Cash for clunkers anyone? How much waste did that create...turn in a 20 year old Civic and get a bunch of money to buy a brand new vehicle that probably gets worse MPG.
Change it over to "Cheap EV for clunkers", the government could/should cover most of the financials and it's a win for the car owner and the environment.
I think it could be argued that it's the government's job to fund things like this. Vision is all that's required!
... In the US/Canada. This is for the most part a self-contained cultural problem.
SUVs/trucks numbers are a small percentage of the vehicles on the road elsewhere in the world, mostly because there is no space for them in the road/city infrastructure in most other places.