SUVs are a major source of pollution

More than half of all cars sold across the world are SUVs. Here's why it's bad new for the environment.

Transcript

00:00The reason why SUVs are so bad for the environment is because they are

00:29very inefficient way to move people around. So what we're doing when we're using an SUV

00:34is that we're expending a lot of fuel and a lot of energy to just move that 2.5, 3 ton vehicle around

00:41and very little energy is actually going into moving the 70 kilogram person around.

00:55So

01:11we realized that more or less between 14 and 20 percent is the increase in emissions that SUVs

01:18have when comparing to smaller vehicles. When you consider the amount of vehicles that are being sold

01:23today that are SUVs, then this starts becoming very alarming.

01:45The reason why we believe that SUVs have become so popular in culture right now is that vehicle

01:53manufacturers have massive budgets and a lot of these budgets are really going into advertising.

01:58So they are hammering into our heads this message that SUVs are equivalent to freedom, to safety,

02:04to higher quality, to ruggedness. And these are of course values that resonate with many people.

02:09An SUV is really an outdoors type of thing and we're going to conquer the great outdoors.

02:15But in reality, most people are just using it to go to the shop or to go to for commuting.

02:34We can't really expect that every single buyer of an SUV will make the connection between,

02:38oh my SUV is killing the planet. So it really is up to governments to step up their game

02:43when it comes to policies that drive efficiency to the sector

02:47and that drive all these SUVs and larger vehicles towards electrifying.