Why we gave in and bought...an SUV
Welcome to Eco Matters, a regular column in the Advertiser focusing on the environment and biodiversity. This community-led column is written by local volunteers and will discuss the climate crisis, as well as offering practical advice for residents to reduce their carbon footprint and help nature thrive. This week Andrew Ingram discusses SUVs and the lack of smaller options in the Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle market.
Okay, okay. You are already crossing me off your Christmas card list because I have done that thing – bought an SUV, a Suburban Utility Vehicle, one of those big, high-up cars that we all know are too big to park, mow down helpless grannies and, worst of all, pump huge amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
Are SUVs really that bad?
Well they do pump out more toxins. According to the International Energy Agency, annual CO2 emissions from SUVs reached almost one billion tonnes last year.
If SUVs were a country, they’d rank as the sixth most polluting in the world.
That’s more emissions than the entire aviation industry.
And yes, they are big and heavy, so manufacturing them has a bigger carbon footprint, and in a crash they are much more likely to kill people in smaller cars, and pedestrians.
Almost every other new car today is an SUV, and manufacturers love them because, while they cost a wee bit more to make (more materials, more processing) they can sell them for much higher prices – because people want them.
People love the raised-up view of the road, and the fact that they feel safe and strong – and high status.
The grandfather of the posh SUV is course the still-iconic Range Rover, and that’s the symbolism which our reptilian brain recognises: size, power, safety, status.
So, obviously, we weren’t going to buy an SUV. We were going to buy an electric car. Save the planet, all that.
But you keep reading stories about batteries running out, public chargers which are faulty or being used by someone else.
It’s been said that it’s less about range anxiety now, more about charger anxiety.
So we thought: let’s get a PHEV, a Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle.
It only has a small battery, with a range of about 30 miles – and for us that’s fine.
Most of our journeys are well under 30 miles.
But it also has a petrol engine, so on the day you have to go and see Cousin Archie in Aberdeen – you just get in and go, in the knowledge that petrol will be easily available if you need to fill up on the way. So we bought one. Perfect solution. Cheap overnight electricity tariff to charge it up. Carbon footprint slashed. Petrol bill hacked to pieces.
But here’s the thing. You can’t get a small PHEV.
Maybe you will be able to in the future but at the moment the smallest one is, according to the Telegraph’s motoring correspondent, the Renault Captur, which is – you guessed it – an SUV.
Until they start making small PHEVs, I think we will drive round in dark glasses hoping to go unrecognised.