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