Extract from ABC News
Australians are driving bigger, heavier, dirtier cars and it's alarming both climate and road safety experts.
A decade ago, sedans and hatchbacks were the most popular cars in Australia. Today, Sports Utility Vehicles (SUVs) and American-style utes dominate new car sales and advertising.
Internationally, SUVs are driving an increase in oil consumption, which is at odds with the need to reduce emissions. In fact, the rise of SUVs is wiping out the climate gains from the switch to electric vehicles.
It's not just climate experts who are concerned about this trend however, these bigger vehicles are also worrying road safety experts because of their "aggressive" geometry that's more likely to injure someone in an accident.
So how did we get here? And just how much of a problem is this?
The changing Australian car
Just a decade ago, the most popular car in Australia was the Toyota Corolla, and most of the top five cars sold were all sedans or hatchbacks – known as passenger cars.
Passenger cars have gone from making up half of new car sales a decade ago, to 16 per cent, according to data from the representative body for carmakers in Australia, the Federal Chamber for Automotive Industries (FCAI).
Now, SUVs are the king of Australian roads.
FCAI director, Peter Griffin, says SUVs made up 55 per cent of the cars sold in the first six months of 2023.
"If we go back to 2013, SUVs and light commercial made up about 36 per cent of our market of new car sales. And as of 2023, SUVs and light commercials make up 78 per cent of new vehicles sold."
There are lots of reasons why drivers like SUVs. They're higher, so easier to get in and out of; they can switch between cities and rough country roads, or off-road; a lot of drivers say they feel safer because they can see better.
The other shift in cars in Australia is the rise of 'light commercial' vehicles. This category cover utes like Australia's highest-selling car, the Toyota Hilux, as well as the Ford Ranger and the US pickup the Dodge Ram.
"In the early 2000s… the light commercials became more like a passenger car, rather than just that workhorse vehicle."
But it's not just an accident that Australians became so enamoured with these vehicles.
A new report from the groups Comms Declare found advertising of SUVs and light commercial vehicles jumped 200 per cent in the last decade.
Comms Declare advocates for a ban on advertising of fossil fuel products, including petrol and diesel cars, similar to one introduced in France in 2022.
Why it's bad for the climate
Australia's obsession with bigger, heavier cars is worrying climate experts like Jennifer Rayner, the head of advocacy at the Climate Council.
"The heavier cars generally use more petrol, and the amount of petrol that gets used is a big factor in the emissions that are produced," she explained.
"So if you're switching from driving a smaller sedan to a bigger SUV or a large ute, that not only tends to mean a big increase in your fuel bills, but also a big increase in your emissions footprint."
As emissions from Australia's energy sector fall because of the uptake of renewables, the transport sector is projected to become the biggest source of emissions by 2030.
"What we've seen in recent years is that even as cars are becoming a bit more efficient and a little less polluting, we're actually seeing a shift towards buying larger and heavier cars, which means we're not seeing any overall reduction in the actual emissions that our fleet produces," Jennifer told Hack.
But the love affair with SUVs is international.
Last year, the International Energy Agency warned that uptake of SUVs was wiping out the climate gains from electric vehicles.
"A strong increase in sales of electric models was not enough to prevent carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from SUVs worldwide reaching almost 1 billion tonnes in 2022," it reported.
"The oil consumption of SUVs globally increased by 500 000 barrels per day. On average, SUVs consume around 20 per cent more oil than an average medium-size non-SUV car."
It hasn't gone unnoticed either. The activist group Tyre Extinguishers has targeted city SUVs and deflated their tyres in protest over their climate impact.
Emissions standards
Australia has been described as a "dumping ground" for dirty cars that can no longer be sold internationally because of their emissions.
More than half (55 per cent) of all new passenger vehicles sold in Australia in 2021 had an emissions intensity of more than 160 g/km, compared with just 10 per cent in Europe, according to the National Transport Commission.
That's expected to change soon, after the federal government announced plans to introduce a fuel efficiency standards policy, although it's yet to announce details.
Broadly, these policies work by putting a cap on the total emissions from the fleet of vehicles that manufacturers sell in Australia each year.
Jennifer Rayner from the Climate Council says Australia's current situation with high transport emissions can be partly explained by not already having these standards, unlike 80 per cent of the world.
"It encourages uptake of electric vehicles… but it also encourages manufacturers to make their petrol and diesel vehicles more efficient."
There is a stand-out among the most popular cars being sold in Australia in 2023.
The second highest-selling car in Australia in the first half of 2023 was the Tesla Model Y, an electric SUV.
The safety paradox
There's another reason experts are worried about the supersizing of Australian cars, and it's the risk they pose to other road users.
Associate Professor David Logan studies road safety with Monash University Accident Research Centre, and says these bigger cars cause greater damage in accidents for two reasons: weight and design.
"The bigger mass in the larger vehicle means that the victims in the smaller vehicle effectively having a more severe crash."
"The front of the larger car is [also] very high and it's usually quite square and flat. When that hits the car that you're in, if you're in a smaller car, you're much more likely to get head contact with the bonnet or the front of the incoming car."
It's even worse for pedestrians, cyclists and motorbike riders.
"When a large vehicle like an SUV or a huge ute hits a pedestrian, they're much more likely to hit their head on the front of the car rather than on the bonnet."
Solutions
While electric cars address the problem of emissions from bigger cars, others have suggested more controversial options to nudge Australians away from larger cars, like putting more public parking for smaller cars only, designing urban roads for smaller cars, and rethinking the generous tax write-offs that businesses get from vehicle purchases.
The city of Paris has just announced it will be charging SUV drivers more for parking, taking the vehicle's weight and size into account.
But Jennifer Rayner from the Climate Council says Australia needs to invest in other transport options to help people shift away from their dependence on cars.
"At the moment, the average Australian household has two petrol cars in the garage. In the future transport system, we need one of those [to] be replaced by an EV.
"But the other should actually be substituted all together by a mix of active and public transport, because that's the only way we're going to drive down emissions as quickly as we need to."
Peter Griffin from the Federal Chamber for Automotive Industries says the market is already being reshaped with the transition to electric vehicles.
"As we had the shift from passenger cars and station wagons into SUVs, as electrified vehicles become more available in the market, it's quite likely we're going to see a shift again."
This change is already being reflected in the data, with electric vehicles now making up 7.5 per cent of the new cars sold in the first six months of 2023. According to Peter Griffin, it was 2 per cent last year.
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