SUVs in traffic jams – German megalomania on wheels

The number of cars on the roads is growing, as is the size of the vehicles. This cannot continue.

The automotive sector is growing. What sounds like good news has enormous and surprising consequences. While the number of cars on the road has been rising steadily for years, these vehicles are being used less and less. 43.9 million passenger cars were registered in 2014, and this number rose to 49.1 million in 2024.

By 2024, however, each car in Germany will have traveled an average of only 12,309 km. 1,802 km less than in 2014. And yet, the transport sector is the only sector that consistently misses its CO₂ targets. While industry, agriculture, and the energy sector are at least making progress, road traffic continues to emit billions of tons of CO₂. A total failure in climate protection.

What are the causes? The car continues to be the pampered only child of transportation planners. Public transport, on the other hand, is chronically underfunded. Buses, trains, and frequency—everything remains piecemeal. Added to this is the fact that cars are getting bigger and bigger. By 2024, SUVs already accounted for 30 percent of registrations. Some models have now become so large that they no longer fit into standard parking spaces.

What's missing is the incentive to build smaller vehicles. Yet Japan has been demonstrating how it can be done for decades. There, you'll find the so-called kei cars – small cars with a maximum length of 3.40 meters, a width of 1.48 meters, 660 cubic centimeters, and 64 hp. Not only are they maneuverable, they also enjoy tax advantages, special license plates, and exemption from parking requirements. It's no wonder that around 40 percent of all cars registered in Japan in 2020 were kei cars. We lack this framework – instead, SUVs and heavy station wagons dominate our streets.

One could argue that electric cars solve the CO₂ problem, at least in the long term. But they don't solve the space problem. Due to their design, electric cars cannot be smaller than a certain size because otherwise the batteries would be too small and the vehicles would have too little range.

But replacing every combustion engine in Germany with an electric car over the next ten years won't help either. People will still be stuck in traffic jams, which will just be quieter. Moreover, the auto industry doesn't like small cars. They don't generate enough profit, especially electric cars. Therefore, the industry sees no reason to build small cars based on the Japanese model.

And now? Get cars off the road – that's the only answer. Fewer vehicles are needed, but they are actually driven and used sensibly. Expansion instead of reduction: Public transport with regular service, speed, and comfort, sharing-oriented models, urban environmental zones to combat SUV inflation, and discounts for small cars.

One effective way to at least limit the flood of cars is parking fees. In Berlin, a resident parking permit, regardless of the size of the car, costs just €10.20 per year. That's 85 cents per month for an SUV the size of a small garage. If the parking space required for an SUV in Berlin were calculated based on the basic rent, this would correspond to monthly costs of approximately €247.

A stark contrast remains: We're driving ever-larger cars less and less, which require ever-more space. The solution lies not in the next SUV upgrade, but in a fundamental shift in our thinking about mobility. Only with fewer, but more efficiently used vehicles can the climate sustainability tsunami in the transport sector be stopped. This is not a luxury, but an unavoidable reality.