James Nix: Yes. Cars are getting wider, taller and heavier, and there are consequences
It’s not a trick of the eye. Cars are getting bigger every year. The average width and the bonnet height of newly sold cars in Europe are both increasing by one centimetre every two years. New cars are also getting heavier and heavier, adding 25kg every year.
There are real-world consequences. Consider trams and buses that are slowed to a crawl – or blocked – by excessively wide SUVs infringing their route. Or a returning shopper trapped outside their car by big SUVs parked up against both sides.
Those who cycle and walk – or want to do so more – also have to deal with new cars consuming ever more space. Take a young cyclist, scared to get back on their bike after being pushed into the road by an extra-wide SUV parked, as is typical, outside the boundaries of a standard on-street parking space.
Pedestrians, cyclists and occupants of other vehicles are all at greater risk if hit by an SUV than by a regular passenger car. In crashes, high-fronted SUVs typically strike adult pedestrians above their centre of gravity, often first hitting vital organs. For children, the point of impact may be their head.
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One study, based on crashes involving 300,000 road users in Belgium, indicates that a 10cm increase in bonnet height (from 80cm to 90cm) raises the risk of death by 27 per cent for pedestrians, cyclists and other vulnerable road users.
The earth’s surface, the climate and our lungs are paying a heavy price too. Added resources – steel, aluminium, plastic, glass, rubber, oil, battery raw materials and electricity – are used to make and run ever-larger and heavier vehicles. The accompanying emissions add to climate instability.
Tyre wear increases with vehicle weight, so the wheels of SUVs cast off more micro-particles, adding to a lethal air pollution cocktail increasingly linked to asthma, certain cancers and heart conditions. Particles not inhaled pollute our soil and water.
Under proposals outlined by the Department of Finance in July, a weight-based element would be added to vehicle registration tax (VRT). The measure would only apply to newly sold cars and second-hand imports. The intention is only to shape future purchase decisions; all vehicles already on the road would be exempt.
Full electric vehicles (EVs) would be exempt from the first phase. Chief executives of European carmakers have been regrettably slow to produce reasonable-sized full electric cars.
Increasing competition from China, and city measures such as the Paris SUV parking tariff (which applies to full EVs weighing more than two tonnes), have led them to pledge a real supply of mass market full EVs. Ideally, the new VRT surcharge would only exempt new purchases of full EVs for the first six or 12 months.
The draft proposals exempt wheelchair accessible/adapted vehicles. There’s also support for an allowance for families with three or more dependent children, as is the case in France. Generally, farm jeeps are bought and registered as light commercial vehicles, but where a farm vehicle is registered as a passenger car, departmental officials see the case for an allowance or exemption.
Overall, the increasing numbers of ever-bigger SUVs on our roads is leading to a significant burden for taxpayers – increased road wear, public transport delays, young cyclists thwarted, higher pollution levels, more severe crashes. Adding a weight-based levy to VRT is a fair and reasonable reform. The proposal deserves all-party support and a timely commitment to a January 1st, 2026, start.
James Nix is vehicles policy manager for advocacy group Transport & Environment (T&E)
Michael McAleer: No, this isn’t a tax on SUVs, it’s a tax on the smug
What is an SUV, that three-letter suburban swearword and the car-shaped proxy for smugness? It’s important we know what we’re talking about before we tax it.
Official new car registration figures list more than half the sales this year as SUVs. Understandably, that catches the eye. Except it’s not really half.
Take Toyota’s Yaris Cross, Ireland’s second bestseller. It’s classed as an SUV.
Is it really? Toyota has taken its once-popular city car and raised the ride height by 30mm and added some chunky plastic cladding. It’s the regular Yaris in hiking boots.
The argument goes like this: SUVs are too big, too heavy and too dangerous. The proposed answer is to apply a new tax, likely based on weight. But the problem with tax policy is that it’s not a sniper rifle, it’s a blunderbuss.
We’ve been here before. When tax shifted from engine size to carbon-dioxide emissions, the message was clear: petrol is poison, diesel will save the day. So buyers flocked to diesel, petrol car values fell and people paid thousands more for a diesel to save hundreds in motor tax.
Then came the about-turn. Diesel was deadly, hybrid was holy. Then plug-in hybrids were a hoax and only electric would save your motoring soul.
Now it’s not the engine, it’s the shape. SUVs are the root of all evil and small city cars are our salvation. It’s environmental whack-a-mole, with the motorist as the mole.
Two issues arise when it comes to SUVs: the environment and road safety.
On the first point, there is no doubt that heavier cars mean higher emissions. However, of the new so-called SUVs sold in Ireland so far this year, 47 per cent were hybrid or plug-in hybrid, while a further 14 per cent were all-electric. In terms of emissions, 51 per cent were under 116g/km, cleaner than a one-litre Volkswagen Polo.
On road safety, yes, SUVs can be dangerous. Higher bonnets are worse for pedestrians and cyclists, as is the format of most vans and trucks on our roads.
But is the SUV really the biggest threat on our roads, or is it a wider issue of the wilful disregard for the rules of the road, and weak enforcement highlighted by the recent damning report on the Garda Roads Policing. Would the money raised by the levy be ring-fenced for road safety?
Buyers aren’t choosing SUVs out of contempt for other road users. They buy them because they’re practical: big boots, high seats, seven seats.
The bestselling “large SUV” this year isn’t a Range Rover, it’s the Peugeot 5008. That was once a boxy people carrier, but the French car firm now dresses it up as an SUV. You might think SUV styling is gauche, but it’s the seven-seat format that swings it for buyers.
The SUV has replaced the people carrier because nobody wanted to be seen in the latter.
If we turn people away from SUVs, what are the alternatives? Small, light all-electric city cars are best for the environment and, driven within the rules of the road, are arguably safer, but do they cater for the needs of a mid-sized Irish family?
What’s the real target of any extra tax? Will we penalise the pickup trucks of farmers and construction workers? No, probably not. How about the delivery vans scurrying around housing estates delivering consignments of Labubus? No, these are seen as essential.
Clearly there are going to be exemptions. So electric cars, heavier than combustion-engined equivalents because of the battery packs, will get some tax relief. As will farmers or others who use off-roaders for work.
What about the handful of big, practical seven-seaters based on van platform, heavy enough to be hit hard by a weight levy but that don’t look like SUVs?
If we permit exemptions, then what is the tax really about?
There are earnest environmentalists who believe an SUV levy will make a difference to the planet, but opportunists have boarded the bandwagon, driven as much by a desire to tax the motoring stereotypes of status seekers and school-run tank commanders.
It’s not a tax on SUVs. It’s a tax on the smug and on people we don’t like. That tells you more about the politics than it does about the cars.
