Parisians vote in favour of tripling parking costs for SUVs | Hacker News Reader

Parisians vote in favour of tripling parking costs for SUVs

theguardian.com

137 pointsschleck8200 comments

This article leaves a lot of details out. As a Parisian who's been following this with attention, here are a few details:

* first, the "SUV" part is the intent, but not the reality. It's actually by weight: over 1600kg for ICE and 2000kg for electric/hybrids. A lot of French SUVs fit under those restrictions (for example Peugeot 2008/3008). It's unclear to me if there is really something specific to target those SUVs as well (I have not read the full text)

* part of the issue is width rather than weight: cars become larger and no longer fit in the parking spots. Parking spots minimum width in Paris is 180cm. For example, a Porsche Cayenne (a typical SUV) is 198cm without mirrors, 219cm with mirrors deployed. Being at least 20cm outside of the parking spot is an issue, roads are narrow.

* this is only for paid surface parking for non-residents. Residents price is not impacted (which is controversial). Underground parking is private and not affected. Free parking (outside of 8AM to 8PM Monday to Saturday) stays free for everyone.

* In general, underground parking is cheaper than surface parking even at the normal price. This will likely push those cars underground, which is IMO a good thing (especially because of the width issue).

* this vote is controversial in the first place (much like the rental scooters one was recently): the result was expected: it doesn't really affect negatively Parisians, only outsiders, and is strictly a QoL improvements for Parisians. I'm actually surprised it's not a landslide, but I guess the people who went to vote are generally more likely to have a car and vote against because of that.

* there were other questions asked for specific arrondissement. Those were important as well.

Edit: of those questions, only one arrondissement rejected its question (8th, which is also one of the least favorable over the poll). Those questions were mainly around reclaiming space from cars to allocate to pedestrians/cyclists/green spaces.

> this is only for paid surface parking for non-residents. Residents price is not impacted (which is controversial). Underground parking is private and not affected. Free parking (outside of 8AM to 8PM Monday to Saturday) stays free for everyone.

If my end goal was to apply this to everyone at some point, I would probably start with such a restricted law, then extend it step by step later.

Nah, it might be extended to residents, but the private parking and the free parking hours won't be changed ever.

(unless a national law is passed).

The news makes people focus on this particular vote, but it's just yet another small step in the multitude of other steps to curb car use in Paris.

It started at least 10 years ago (current mayor that really pushes the issue was elected in 2014, I'm not sure it's the actual starting point), and we saw:

* bike lanes. Lots of bike lanes. Generally replacing traffic lanes and parking spots.

* several pedestrians zones replacing traffic lanes (especially in front of schools).

* Crit'air restrictions (car pollution rating, derived from Euro rating). You cannot drive a polluting car in Paris anymore.

* reduction of the speed limit from 50km/h to 30km/h in Paris, and from 80km/h to 70km/h on the Périphérique (highway circling Paris)

* there is no longer any always-free surface parking spot, and price has been raised a lot

And I'm very probably forgetting a few.

It’s interesting that new legislation is baking in the idea that more “sustainable” cars can weigh a lot more. Disappointing that this means we won’t tackle the other externalities of personal motorised transport including size, safety and visibility issues, wear on public infrastructure, and sheer amount of extra material people use to get themselves around.

I think the idea is that batteries can make the car more dense. Their concern was larger vehicles not fitting in parking spaces, allowing more weight in an EV makes sense in that case.

It is interesting that they went with weight as a proxy for size though. I expect the process for charging by weight or dimensions would come down to a list of oversized vehicle models, why abstract it a layer rather than a max width/length?

That might just be tradition. Driving license classes also use weight as a proxy.

And bigger. For any particular fuel range of interest, an ICE drivetrain is smaller than a battery one.

But yes, I agree that weight as a proxy for size is ridiculous.

They are more "dense" rather than necessarily larger.

For comparable driving ranges, EVs are necessarily larger than ICE cars.

>the result was expected

With 54,55 % in favor and only 5,68 % voting, I wouldn't call that "expected".

>is strictly a QoL improvements for Parisians

No, anyone visiting Paris in anything other than an SUV (say, a train, a bus, a bicycle) will benefit.

To be fair, the sentiment was "it will be a landslide in favour" (like the electric scooters). It indeed wasn't, but still went in the expected way.

People visiting Paris were not polled, only Parisians were, that's why I only explained this point of view. But yes it does benefit everyone that doesn't visit Paris in a SUV.

Note that it also impacts Parisians with a SUV when they are parking outside of their resident zones (a resident parking permit allows you to park in 4 zones around your home).

>the sentiment was "it will be a landslide in favour"

Source?

I voted and like many people in circles and voting center, I didn't share that sentiment.

Here is a news article talking about that (in French) from before the vote was done: https://www.francetvinfo.fr/france/ile-de-france/venir-a-par...

Key part translation: "According to a poll, 61% of Parisians support the implementation of parking pricing based on the weight of the vehicle".

This tweet is quoted in the news: https://twitter.com/franckboisselet/status/17526758926927016... Translation: "What's the point of organizing an expensive vote on SUVs where everyone agrees."

Seeing as some arrondissements were very much against that change, it's not hard to find anecdotas of places where the sentiment is against it.

If only parisians were polled doea that not mke this the dwfinition of nimby bs? This isnt necessarily a terrible idea, just a terrible, punitive attack on an unfashionable vehicle type. This would be much better if they charged b^ the foot or something rather than having 2 categories with such a large cost difference

The weight limit is quite weird. My 2019 BMW 2 series (so not big at all!) weighs 1690kg and length of 443.7cm has a width of 177.4cm without mirrors.

Indeed, the Tesla model Y is also below 2000kg.

I also think the weight for EV cars should be lowered, considering the better acceleration that EVs have.

Perhaps that will come later.

In my country the car registration document has the weight number but not the width number. I suspect in France it's the same, and that's the reason they went by weight instead of width – it's easier to administer that way.

It makes sense that road and parking pricing should be proportional to the size and impact of your car. Hopefully this will encourage manufacturers to produce more smaller cars - it's getting somewhat hard to buy a small car these days. I'd love to have a Japanese-style Kei car.

Agreed -- the popularity of giant vehicles is basically a tragedy-of-the-commons situation, and probably regulation is the only way to fix it at this point.

Some people claim it was regulation that caused SUVs

https://www.capitalone.com/cars/learn/finding-the-right-car/...

Hopefully new regulation will fix it rather than make it worse

Regulation that came to be because of the aggressive lobbying.

Certainly not in Europe, where things like pickup trucks and light trucks were exceedingly rare and there was no such regulation loophole.

I think some might say it started in the USA and was then brought to Europe after. Many things are introduced in one country and once successful the companies try to expand their market to other countries

They are less rare now than they used to be, sure, but they are still very uncommon. As in, I might see one every week living in a ~10 million people reasonably wealthy metropolitan area. No regulation was tweaked to favour light trucks and Ford is perfectly happy to sell sedans and hatchbacks instead of F-150s. They don’t need to sell the same thing as in the US to develop their market share here.

SUVs seem to increase in popularity following the American fashion, unfortunately.

In 1990, if you had 3 kids, it could easily fit in a Renault 19.

In 2020… if you have an SUV with kid sits… it barely fits TWO kids. It is totally produced by legislation, although it’s for safety, you have to be extremely rich to carry 3 kids in a car today.

Such a SUV has barely more room than a 308, though, which is lighter, smaller, and more efficient. I agree that there are not that many good family cars and even more reasonably-sized cars are somehow getting too large on the outside and too cramped on the inside at the same time. It makes them very impractical in a lot of situations.

Yeah once you have kids, you realize this isn't the truth but actually just FUD.

People had kids before the SUV boom?

I don't understand. What does having children have to do with this issue?

SUVs are shit with interior space. Compare an X5 with a VW Sharan and you will see the latter one is a space wonder

tiny EVs are going to be very popular in europe

EVs in Europe and the US are on the downward trend at the moment. I’m not entirely sure why, maybe they are still too expensive.

The first derivative is still strongly positive. The second derivative is what’s been reported as falling, which is common in the typical S-shaped adoption curve.

For the downvoters, look it up - this is objectively true and has been well reported.

And I’m not saying don’t buy an electric car, just that EV sales have decreased.

… Wait, how are you defining ‘downward trend’? The rate of _growth_ has slackened, which you expect as a product category matures, but sales are still very much growing.

I’d be a little more sceptical of the media sources doing this well-reporting, if I were you.

https://www.wsj.com/business/autos/electric-vehicle-demand-c...

The legend on that chart says "U.S. electric-vehicle sales, change from a year earlier"

That's a plot of the first derivative (which is still positive [+42% at the last measure, meaning for every 100 EVs sold in Nov 2022, there were 142 sold in Nov 2023]) and the slope of that line is a derivative of the first derivative, or a second derivative.

tl;dr: EV sales are growing. That rate of growth is slower than it was before.

As I said, the rate of growth is decreasing, but sales are still growing. That article is kinda misleadingly couched, tho (I mean, Murdoch media, what can you expect?), and I can see how people could misread it as saying that sales were actually decreasing.

I couldn't find anything substantiating this claim, everyone is reporting record sales. What is decreasing is sales growth [1]. As in: each year more EVs are sold than the last year, but the difference to previous year's sales is shrinking

1: https://www.ev-volumes.com/

Sometimes the difference is still increasing year on year, but due to the higher baseline, the percentage increase has declined.

No, the absolute sales and percentage of sales is up, it's just the rate of acceleration that's decreased. https://www.ev-volumes.com/

This literally has sections labeled “Lower European Expectations” and “North American fall”.

You will need to read the sentences or look at the charts rather than just skim the headings.

Yes. Poor reporting is incredibly common and most journalists seem to have no clue about the difference between a first and a second derivatives. See also, most articles about the economy.

But note that the actual data presented shows an increase in sales.

“Look it up” is not a good way to make a point. If you are making the claim, then you need to substantiate it.

I dropped some links into several comments. Should I for every single response? Look it up.

In the EU current short-term trends don't matter that much as long as the scheduled fleet emmision rules will come into force as is the current regulation.

That means from 1.1.2025, for passenger cars 93,6 g CO2/km average (which is impossible with ICE-only cars of current sizes and technology) and the manufacturer pays a fine for anything above that. But that can be relaxed if they sell at least 25% EVs (0 g CO2/km), and higher percentage of those means higher permissible average emmisions. So the manufacturers will be highly motivated to sell more EVs and we can expect all the big manufacturers will hit the 25% quite soon.

Then from 1.1.2030 this goes down to 49,5 g CO2/km and at that point ICEs are goint to be increasingly niche. From 1.1.2035 the limit is 0 g CO2/km.

It's pretty easy to achieve fleet goals with plugin hybrids, since they have ridiculously low emissions on the standard tests (unlike in reality).

Which is why new vehicles (since 2021) have a On-Board Fuel Consumption Meter and this data is then collected by the EU.

Oh I didn’t know that. Does the eu do something with the data? Is it just collected to inform some hypothetical future law? In the latter case that will likely be overtaken by the market favoring BEVs

There is not a lot of info about that, but as far as I could gather the data started to be collected only last year, so probably not a lot right now.

I agree but it's an interesting problem, things like parking spaces and roads will still have to be made to the size of largest vehicle that will use them and I imagine more cars in the same amount of road will lead to even more traffic.

You can have different sizes of parking spaces, for different prices maybe.

And the change will probably not increase the amount of cars on the road, because at the same time, bikes and public transport are becoming more attractive in cities all across the continent.

No. There are buses, trucks and vans on the road but not everything is made based on them. In many parking spots you can't park full size vans - and vans are quite popular.

In Europe, if you're driving a huge North American truck (which some people do) your parking options are very very limited. We don't build everything for their sizes only because there's some of them on the road.

This is Paris we're talking about. The roads will remain the size that Hausmann built them. https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/mar/31/story-cities-...

EVs are not really popular in my EU city because they require a dedicated parking space with a charger and most people live in an apartment with none of that.

Daily at-home charging is needed only for plug-in hybrids. BEVs can easily do a week of city driving without needing to charge.

In my city supermarkets have charging on their parking lots, so my car charges when I'm shopping.

I wonder if the next invention will be a "powerbank" for cars... rather than those dumb e-scooters littering the sidewalks, how about a giant battery on 4 wheels you can leave next to your car to charge it? When it's close to depletion, just like the e-scooters, a van can come around and take them to a hub to be charged. Or I suppose a car driver can put them in the trunk and return to that hub, in case they're driving that direction anyway (plus, they can collect another one to place in their neighborhood).

Sadly it'll probably need protection against people whose denial of the climate crisis involve violence and vandalism.

Charging is so close to being solved, that I don't think we need any new boondoggle. Just build more infrastructure and modern batteries.

For road trips, Nio has 10-minute battery swapping stations, but modern 800V BEVs can be recharged in 20 minutes.

City use is an even easier case, because most cars will spend hours parked somewhere. If not at home, then in a parking garage at work. There are street-side chargers too. In many cases you don't even need a fast charger.

At least in my city (in NL), there are a bunch of public electric chargers with the street parking around the city. It seems like almost 25% of spots are electric only in my neighborhood

NL is so far ahead of other countries that it's kind of ridiculous. I wish there was a way for average citizens from other places to get a sense of what is possible.

Living in another NL city in the Randstad. Although the infrastructure is getting there and is apparently much better than other countries, it is still hard for me, living in a terraced house without a dedicated car parking space in front of my house. The charging spots in my neighborhood are almost always full - and I will be anxious to leave my car there because what happens when my car is done charging and it is occupying the slot from someone else? Or worse, if others do the same and I don’t have a spot.

The public fast chargers cost pretty close to the equivalent Diesel cost for my ICE car. That is after paying extra to go electric compared to a cheaper ICE car.

We are not there yet to get more folks like me to give up their ICE cars and go electric. I’ll keep my VW Golf kicking until the situation improves and hopefully soon.

I'm not 100% sure where the next public charger is here (quick research says: 1x 1.4km and 1x 1.8km) and one at Aldi closer to my apartment. For me this basically means an EV is completely off the roadmap.

This is in Munich, Germany, so basically an unimportant remote place. :P

This isn’t inherently true. Take a look at the Silence S04. The batteries are removable and have wheels and a handle like luggage. You could park in any old spot and wheel the battery home to charge.

They’re even cheap to buy because you can buy just the car and lease the batteries on a monthly basis. For small city cars with batteries that aren’t too heavy, this kind of design makes an EV workable for a lot of people who might otherwise not consider one for the reason you’ve stated.

I wouldn't say that bringing batteries home like a wheeled luggage is exactly a convenient option, although it's better than no charging possibility at all... But that can be a showstopper for many people who don't have access to charging spots: putting gas in a tank is way simpler (although clearly not ecological... but that's still secondary for many people, unfortunately).

I feel like charging these batteries in my apartment would be some kind of a safety hazard.

I'd hardly call a 2 tonnes EV a tiny car, which is the limit in the proposal.

The Tesla model 3 is right on that limit with 1.980 Kg, whereas the model Y weighs 2.4 tonnes.

In Denmark the model Y is by far the most sold car in 2023, with 1 out of every 10 cars being a model Y.

So I think it will be an uphill battle to enact the same law in Denmark.

Where are you getting those numbers from? Tesla's specs pages say 1777/1840kg and 1911/1981kg for the standard/long-range Model 3 and Model Y respectively:

https://www.tesla.com/ownersmanual/model3/en_cn/GUID-5656213...

https://www.tesla.com/ownersmanual/modely/en_cn/GUID-E47C4A6...

The Model 3 is undoubtedly still a heavy car, but the bulk of that is the battery pack, so the weight will go down as battery tech improves. Maybe it already has compared to your source?

You are absolutely correct, it was the Model S that I mistook for the Model Y from the source https://insideevs.com/news/527966/electric-cars-from-heavies...

I wonder what made the Parisians choose 2 tonnes, lowering the limit could certainly be justified.

The Model 3 and Y weigh twice that of my current drive, which is quite the difference.

In France, small cars are not hard to buy - there is a large range of innovative designs on the market.

That’s because it makes more sense financially for car makers to make larger cars [1]

[1] https://amp.theguardian.com/business/2024/jan/29/us-car-cost...

You'd think that the country which invented the 2CV and went for full-nuclear electricity generation to save oil imports would have plenty of good small EV options.

There are some of them (like Zoé and the e-208). But even if the option is there, not everyone can afford it, and if everyone would, production would be insufficient, and if production were sufficient, then raw materials imports would not be enough.

There is no magical switch, we have to accept that any transition will be long and messy.

It would be nice if the rules for 2 wheeled vehicles could be refined as well.

Here (not France) you can drive an EU moped (45km/h) on a car license, which could (and should!) be a great alternative to a smaller car. The problem is that it's difficult to get to and through the city without touching the highways, which are strictly off limits for the mopeds for obvious reasons.

What's needed is something in between a full sized MC and a moped that can be driven on a car license and that can reach at least 80km/h to keep up with inner city highway speeds.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitsubishi_i-MiEV

Max speed is told to be 130km/h but I'm pretty sure I drove my C-zero faster than that without much issue

It would be nice if they didn't intentionally nerf the speed limit to 45 so that's impossible to keep up with the flow of traffic. That makes them a lot less appealing and much more dangerous.

> Here (not France) you can drive an EU moped (45km/h) on a car license, which could (and should!) be a great alternative to a smaller car. The problem is that it's difficult to get to and through the city without touching the highways, which are strictly off limits for the mopeds for obvious reasons.

In France you can ride a scooter or motorcycle with a displacement < 125 cc with a car license. Certainly not ideal for long trips, but it’s enough for small stretches of motorways in the daily commute. Indeed it’s a good alternative to large cars but it can be dangerous depending on the state of the roads.

Also, surprisingly perhaps, motorcycles pollute more than cars. They don’t have the heavy filters. Some pollutants are higher, even in absolute values.

Correct. So motorcycle parking tickets should be 1/4 of cars.

This applies to people coming in from outside the city with SUVs.

It's probably still not fully financing the parking spots. Parking spots in cities are incredibly expensive and heavily subsidized.

Imo you should be allowed to use the parking spots for just about whatever you want within reason. Pay the parking price and set up a hotdog stand for the day if you want. Then raise the price until some spots are usually free

Free market solutions are so simple, elegant, natural and organic...I wonder why ecologists hate it that much...not.

The free market solutions are more of a thought experiment than a practical answer. They show how absurdly subsidized driving is. But if you actually implemented them they would make car usage not viable instantly which is too rapid of a change to go down smoothly.

The non market legislation solutions like the OP article are a much softer landing which guide people towards the end goal without immediately bankrupting people.

Free market solutions should perhaps be more of a general direction than an absolute goal.

> without IMMEDIATELY bankrupting people. Il love the (involuntary ?) irony here !

Indeed, legislation actually bankrupt people. And industries.

The automobile industry is now in bad shape thanks to legislation forcing them to adopt EVs. Even with subventions and taxes/norms for "bad behaving" vehicules, people aren't buying 60K electric vehicules...

Many profesionals now can't afford to go to Paris due to the punitive politics for cars. (think plumber) People with old cars can't go there anyway. Yes, the poor gets poorer with this.

This would go a bit better with an efficient system of public transportation. But since what belongs to everybody belongs to nobody and is taken care of by nobody...

And before that they incentived everybody and their dog to buy diesel cars, only to overtax it a few years later... Example exists in every industry.

This is a never ending story of politicians taxing and legislating what move and incentising what don't. In their own interests, not yours. Repeat and rinse.

Nobody seem to understand that the ones that take decisions (politicians) are often remote from the actual situations, with a set of incentives often misaligned with their targets.

Yet understanding this only takes a game of monopoly with friends or family, or just real life experience that everybody have on how people behave even for very small personal gains.

I am not aware of any country where there's a free market. As soon as somebody can point me to one, we will see how's the parking space there and take that as a model.

Free market is not an absolute measure, not a 100%, but rather a cursor. A country is rather ruled by free market or by government.

Like in "are USA more a free market than Venezuela and North Korea ?"

I can't understand why so many people keep on saying "there is no free market", as that's not even an argument. I mean i hope you can get out of this "black or white" void which just cancels any intent of reasoning. Unless it's done on purpose.

Here is a list by the way : https://www.heritage.org/index/ranking

When somebody makes an argument to let the free market do something free, it's quite important to remember that said free market is not free and will definitely not act freely, whether we're talking North Korea or USA. And the Parisian parking places market is definitely not a free market (as we just saw) so we simply cannot have a real talk about "letting the market decide", until same Parisians vote to let them run free. Assuming that was your argument we could talk about such a vote - which by looking at the trends has zero chances to pass. But let's assume for the sake of argument it would pass. Next vote will be then to limit it again because nobody wants a Cayenne parked in the narrow street in front of their little shop windows, either blocking the view or the passage, or the traffic. But again for the sake of the argument let's say we only liberalize the spaces in places where you can actually park bigger cars. Then yes you will be able to park them, but still not put a kebab stand because well a parking space is a parking space by definition, so again you'd need a voting to change that place attribution. And I could go on to show you how all this is in reality very much not free regardless whether you call the French economy a free market or not. It's not a jungle but a city with lots of inter-dependencies and who doesn't like it can, yeah, move someplace else - like in a jungle. And even in a jungle you wouldn't want to park your Cayenne next to the gorillas den. Freedom to do whatever is there only when you're completely alone - or in imagination.

Imagine if you could live in a parking spot. Or turn it into an AirBnB. Parking charges (and congestion charges) should equilibriate with rents for the same ground area.

Used to be 5 EUR per day here, so that's 150 EUR for the month to pitch your tent, not bad.

In my city, during the covid lockdowns, restaurants were allowed to set up outdoor tables in the street parking spots in front of their restaurants. Many built semi-permanent structures with wooden flooring, waist-high walls to isolate seated guests from motorists, roofs for shade, etc.

After everything opened back up, restaurants were allowed to keep the spots for about a year so long as they brought the structures up to code. After that, rather than shut them down the city started charging them rent.

It's such a nice solution. The city earns much more revenue than they would if they put a parking meter there, the business gets more seating capacity, the guests get al fresco dining options. The only people who lose are those who insist upon driving (instead of Ubering, taking public transit, biking, walking, etc.), but even they can just park further away from the crowded areas and walk, or park in the parking structures (which charge something closer to market rate).

This is the most important part, I think.

Everybody is hyping Paris like the end of the car is near, but in fact it's just an action to get some money from visitors and other external people.

Don't see how this might change transport in large.

Visitors here also means Parisians outside their neighborhood.

Subsidized in what way? You mean street parking?

Subsidized by the government

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztHZj6QNlkM

Interesting to note: the turnout (5.6%) is even lower than when it was decided to ban e-scooters sharing systems (7.4%).

Also note this only applies to vehicles from non-residents. And that parking in public spots is already very expensive in Paris; limited to a maximum of 6h, which will cost you up to 75€: https://www.paris.fr/pages/payer-son-stationnement-2129

> the turnout (5.6%) is even lower than when it was decided to ban electric scooters public sharing (7.4%).

These things should really have a quorum requirement.

Most eligible voters are probably not personally affected and so didn't see a need vote. A quorum would make it effectively impossible to change anything.

The current system makes it possible for a very small portion of the population to change things for everyone. I'm not sure that's better.

Bring in Australian-style compulsory voting then.

In Australia there would be no public vote for this. It would just be some internal council decision.

If said "everyone" would care, they'd definitely show up at the booths. So the change is better indeed, benefiting those few who care.

If a small portion of people is in favor of a change and the rest is ambivalent, does that mean the change shouldn't happen?

OTOH, perhaps 95% don't care either way. Setting a minimum turn-out is a way to kill all referendums. It's only a "good" idea when you're in power.

The thing that's most interesting to me (and not mentioned in the article) is the crazy split between results depending on the arrondisement.[0]

Only one (the 6th, both rich but also rather low on parking) had results that were closer than 60/40 or 40/60.

[0] https://www.paris.fr/pages/plus-ou-moins-de-suv-les-parisien...

Should be added that this is for SUVs coming from outside of Paris and doesn't affect residents. Positive development nonetheless.

Let's have a vote of only the residents about an issue that only affects the non-residents...

> only affects the non-residents

The status-quo (all you can eat SUV use in cities) has a big impact on everyone using the city. Yet no one voted for that...

Of course a city's residents are the ones who should vote! Cities are built for us, who live in them, therefore we're the ones who get to decide how they are managed. It's the same reason that municipal elections are only open to residents of a city and national elections are only open to a country's citizens.

Yes and no. Residents aren't affected if they are parking in their "authorized parking zone" but they are elsewhere, so unless their only Paris parking is in their neighborhood, they'll be affected by the change.

Vive la paris!

It is always heartening to hear that people who make antisocial choices (cars in cities) are finally being made to bear the costs of those choices.

The reality is that people like their SUVs. It doesn’t matter where in the world, SUVs are popular and growing in market share. Here’s the International Energy Agency on SUVs. https://www.iea.org/commentaries/as-their-sales-continue-to-...

SUVs are a lot bigger than typical European cars. Since people don't feel safe driving small cars around big cars the presence of SUVs causes an upwards pressure on vehicle size. That's an issue in cities where the roads and parking spaces are built to fit vehicles from 20 years ago, causing a lot of frustration for everyone. Which creates the paradox that SUVs both cause people to dislike them and to buy them, for related reasons.

It's not that simple. There are SUV-like cars in all sizes now, starting with small cars like Suzuki Jimny, and you can find a model within each 5cm band up to 5m+. Where do you draw a line? Each of these could be called a SUV by a typical voter, with increased height and ground clearance, larger wheels, in many cases 4x4. There are also sedans and station wagons with increased height and some offroad protection and styling.

My point is it's very hard nowadays to say what's a SUV. According to the article, French authorities decided purely on weight, which is only semi-related to SUV-ness of a vehicle and might include non-SUV cars, especially with heavy diesel engines, but exclude my petrol Honda CR-V 3rd gen. Why didn't they call it "triple cost for heavier vehicles" instead?

I've noticed this trend, but I feel like it's down to several factors, and I think as full cost gets priced in correctly, it's likely to end.

Obviously these use more fuel than the equivalent smaller, lighter car. Over time that's going to affect both the direct fuel costs, and the other taxes and costs levied for environmental reasons, road use, etc. Credit has been remarkably cheap, particularly in cars, and that's coming to and end. Insurance premiums have been going up in many countries, and these cars generally cost more to insure. On top of all of this, in the US SUVs are more practical because of the support for much larger vehicles (parking, roads, etc), and US media is a trend-setter for much of the world, so these vehicles are considered desirable more than may otherwise be the case.

The numbers you point to are from 2022, I'd be interested to see 2023 numbers as that's where I expect things would really start to turn around.

“People like Coldplay and voted for the Nazis. You can’t trust people Jeremy.”

The popularity of SUVs is driven by a whole variety of factors. Eventually some of those factors will start to weaken. One of the factors is that many of the costs of SUVs are externalised.

Another factor is that car companies market SUVs heavily.

Another factor is that you get often more space in cabin and boot compared to a "regular" car of the same length. I.e. you get more comfort for passengers while still able to fit in the same parking space. It's not just fashion. There are real reasons why families purchase SUVs. SUVs nowadays are not just Range Rovers and BMW X5s, there are myriad smaller vehicles starting from 4m length. Even France's own Renault, Peugeot and Citroen have half of their models in SUV shapes of all sizes.

SUVs are more profitable than "regular" cars. Therefore they are marketed more heavily. Consumer choice is obviously not entirely driven by marketing, but if it didn't have an impact, car companies wouldn't do it.

American automakers are obviously much further down this path, but European automakers don't have to pay for externalities either.

Nope that's just wrong, you often get more space in the regular car. The classic "ugly" family cars like Renault Espace or VW Sharan provide waaaaay more space than the SUVs

Repel the Chicken Tax then and we'll see how auto OEM change their tunes and people start liking small cars again.

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/chicken-tax.asp

>Most SUVs are classified as light trucks and are therefore included in the Chicken Tax

Full story: https://www.wired.com/2014/12/subaru-brat/

This vote was a total joke.

For example, the question on the ballots was totally different and like "do you approve bad things"?

But if you want to laugh a little bit, look at the official results: https://x.com/lachape_one/status/1754271878737203536?s=20

The total of ballots "FOR" + "AGAINST" in one district equal to 108% ...

The vote is a joke because of a typo on a webpage?

Results are 59,20% and 40,80%. https://www.paris.fr/pages/plus-ou-moins-de-suv-les-parisien...

No, it is one of the hundred of points why it is a joke.

Like for example not defining what people are voting for, or having more voting locations in small less populated districts that the mayor majority control and people being refused of some voting hall in the other districts being told to go in another district.

Almost nothing respected the rules of a fair votation.

Regarding the typo (maybe), the point is not an error on a random webpage but this page is the official results display for the votation. It let's you see how the rest was handled!

Fake news. This is the real one https://www.paris.fr/pages/plus-ou-moins-de-suv-les-parisien...

Not fake news, they just updated the web page after social storm...

Sure, keep on dreaming

Perhaps you should not use Xitter to get your "official" news?

Why a tonnage limit for electric vehicles. It's obviously not entirely for GHG reasons. 2T is not all that heavy for EVs.

What ? It is. 2T means a 70kwh+ battery, an heresy on a planet with limited resources.

In Europe there is decent EVs with a 1.4-1.5T weight (Zoe/208/fiat)

The Zoe is not being produced anymore and has a 0 of 5 possible stars safety rating.

There's a tonnage limit for all vehicles. The only difference is +400 kg allowed if it's an EV.

Weight is the best way to tax vehicles.

It correlates to the amount of energy needed to move it, generally with the size of the vehicle, and highly with the particulate pollution from brakes and tyres (yes I'm aware of regenerative braking), as well as the amount of wear and tear on the roads and infrastructure, etc.

European cities were never built for large vehicles, we should be going towards smaller vehicles, a Fiat 500 EV would be well within the limits described (at only 980 kg) even without the extra weight allowed by EVs.

Even if one argues an EV is good for the environment... they could still be better for the environment by being smaller and weighing less as it would take less energy to move them.

But looking at things like the Mercedes EQS SUV (3,375 kg), I drove behind one of these at the weekend and it is huge, it was scary seeing it pass a cyclist on a narrow London street. Living in a dense capital city, I would love if London followed suit here.

Not only the energy though. "Tire emissions" are a serious problem and it's competing with ICE emissions. EV's are considerably heavier so they produce lots of fine particles from the tires. Maybe in the North America they're not that important since other cars are as heavy (SUVs and Trucks). But in Europe, EV's are by far the heaviest of the regular use vehicles.

> Weight is the best way to tax vehicles.

No it isn't. Even the most simple look into EV database would have shown that this is flat out wrong. There are heavy and big vehicles in there using very little energy and small ones using a lot.

So what should be taxed is the actual efficiency - either per individual vehicle which would also incentivise reasonable driving (could be easily done by either submitting two numbers, similar to what is already submitted to insurance) - or by using the test ratings which is a good approximation.

It's quite tricky actually.

There's other negative externalities from car usage apart from the energy usage, like tire and brake dust, congestion, accidents, and road wear. And using up limited space in cities for parking. Etc. etc.

Even if you only wanted to tax energy usage, that clearly correlated with the amount of fuel or electricity used. Taxing liquid fuel is common and a sensible choice, however you can't slap on a big tax on electricity in general since if anything we want to encourage electricity use in favor of fossil fuels (e.g. heat pumps powered by zero-carbon electricity instead of gas heating, or indeed EV's instead of ICE vehicles). And arguably for electricity, it would be better by slapping a CO2 tax on the producers (or some roughly equivalent scheme like cap-and-trade) rather than taxing electricity generally.

And of course, if you want to tax by miles driven, that then gets into all kinds of problems how to track that in a way that doesn't enroach on people's privacy. Say, checking the odometer during yearly inspections?

So where does that leave taxing EV's? Maybe a flat yearly fee based on the weight isn't that terrible, and it's at least cheap to administer and doesn't leave much space for cheating. Although that is of course very unfair to those who live out in the boonies where parking space is not at a premium and drive very little.

You can slap a tax on the car. You simply take energy used/miles driven and that's your multiplier for a yearly vehicle tax. It could be collected by insurance companies (that usually require you to submit the miles driven anyway) on behalf of the government .

As for the other things, such as congestion, I believe it when I see proof that there is a big difference between cars. Even if there is, the priority right now should be energy efficiency, because reducing CO2 emissions is fairly urgent.

I fully agree reducing CO2 emissions should have a high priority. Which for fossil fuels would mean a quite substantial tax on the fuel volume, but for EV's it's trickier since electricity is used for many other things, and electricity production is already taxed for CO2 emissions (or cap and trade etc). There's no particular reason, from an emissions perspective at least, why electricity for EV's should be taxed higher than, say, for domestic use. If anything, an extra tax on electricity could be counter-productive if it causes more people to prefer ICE cars.

Which implies that a vehicle tax should then be primarily concerned with non energy use types of externalities. And maybe generally funding road construction, and so on. Probably a lot of that is more accurate if the tax is a function of distance driven than a fixed cost, true, assuming you can reliably get that information in a privacy compatible way.

No why should you ignore road deterioration? Road deterioration is Weight^4

While I agree entirely I just wanna correct you for a bit:

The Gross Vehicle Weight (GVWR)refers to the maximum weight a vehicle is designed to carry including the net weight of the vehicle with accessories, plus the weight of passengers, fuel, and cargo, which is indeed a hefty 3375 kg.

The Weight Unladen (EU) is still a ridiculous 2810 kg for the EQS SUV 580 4matic

thanks, I did wonder if I was making a fair comparison

I won't edit, as your correction is clear and the context would remain

Wait, what? A 3-tonne vehicle that can only carry a measly 500kg of cargo, including the driver and passengers? Who approved that idea, and how come they still have their job?

Of course it's as much an environment tax as it is a show-off tax.

Why not? Isn't it immensely good thing to guide manufacturers to make lighter and smaller EVs? Less resources and less energy spend. After all the goal is to lower emissions so attacking on all areas should be the way to go. You want an EV, you must accept that it is smaller and lighter than other options.

2T is a lot for EVs! Take Tesla for example: all their 4 cars 3 are huge and the only one who is just barely below the limit is larger than the vast majority of cars on the road: the 3 often doesn't fit on parking spots neatly and has trouble with narrower streets.

Even if this were a resounding message against SUVs, I think this will lift the status of the SUV owners: "look what I can afford, even with expensive parking fee". This is just like how Apple made the exortionary and inflated prices of their products "cool" and a status symbol.

I can understand why they went with weight (I assume the data is more readily available), but given many of the concerns they are trying to address I would think that height would have been a better measure.

Conspiracy theorists or cynics might claim it's not just about pollution and parking spots. Such initiatives could coincidentally align with the interests of French automotive industry.

As of now, France is importing more cars than it is exporting, and its traditional main rival - Germany - happens to be doing particularly well in the SUV sector.

Just a few months ago a French MEP called for introducing a special driver license for SUVs; German MEPs would want nothing of it, even the German Green Party opposed, dismissing the initiative as "nonsense".

So when "citing a 60% increase in SUV ownership over the last four years, Parisian officials say SUVs are ridiculous, dangerous, and needlessly polluting", it would be interesting to break down where these ridiculous SUVs are coming from, in order to dispel such suspicions.

When I told my wife this, her immediate reaction was - “oh no, the families with 2 or more children that needs a bigger car will be penalized because of the SUVs driven by those who don’t need it”. And I said may be this is a two birds one stone moment.

Give out SUV passes to those families with 2 or more children, and make it absurdly expensive for the rest. This way either you help increase the birth rate in EU or pay for the luxury of driving a huge thing on the road disproportionate to others.

I see the article didn’t go about that way, and didn’t even apply for residents. Just for the tourists…. Meh.

Is an SUV needed for two children? I can accommodate my two children (and the dog if required) in my smallish hatchback.

Me too. But, when we drive to my in-laws, NL -> Austria and back, we inevitably bring more stuff with us. I’m not going to rent a car three times a year while still owning a hatchback, and paying insurance and taxes for it.

> The move will not apply to Paris residents’ parking

This is mostly intended to curb car use from the suburbs into Paris, and within Paris: from what I gather the surcharge will apply to cross borough parking.

From the article it seems that the campaign was about pollution. Heavier vehicles also consume the road much more than lighter ones. It's proportional to the fourth power of the weight on axles.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_power_law

There is no math behind it and its evidence is poor. Thats why:

> The accuracy of the law of the fourth power is disputed among experts

A more extended quote:

> When evaluating the series of tests, it was found that there is a connection between the thickness of the pavement, the number of load transfers and the axle load, and that these have a direct effect on the service life and condition of a road. The service life of the road is thereby reduced with approximately the fourth power of the axle load.

> The accuracy of the law of the fourth power is disputed among experts, since the test results depend on many other factors, such as climatic conditions, in addition to the factors mentioned above.

Yes, saying it's only axis loading is wrong

But the proportionality rule should be valid

Even if the actual power would be 2 instead of 4 it does make sense to limit axis load

Even if we give it a bit of slack and make it a third-power-law for taxation purposes, it would still mean a large increase in tax for heavy vehicles.

Or IOW, currently heavy vehicles are free-riding, with lighter vehicles providing much of the tax revenue to fix the damage the heavies are causing.

There are small SUVs and they are great. They are popular for a reason: they have Utility, and you can use them slightly offroad.

OTOH an X3 or other luxury suv is basically stupid concept other than a display of wealth.

The Fiat Panda 4x4 and Skoda Yeti are good examples of small SUVs that are incredibly practical. Shame that Fiat discontinued the Panda 4x4 and Skoda never released a true successor to the Yeti.

An X3 isn't massive. We have a mid-size people carrier and although it's a different (and less practical) shape, it's a very similar size. An X7 is more what you're talking about, which almost no-one has.

The X3 is big (D segment I believe) and larger by a decent margin than most other cars on the road. Even the X1 is not anywhere near close to being small (C segment?).

Sorry, I don't know segments.

Dimensions - some examples:

Toyota Corolla 4600mm x 1710mm [0]

Toyota Prius 4645mm x 1760mm [1]

BMW X3 4,716mm x 2138mm [2]

VW Passat 4767mm x 2083mm [3]

Doesn't look like an X3 is particularly egregious vs some non-SUV family cars.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Avensis

[1] https://www.parkers.co.uk/toyota/prius/plug-in-2017/specs

[2] https://www.parkers.co.uk/bmw/x3/suv-2017/specs

[3] https://www.parkers.co.uk/volkswagen/passat/estate-2015/spec...

Height is my biggest concern as a cyclist and pedestrian.

Okay, so again - my people carrier, which is not large, is about the height of an X3. Vans and lorries are much higher. Why SUVs in particular?

An X3 weighs less than 1600kg and isn't affected by this regulation.

As a person with SUV and big family in Paris, I suggest we do the same with obese people and public transport - now that my kids will need to use it more frequently while paying more for sq ft.

I'd agree that families have the best reason for larger vehicles given how public transport can be difficult for buggies ect.

An interesting intersection of gov trying to encourage families could be used here to offer a tax-relief on people that carpool (which'd by default therefore include families)?

To be honest we're moving out of France. I don't see much future in this country if you have a family unless you go to somewhere like Auvergne where there's less jobs, mostly farming and these guys are getting decimated and cities run down. Owning a dog here starts to be higher virtue than having a child. French are moreover delusional about the role their country plays in the international scene and lot of other things. I give it 10-20 years max.

A good public transport system is not difficult for families and even easier. Berlin has a pretty good public transport. We had a car when we first moved here (we're a family) but we never had the need to use it other than 1-2 occasions in a year because public transport + biking is easier, faster and more comfortable.

At the end we got rid of our car and not planning to buy another one. For those occasions that happens 1-2 times a year, we just use a car sharing app. It's also a lot cheaper than maintaining a car.

Sadly, Paris is not that. It's a great public transport system without families, but not for anyone with young children or with mobility problems. I can make do, but only if I have my 18 mos. old in the stroller OR my 3 year old walking, but not both. (It's a bit easier for my wife, because people will stop and help her up and down the stairs with the stroller.)

Buses do tend to be a bit easier if you're travelling outside of peak hours. Otherwise, you might have to let a bus or two pass you before one comes with enough space for the stroller.

Things are supposed to be a lot better with the Grand Paris Express, although that won't help much intramuros.

The vote did not concern resident parking places - even if you have an SUV you can still park as usual in _your_ area. Of course, if you drive to other parts of the town where you are not a resident (i.e. drive to a different arrondissement) then you count as a visitor. Its not unlogical - within Paris public transport should be used notably by those who live there - driving less than 5 miles inside the city makes little sense with some excceptions.

To be fair Paris has huge problem with too many cars. I'd close the center entirely.

I'm detecting snark and bad faith engagement.

I regret posting it.

Large families fit in estate cars / station wagons, just like they did in the 1980s and 1990s.

Actually they voted for tripling the cost of heavy vehicles. The size is not even mentioned. It's a shortsighted move, since it incentives using gasoline cars in cities and disincentivies Hybrid and even EVs due to their weight.

There is nothing in the rules specific to SUVs.

Tyre dust, break dust, there are other forms of pollution we need to eradicate / reduce.

This is true. But I fear that this talking point will be used by lobbyists and pro-ICE fanatics to justify more climate damage than necessary.

The world is off ICEs now, no amount of lobbying is going to convince people they’re a good idea going forwards.

> The world is off ICEs now

How is it off ICE? It's slowly moving in the right direction, but very slowly indeed. New ICE will be produced and sold even in Europe for another 10 years and afterwards they have a long lifetime.

Younger people are growing up facing an existential threat from climate change, they're the next generation of car buyers, and they're not passionate about or interested in maintaining the status quo.

My fathers generation was, most people were very concerned at the idea of there being no more ICE vehicles on the road, as if something important was being taken away from them from a cultural standpoint.

EVs produce almost no brake dust.

Someone needs to develop tyres that are made of healthier materials.

They produce break dust.

Maybe you should have asked ChatGPT. It would have told you that due to regenerative breaking no break dust is produced.

The recuperation is pretty strong and there is absolutely no need to ever break inside a city, except in rare emergency situations.

> Someone needs to develop tyres that are made of healthier materials.

Good point. We certainly have the technology. Currently tyres are half natural rubber and half plastic. They could be made 100% rubber, perhaps with some drawbacks. Maybe an engineer can comment on that, I would be very interested to know why exactly the non natural rubber is needed.

I know that Continental has a research project to make the natural rubber out of dandelion. But even those tyres still have 50% plastic rubber.

I suspect that's partly due to the scale of land use that would be required for rubber plantations.

So it's a price issue? Well then the prices of tyres will go up, I don't see a fundamental problem here. This will also create a natural incentive to drive in a way that minimises wear on the tyres.

If it's a dandelion plantation it can be done in central Europe, for example.

> Break dust

Should not occur in EVs because braking is not necessary.

> Tyre dust

Fine. In cities this is one of the easiest problems to solve, since most of it is washed out into drainage pipes and the waste water can be effectively filtered (although this is not done in most places yet).

Fortunately I don't live in a city anymore so I don't have to put up with these rules.

No, people can use a small EV.

I am not even sure using a large EV is better than a small ICE once you take into account other forms of pollution, road damage, congestion (which increases pollution as well as other effects) and safety issues.

Sure they can. But currently using an ICE is cheaper than using an EV and they have made it more like this.

> I am not even sure using a large EV is better than a small ICE once you take into account other forms of pollution, road damage, congestion

Where did I mention large EV? I'm mentioning a normal EV and comparing that to an equally sized ICE. Why would anyone compare a large EV with a small ICE? It's a strange and dishonest comparison.

Large cars are not significantly longer (they are higher and fatter) and congestions does not occur due to this car size. Cars need to keep a large distance between each other for safety. Even a small ICE car will very quickly emit more than the production of an average EV car ever could.

In a city there is the added benefit that EVs are silent and do not emit locally which matters.

> Sure they can. But currently using an ICE is cheaper than using an EV and they have made it more like this.

Running would depend on prices of petrol and electricity. Have you checked what they are in Paris? Overall costs depends on that and purchase cost and usage. An ICE car is cheaper for me because I do very low mileage (a few thousand mile a year, almost none in heavy traffic), I imagine it would be very different for commuters.

> Why would anyone compare a large EV with a small ICE? It's a strange and dishonest comparison.

Because the whole point of the charges is to encourage people to use a lighter car. The weight difference between small and large cars is far bigger than that between EV and ICE of the same size.

You have also not considered other forms of pollution in use (you mentioned production, which is another issue) or road damage and safety (which is directly related to weight).

> Large cars are not significantly longer (they are higher and fatter)

Really not longer? Current Range Rovers are about 5 meters long, that is about 20% longer than typical hatchback. Wider also causes congestion as people need to slow to pass each other more often.

Paris has excellent public transportation infrastructure.

They might as well incentive people to use that instead of cars.

Actually only EVs above 2 Metric Tons are concerned, which is fair IMO.

It's fair only to young people without kids. The Model 3 barely manages to be below that limit and it might work with kids (although no doubt the Y is better for that). But it is difficult to use for old people because it is so low that getting in and out is not easy and making it less low will make it less efficient and require adding a larger battery - making it heavier.

No, even the long range still has a 150kg margin. The problem is that people use their large car to go on vacation with the children for their work commute, be it an SUV or a long rage EV, that's not sustainable. Especially in a town like Paris where you have good public transports (could be better, granted).

So it's more sustainable to have two cars instead of one?

For an EV most of the emissions are created during production, so the less production the better. It's best to have one sufficiently flexible car, even if it's bigger, since that minimises production emissions.

Also the large car is not just used to take the kids on vacations, but typically all the time.

> So it's more sustainable to have two cars instead of one? Depends on the cars but if the second one is a small EV yes, you're better using that for your daily commute. The larger one should last longer, mitigating the production cost over the long term.

Still in towns like Paris you should favor bicycle or public transportation. You can also have a smaller EV and rent a larger one for the long trips.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com