"We must stop the SUV race in France"

An SUV, illustration -

• The share of SUVs in new vehicle purchases in France increased from 5% to 38% between 2008 and 2019.

• An increase incompatible with the country's climate objectives, according to a report published on Tuesday by WWF France.

• Pierre Cannet, from the NGO, explains to

  20 Minutes

  how to remodel the French car fleet so that it is more compatible with climate issues.

Gone are the days of Clios and other cute little city cars.

The years 2010 were marked by an evolution of the vehicle fleet, with an increasingly important place given to SUVs.

In France, sales of this type of car went from 5% of the new vehicle market in 2008 to 38% in 2019, according to a WWF France report made public on Tuesday.

The month of September 2020 saw a new record set, with 41% of SUVs among new vehicles sold.

This change in the size of our cars is not without ecological consequences.

Much heavier, and therefore much more polluting, these vehicles and their growing success are "incompatible" with the respect of French commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, according to WWF France.

They would constitute, according to the organization, “the second source of increase in energy greenhouse gas emissions in France from 2008 to 2018, just behind the aviation sector”.

Pierre Cannet, WWF France Advocacy Director, explains to

how to stem this SUV epidemic in France.

How did France become a land of SUVs?

With the economic crisis of 2008, manufacturers have chosen the SUV, vehicles increasingly tall, wider, with a shape borrowed from the urban 4x4.

Fashion was first established in wealthy circles and urban centers such as Hauts-de-Seine or Paris at the end of the 2000s, before also entering more and more massively in the countryside around 2014- 2015.

It is also a political decision.

The aid allocated during the financial crisis was without constraint or without requiring certain climatic ranges from manufacturers.

Suddenly, we are taking the path of an Americanization of our mobility, even though in these years 2008-2009, we had new options and technologies to on the contrary move more lightly while consuming less, whether with electromobility. or vehicles of reduced size.

As for the bonus / penalty policy, it did not work, the sales figures clearly show that it has failed.

Is this massive SUV sale a problem?

This clearly puts France at odds with its climate objectives and that is why the SUV race in France must be stopped.

Beyond ecology, there is the social impact: we have created a chasm vis-à-vis low-income households.

Current SUVs will be on the second-hand market over the next 15 years, at a much higher cost than older used cars, which is going to be a real disaster for lower incomes.

Ecologically and socially, this SUV-ation will generate a very heavy bill that we wish to see corrected now.

How can the success of these vehicles be reduced?

Our priority is the question of taxation.

The market is influenced by the interventions of the State which can no longer be satisfied with a bonus / penalty only around the emission of CO2 per kilometer.

The ecological impact of construction is very important for SUVs, and it is not something that is taken into account in the bonus / penalty currently.

Even a total electrification of the SUV fleet would not be enough to meet France's climate commitments.

It must be understood that to run more than 1.3 tonnes, it requires crazy energy, very expensive.

What we therefore want is a bonus / penalty geared directly to the weight of the vehicle.

Above 1.3 tonnes, a penalty would be put in place and the heavier the vehicle, the greater the penalty would be.

The money from these penalties would be redistributed to feed other types of mobility.

Then comes the industrial question.

Long-term visibility is needed to help the automotive industry.

The coronavirus has allowed the State to give billions of public aid to help the sector, this investment historically must be an opportunity seized to ensure and impose that the production chains are redirected towards less heavy vehicles, less powerful and less polluting.

The SUV has gone from the image of a polluting 4x4 to a very safe vehicle.

Should consumers be better informed so that they are alerted to the ecological cost of this choice of mobility?

The consumer is bludgeoned by advertising and culturally conditioned, and advertising should indeed be better framed so that it stops claiming the virtuous impact of the SUV.

This is also what we wanted to do with this report: to objectify the debate on the basis of figures and facts.

However, we believe that consumers are at the end of the chain and that we will come back to the issue of advertising at the end of the year.

For the moment, our real struggle is the penalty based on weighty criteria.

Consumer incentives and information will not be sufficient if we do not correct the market, we must above all act on the market.

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