Shock Horror: Report States That SUVs Are Not City-Friendly, Most Bought By City Dwellers

While it's easy to criticize manufacturers for churning out a seemingly endless supply of SUVs , there's a reason why they do so: the general public loves it. Nowadays, SUVs are the de facto choice for the majority of new car buyers. Whether it be for ease of egress, the command driving position, the peace of mind the extra ground clearance gives, or space and practicality, it's not too hard to see why they're so popular. However, with the number of vehicles populating roads around the world increasing steadily, owning an SUV while living in a densely populated area might not be such a practical idea after all. The report does call for more responsibility to be shouldered by city-dwellers considering their next purchase. See: The Jeep Wrangler’s Biggest Market Outside North America Is Now Japan The BBC quotes Steve Gooding from the RAC Foundation as saying, "It is right to question if suburban drivers need a car capable of flowing over rivers, across fields and up steep hills just to pop to the shop." The truth is that, in the UK at least, most SUV owners reside in urban areas. A report published by the New Weather Institute think tank highlights that three-quarters of all SUVs sold in the UK are registered to people living in towns or large cities. While Gooding stressed the importance of choosing the right vehicle for one's necessities, he also told the BBC that the same view should not be shared towards medium-sized vehicles that look like SUVs, such as the increasingly popular crossovers . "The popularity of the SUV body style looks like it's going to be with us for some time as some auto companies have already released fully electric versions with more to come this year," he said. Meanwhile, the New Weather Institute lays out several steps to counter the influx of SUVs, including banning all advertising for them, and calls upon advertising agencies to be more responsible when carrying out campaigns for auto manufacturers. Read: VW ID.4 Advertisement Goes After Subaru’s Green Image Of course, with many SUVs now shifting towards electrification , this does call into doubt whether local emissions could or should continue to draw ire from such groups. "Talk of banning the advertising of SUVs is a naïve approach," said the AA's Edmund King. "Some of the cleanest cars come in the SUV shape but are all-electric such as the Jaguar I-Pace , Tesla Model X or Hyundai Kona ." The BBC concluded its report by stating that the annual emissions from SUVs have increased to more than a staggering 700 megatons of CO2. To put that into perspective, if SUV drivers were a country, they would be number seven in the world for most carbon emissions. Is this the beginning of the end for the Chelsea Tractor brigade? Or will we just see a mass shift towards EV SUVs? The way the industry, as well as buyers' preferences, seem to go, we feel that it'll be the latter.