efficiency improvements of close to 6%. North America, which has a lower market uptake of EVs, recorded a yearly improvement rate of 1.6%.

“Growing vehicle size is a huge problem, which is threatening many aspects of sustainable mobility, from climate to road safety,” said Sheila Watson, deputy director of the FIA Foundation, an environmental nonprofit. “This report shows that we must move away from these mega-vehicles if we are to achieve the GFEI goal of doubling the fuel efficiency of cars by 2030. Vehicle size matters – and in this case bigger is definitely not better.”

This includes large, heavy electric SUVs – while they have zero tailpipe emissions, they also have with enormous battery and energy demands, not to mention the fact they kill more pedestrians than any other vehicle. “Reversing the trend toward bigger and heavier vehicles is key to achieving more sustainable mobility,” said Dan Sperling, founding director of the Institute of Transportation Studies of the University of California, Davis. “This applies also for electric mobility, to make the market for EVs more equitable and inclusive – and to reduce the need for critical minerals and more electricity.”

To turn this around, the report calls for governments to set caps on vehicle size (on hybrid and electric as well as ICE) to reverse the SUV trend and help accelerate the shift to smaller EVs – Paris is proposing one such restriction right now. Plus the report authors recommend more stringent environmental and safety regulations on highly utilized vehicles such as company cars, taxis, government fleets, and ride- and car-sharing services.

They also are calling for more investment in renewables, a reversal of fossil fuel subsidies, with the application of carbon pricing, regulations on minimum EV charging deployment, and financial instruments designed to facilitate affordable access to EVs.