The car manufacturers continue to make huge SUVs both with conventional power units – petrol and diesel – and battery-powered. The latter have to be huge to house batteries large enough to provide sufficient mileage as they have to move a 2-ton vehicle! The petrol and diesel SUVs are also grossly too large for modern times.
Larger electric vehicles weighing over 2,000kg (2 tons) cause the most damage, with 2.32 times more wear applied to roads. Such stress on roads causes greater movement of asphalt, which can create small cracks. If these are not fixed, then these expand and eventually develop into potholes.
The Telegraph newspaper
The car manufacturers are pandering to customer demand. They are not trying to shape customer opinion and help prevent global warming. With global warming looming over the planet this is not a time to pander to climate change denying customers who for some bizarre reason hanker after a huge vehicle. Do they feel safer in them? Are they that scared? Can they park them? The parking spaces are barely wide enough to accommodate these monsters.
Making EVs (electric vehicles) this large is counter-productive. The larger you make them larger the battery has to be and therefore you have to make the vehicle even larger to give it sufficient mileage. They’re too big to fit into garages and they are arguably, for most people, too big to park in standard parking slots. They are a nightmare.
And the manufacturers, as mentioned, are still making petrol and diesel-powered massive SUVs which, to many people, look totally out of place in today’s world.
This is a world where cars should be small, light and powered in a way which minimises global warming.
And that sentiment is shared by a campaigning group which detests large sports utility vehicles. They are called Tyre Extinguishers. And they aren’t shy about causing criminal damage on a large scale.
Their activists recently damaged tyres on at least 60 cars at Jaguar Exeter in Devon on Sunday night.
The group posted a video online which appears to show someone damaging parked cars with a drill.
They called their protest at this Exeter car dealership a “wake-up call”. It was in response to a woman driving a large SUV outside a school and allegedly killing two schoolkids. She was arrested at the scene on suspicion of causing death by dangerous driving. She has been bailed until the end of next month pending further enquiries.
Tyre Extinguishers said in a statement: “Tyre Extinguishers destroyed all the tyres on at least 60 vehicles at Jaguar Exeter, Matford Way. SUVs are eight times more likely to kill children in crashes than smaller cars. This act of retaliation is intended as a peaceful and non-violent demonstration to draw attention to the presence of grossly inappropriate private vehicles in our towns and cities.
Tyre Extinguishers firmly believe that their action is a necessary escalation to try and stop these vehicles from wrecking further lives and continuing to push the worsening climate crisis of the cliff edge. The group hopes that this action will serve as a wake-up call for all stakeholders to unite in their efforts to prevent further tragedies and make our roads safer for everyone.
Tyre Extinguishers
They want SUVs to be banned from the urban environment. Their aim is to “make it impossible” to own SUVs in urban areas.
SUVs have also been attacked in other countries including the United States and in much of Europe.
Tyre Extinguishers believe that electric and hybrid SUVs are also worth targeting as there are “not enough rare earth metals” to supply them and to replace all cars with EV SUVs of this size.
I agree with them wholeheartedly in terms of the inappropriateness of these monstrous SUVs which are perhaps the most popular private vehicle today in the UK.
It proves the point that the majority of people are not ready to make sacrifices to meet the demands of climate change. They just don’t get it yet. This is further borne out by another report in The Times today with the headline: “Only 36% back petrol car sales ban”.
The public’s support for a ban on the sale of new diesel and petrol cars has fallen, The Times reports, by almost 33% in 24 months according to a poll. This very much goes against the desires of the UK government to head towards net zero targets.
Postscript: this is just a quick note to say that in The Times today is a story which tells us that the number of bus routes in the UK have halved since 2010/2011. The Labour Party said that there were 8,781 routes operating in the year to the end of March compared with 17,394 in 2010/2011. So, the British government is pushing people out of their cars by reducing the speed limit to 20 miles an hour in urban environments and employing other traffic reduction measures to make it intolerable to drive a car while at the same time taking away alternative means of transport. It’s another example of broken Britain.
