SUVs use more fuel per kilometer than standard cars and emit more CO2 than standard cars.
Canberra:
If we are angry about the price of gasoline, why do we drive the vehicles we do?
SUVs (so-called Sport Utility Vehicles) consume more fuel per kilometer than standard cars – up to 25% more, according to the International Energy Agency.
They weigh more than standard cars: about 100 kilograms more.
And they emit more CO2 than standard cars. In Australia, mid-size SUVs emit 14% more CO2 per kilometer traveled than mid-size cars. Large SUVs emit 30% more emissions than large cars.
Yet we are buying them at a rate that would have been unthinkable even ten years ago.
SUVs outsell passenger cars 3 to 1
As recently as 2012, more than half of new vehicles sold in Australia were ‘passenger cars’ – the standard low-slung cars of the type we were used to. About a quarter were SUVs.
Further on, in the early 1990s, three-quarters of the new vehicles we bought were passenger cars, and only 8% were SUVs.
But after an explosion in SUV sales, today every second car purchased is an SUV. In September, SUVs accounted for 58% of new vehicle sales. Passenger cars accounted for only 17%. This means that SUVs outsell passenger cars three to one.
Like country music, SUVs are hard to define, but you know one when you see one.
They are distinguished by being tall and boxy – the words used in the official definition are ‘wagon body style and raised ride height’, and generally tall. Usually they are all-wheel drive or all-wheel drive.
Standard passenger cars (whether hatches, sedans or wagons) sit closer to the ground, tend to be lighter and are less likely to kill or seriously injure pedestrians and cyclists, according to U.S. insurers.
The new, larger SUVs have become so common that Standards Australia is considering increasing the length of a standard parking space by 20cm. It wants comments by November at the latest.
What we call utes in Australia are also taking market share from smaller standard cars, which are standard vehicles (they used to be Falcons and Commodores) with a built-in box at the rear.
Utes are categorized as commercial vehicles, even though these days they usually have four doors instead of two. They can be used for moving families just as much as for equipment, even if purchased with small business tax credits.
Australia’s National Transport Commission is so concerned about the rise in sales of both SUVs and SUVs that it is warning they are “dampening improvements in Australian transport emissions”.
Vehicles defined as commercial largely accounted for one in five vehicles sold a decade ago. Now they are one in four and sell more than passenger cars.
Taxes only explain so much
Cars receive special treatment in the Australian tax system.
If an employer provides them and their private use is “minor, infrequent and infrequent,” or if they are “not designed for the primary purpose of carrying passengers,” they can escape the fringe benefits tax.
And from time to time, small businesses are given the opportunity to immediately depreciate their assets, which means that all or part of the cost of the car can be written off from taxes.
But apart from perhaps helping to explain the increasing preference for utes, these concessions appear insufficient to explain the demise of the standard passenger car and the rise of the expensive (and more expensive fuel) alternatives.
Australia’s Bureau of Infrastructure and Transport Research Economics identifies the obvious: headroom, legroom and storage space, as well as the ability to drive on both bad and good roads.
Danger is a perverse selling point
But in an information document, the agency further notes that SUVs “appear to be more likely to kill pedestrians than cars.”
They also seem more likely to kill the occupants of standard cars than standard cars when those cars crash, largely because they are higher — a phenomenon the insurance industry calls “incompatibility.”
The Australian Bureau of Infrastructure and Transport Research Economics calls this the “other side of the coin”.
But I think it might be the same side of the coin for SUV buyers. That is, I think it could become a perverse and macabre argument for Buying SUVs.
If SUVs become dominant and endanger other road users, it makes sense not to be one of those other road users.
I’m not suggesting that the danger of SUVs is the only reason for the flood of buyers switching to SUVs. But I suggest it has contributed to a snowball effect in demand for SUVs, along with fashion, and changing views on what is normal.
I’m not sure what can be done at this stage. Higher gas prices should have helped, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.
SUV purchases have increased even as gasoline prices have risen. Additional taxes have been proposed to reduce traffic fatalities, but they may not help. SUVs are already expensive.
Stricter standards would help
One thing we need to do right away is shift the burden of decision-making from buyers to makers.
The federal government is about to implement long overdue fuel efficiency standards that are already common across the rest of the world.
Ideally, these standards would require that the entire fleet sold by each manufacturer meet a gradually tightening average efficiency standard.
Putting more electric vehicles in every fleet would help. But so does increasing the efficiency of conventionally powered SUVs – which would mean reducing their weight, and thus their danger to other people on the road.
The draft plan is up for grabs and Marion Terrill from the Grattan Institute has submitted a submission.
She says regardless of the switch to electric cars, Australians will continue to buy petrol and diesel cars for some time to come. That’s why it’s so important that cars become as fuel-efficient (and, she might add, as safe) as they can.
(Author:Peter Martin, Visiting Fellow, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University)
(Disclosure Statement: Peter Martin is economics editor of The Conversation)
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by DailyExpertNews staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
