All over the world, passenger cars are getting bigger and bigger, SUVs are taking over the market, even though the spread of the category called urban off-road vehicles in Hungarian is undermining sustainability ideas. 2022 was the first year when the majority of newly sold cars (51 percent) worldwide were SUVs, and the average weight of cars rose to 1.5 tons.
The energy efficiency of cars can no longer be measured only in gasoline consumption, as hybrid and electric vehicles are becoming more and more popular. However, electricity consumption can also be converted to the usual gasoline consumption per 100 kilometers. Taking all this into account, it can be seen that the energy efficiency of new cars in the world is increasing, between 2010 and 2022 it dropped from 8.6 liters to less than 7.
Source: GFEI
As you can see, the differences between the regions are large: the least fuel-efficient passenger cars are still sold in Europe, the previous consumption of 7.5 liters is well below the 5.4 liters of 2022. In addition, it was possible to go below the level of Japan, which prioritizes smaller and more economical cars.
It is not surprising that the North American region, which includes the United States, which prefers large cars, ranks last in energy efficiency, and the rate of decline is slower than that of other developed countries. The biggest progress has been made in China, and if trends continue, in a few years, passenger cars will be the least polluting there.
It is worth not only looking at the efficiency of each car, but also taking into account that more and more cars are being sold and there are more and more on the roads. According to data from the International Energy Agency (IEA), in 2010 there were 852 million passenger cars in circulation in all countries of the world, and by 2022 this would increase to 1,285 million. So, even though the value of energy consumption per kilometer decreased by almost a fifth, while the number of vehicles increased by one and a half times. The share of SUVs increased from 8.5 percent in 2010 to 31.4 percent.
However, according to a report by the Global Fuel Economy Initiative (GFEI), between 2010 and 2022, the energy consumption of passenger cars sold in the world would have decreased by 30 percent if the size of the cars had not changed. On the other hand, it can also be calculated from the above data*Considering the annual kilometers driven per vehicle as constant – global data on this is not available. The quality and comparability of available data is also highly limited by country, especially for non-gasoline cars.that
the world failed to reduce the energy demand of passenger cars, between 2010 and 2022 the global energy demand of passenger cars increased by a fifth.
Stopping the growth could be helped if lighter, smaller, and thus less energy-consuming cars were produced worldwide, or if fewer were produced and used. Due to the demands of the voters, the decision-makers do not really dare to undertake the latter. There would be much less conflict with reducing the size of cars. However, car manufacturers can earn a lot more from ever-growing SUVs, so they are trying to drive the market towards it in every possible way.
Europe has fallen in love with urban SUVs
The spread of SUVs is well shown by the average weight of cars. In 2010, 60 percent of new passenger vehicles sold in Europe were under 1.3 tons, in 2022 only 42 percent will be. In 2010, monsters weighing more than two tons accounted for only 3 percent of sales, and by 2022 they will be 12 percent, i.e. almost one in eight new cars.
Below, we analyze the database of the European Environment Agency (EEA) and present the changes that took place in the European passenger car market between 2010 and 2022. (Preliminary data was available for the most recent period at the time of writing our article.) Based on the database, it can be seen that European vehicles have grown very quickly, and nothing is slowing down the process for the time being.
But it is not only the spread of SUVs that is responsible for the weight gain, there are also large differences in the average weight of cars depending on the drivetrain. Gasoline cars are lighter than their diesel, electric or hybrid counterparts. On the one hand, there is a technological reason for this, as battery packs are heavy. On the other hand, the ever-increasing performance of ever-heavier vehicles cannot really be solved with internal combustion engines alone, if the emission requirements must also be met.
Heavy cars used to be driven by diesel, but now electric and hybrid drives are more common. Because with SUVs equipped with hybrid engines, the consumer experience is important, since multi-ton cars can be moved much more dynamically with the help of an electric engine than if they had only an internal combustion engine.
There was no weight increase for gasoline cars, and even compared to 2010, based on preliminary data for 2022, the average weight even decreased by 2 percent. In the case of diesels, the increase was modest, at 4 percent.
The weight gain can basically be traced back to the hybrids.
The average (!) mass of hybrid cars at 2.2 tons is now 60 percent higher than that of gasoline cars. In this, the role of small and mid-range hybrids should not be sought, but typically the cars of manufacturers of larger vehicles such as BMW, Audi, Mercedes or Volvo.
On paper, these vehicles have excellent fuel consumption, so according to reports, their emissions are low. In reality, however, their consumption is not two liters, but rather 8-9, as we previously reported in detail.
According to previous real-life data with hybrids, the main problem is that their owners don’t really care about charging the battery, especially when they use it as a company car. Yet in Hungary, the average mass of hybrids jumped even more than the EU average. It is true that relatively few new cars are sold here, approximately half of the vehicles put on the market were used imports. Thus, company cars dominate the market more than in other countries.
More mass = more pollution
The EEA database also supports the logical connection that the heavier a car is, the higher its consumption and therefore its emissions. Despite this, the mainly German car industry lobby – with the effective help of former Chancellor Angela Merkel – has achieved that the heavier a new passenger car is, the more it can pollute.
On the one hand, this regulation helps the Volkswagen group, BMW, Mercedes and others not to be limited by emission limits in the production of large, polluting cars that can be sold at a high price and at a high profit. In addition, the regulation also puts the production of small, light and less polluting cars in a difficult situation, they are not really worth putting on the market. If European regulations did not favor expensive SUVs, it would be worth selling smaller electric cars.
In the diagram below, you can follow how the emissions of new passenger vehicles developed by drive mode between 2010 and 2021 – by clicking the play button or selecting the year with the slider. It can be clearly seen that consumption and emissions increase as the size of gasoline and diesel vehicles increases.
The physical miracle of hybrids is that even though their mass increases, carbon dioxide emissions do not increase.
This is due to the vehicles being optimized for the tests. The previous figure shows the results of NDEC, the test system used since 1992. This was gradually replaced by the WLTP, which is applicable from 2019. This made it possible for it to be more difficult to optimize the vehicles for the tests after Volkswagen’s failure in the diesel scandal.
As you can see in our diagram below, the goal was achieved in the case of diesels, but this does not mean that we can no longer play tricks. As the environmental protection NGO Transport & Environment drew attention to, on average, the consumption values given in the type license of passenger cars are 12 percent higher when tests according to WLTP are carried out with independent tests. And if someone drives more dynamically, the differences are even greater.
It is striking that in the case of the WLTP standard, a similar phenomenon can be seen with gasoline hybrids as with diesels before the diesel scandal: even though the size of the car increases, consumption and emissions do not increase.
The increase in performance also contributes to the increase in harmful emissions. After all, for a car capable of dynamic driving, it is quite unrealistic that it will be driven according to the slow pace of the tests. The performance of new European cars shows a mixed picture: that of gasoline models is decreasing, that of electric and hybrid models is increasing. The reason for this may be that manufacturers are replacing higher-powered gasoline cars with creatively measurable performance hybrids.
While lower-powered gasoline cars could help reduce pollution overall as we move toward electrics, ever-larger SUVs do far more damage. However, according to the manufacturers, the trend is not uniform: Citroën, Dacia, Fiat, Suzuki are able to produce cars that produce smaller and less harmful substances.
As you can see in the graph below, there are manufacturers whose car weight and emissions are now closer to agricultural machinery than to an average passenger car.
However, pollution is not only related to size, but also to performance. As you can see below, sports car manufacturers stand out even more in this regard. However, we did not even include Rolls Royce and Bugatti, which have even higher emissions, on the graph.
How can these be marketed at all? This is made possible by the European Union legislation, according to which companies that produce fewer than 10,000 cars per year are exempted from the regulations. In addition, this is European marketing, so products from polluting luxury brands can be sold abroad in large quantities.
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