SUVs have become the focus of criticism in recent years. Paris has now reacted after a citizens’ vote and is making parking for these cars very expensive.
In Paris, SUVs will pay more for a parking space from September. Getty Images/Scott Barbour
18 euros per hour. This is what it will cost in Paris from September if you park your SUV in a public parking lot in the city. This adds up quickly when you spend an evening at the theater or sit for a while in a restaurant with friends. Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo let citizens decide whether SUV owners should be asked to pay. 56 percent of Parisians decided in favor of the regulation, but of course the protest is huge. Also because voter turnout was low.
The regulation affects all SUVs with combustion engines and hybrid drives that weigh more than 1.6 tons and all electric SUVs that weigh more than two tons. So practically all SUVs that are on the market. However, things get complicated when it comes to the question of what an SUV actually is. Certainly the absurdly large BMW XM with its 2.8 tons. But what about a Hyundai Kona, for example, which, depending on the equipment, weighs just under 1.6 tonnes? And what about a large station wagon, like the T-model of the Mercedes E-Class, which also weighs two tons? The Paris administration will have to define what is meant by an SUV and what is not.
SUVs are popular and controversial
Huge SUVs are controversial, no question about it. They are the negative climax of a development in the car industry that did not have to be and is actively driven by the manufacturers because the return on the vehicles is significantly higher than that of other models. The cars have become so wide that some of them no longer fit into normal parking spaces. It may be up to each individual whether they want to ride around town in the equivalent of a medieval carriage, but there must be limits.
But the auto industry is still allowing vehicles to grow. The Tesla Cybertruck, which will most likely not be registered in the EU, is, with its three tons of live weight, a dinosaur that does not belong in a city center. But others will follow if the model is successful in the US. It is understandable that cities are starting to defend themselves against megalomania.
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However, Paris is a pioneer when it comes to general parking fees for SUVs. Although a resident parking permit in Tübingen for SUVs costs 180 euros instead of 120 euros per year, you don’t pay any more for parking in the city center. The city of Frankfurt once considered whether to completely ban cars that weigh more than 2.8 tons from the city center, but there is no legal basis for this in the road traffic regulations.
There are better solutions
One can certainly ask whether such measures make any sense at all. Although SUVs make up around 30 percent of all new registrations in Germany, the real large SUVs in the luxury class only represent a fraction of sales. And the Hyundai Kona mentioned above is smaller than, for example, the Hyundai Ioniq 5 electric car, but it does not fall into the SUV class.
Classifying cars purely based on weight is not the best solution either. One of the best-selling SUVs, the VW Tiguan, weighs around 1.7 tons. A Tesla 3 weighs 1.9 tons and is just as wide at 1.85 meters. But the Tiguan should pay more for its parking space? This is very difficult to convey.
You can generally think of SUVs as nonsense, but they are still sold. Accordingly, it would make more sense if we started selling heavy SUVs. France has been doing this since this year. Cars with internal combustion engines that weigh more than 1.6 tons are punished with a tax. There is a one-off charge of ten euros per kilo. This can add up to several tens of thousands of euros. Electric vehicles are excluded from this.
The general trend in the industry to make all vehicles heavier, more powerful and therefore more expensive can only be reversed if buyers turn away from the models. A measure like the one in Paris can help, but will not be the solution. To achieve this, manufacturers, especially in Germany, would have to start developing smaller, more fuel-efficient cars again instead of pushing SUVs onto the market with high discounts.
Don Dahlmann has been a journalist for over 25 years and has been in the automotive industry for over ten years. Every Monday you can read his “Torque” column here, which takes a critical look at the mobility industry.
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