> Cars are steadily becoming longer,

frontal crash protection

> wider

side crash protection

> and heavier in the UK and across Europe

electric batteries.

Indeed: promote electric cars: it's fine if they will be massive, if consumers love them, why force them to do otherwise? Tax ICE powered SUVs and trucks heavily but spare electric ones and give people one more incentive to switch.

I think one of the underdiscussed things is how in the last couple of decades industries like car manufacturing have become steadily more state controlled.

Today, to be a successful car company you need to be producing cars whose safety features are incredibly tightly regulated by government bodies to the point of doing actively user hostile things (try and get a new car in the UK that won't actively beep at you for going faster than it thinks you should drive).

You need to be producing them at government mandated price levels (cars listed for more than £40k pay an additional £2.5 tax, except electric vehicles for whom the tax only kicks in at £50).

You need to be using a propulsion method approved by government, not only the Euro 6 emissions standards, but also the labyrinthine Benefit in Kind regulations that accidentally gave every small business owner massive incentives to buy a Porsche Taycan.

Oh and on top of that the UK government runs a charity that purchases 20% of all the new cars sold in the UK each year (with that number climbing to 50% in Northern Ireland).

I can only speak for what I have seen in the US..but it seems to me that a large portion of the SUVs out there are really just minivans with different doors in the back and a slight suspension lift. Especially ones like the VW Atlas and comparable. Not to mention the living room sized vehicles like the Toyota Sequoia and GMC Yukon. Most of the larger ones have 3 rows and essentially the same design internally. If you squint hard enough and imagine sliding doors on the sides there is very little difference.

People seem to buy way larger than they really need also...but that has kinda always been a thing in the US.

There's a proposal (IDK the current status actually, coming into law in a few years?) in the Netherlands to tax cars based on the area they occupy, not on weight like they are currently taxed. Govt wants to incentivize going electric, but those are heavier than similar sized gas-powered cars.

But there also has been a surge of huge American pickup trucks, which are simply too large for the roads and parking places here. Taxing by area would help with that too.

I hate to say it, but I moved from a small car to an SUV recently and I love it. Just about everything about it is better for me subjectively.

I understand the perspective of city dwellers and mass transit advocates, I grew up in a city with mass transit (and loved that experience as well).

I just wanted to put that out there.

Many people really do like bigger cars better and I don’t know you turn back once you have been spoiled.