Last week, Transport & Environment (T&E) published Ever-bigger? Car size at a crossroads, an analysis of how new cars in Europe keep growing year after year, and what that costs us in safety, urban space, and energy. The findings should worry anyone who cycles in a European city.
The ‘Carspreading’ Trend, in Numbers
T&E’s data shows that since 2000, the average new car in Europe has grown relentlessly across all dimensions:
- Longer length of around +1.2 cm every year
- Higher height of around +0.5 cm every year
- Wider width of around +0.5 cm every year
- Higher bonnet height of around +0.5 cm every year since 2010
If this trend continues, the average new car in 2040 will measure 4.56 m by 1.90 m — up from 4.09 m by 1.69 m in 2000. Remember these are averages; you can only imagine what the largest will be. T&E compares this ‘current trend’ to a possible ‘right-sizing’ in which the average size of new cars could return to 2015 levels by 2040. But for now, the gap between the two futures is stark.
Why This Matters for ECF and Our Members
1. Safety
Bigger and higher-fronted cars are deadlier in collisions with cyclists and pedestrians. Drawing on VIAS (2023) and Tyndall (2024), T&E projects that between 2026 and 2040 the ever-bigger trend could cause around 2,600 additional deaths of vulnerable road users across the EU and UK, including 79 additional child deaths. By 2040, the number of children killed while walking could be 40% higher under the current trend than under a “right-sizing” scenario. For cyclists, motorcyclists, moped riders and pedestrians combined, that is 400 extra deaths every year by 2040 — a 14% increase.
2. Urban Space: Large-Car Parking Cannibalises the City
Longer, wider cars take up more of the street. T&E estimates European cities will lose 8.5% to 14% of their on-street parking spaces by 2040 if nothing changes. The political pressure to recover that ‘lost’ parking will fall hardest on the very space cyclists and pedestrians need: bike lanes, footways, tree pits and public squares. Every centimetre cars gain is a centimetre cycling, walking and urban nature can lose.
3. Energy, Climate and Household Costs
Heavier electric cars need more electricity — an extra 22.5 TWh a year by 2040, equivalent to roughly 1,500 onshore wind turbines, adding €7 billion to household charging bills in 2040 alone. For combustion cars still on the road, the ever-bigger trend means over 100 million additional barrels of imported oil by 2040. Cycling is the cheapest and most resource-efficient mode in any city; ever-bigger cars make this transport choice even more expensive.
Putting Large Vehicles on a Diet: A Multi-Level Policy Agenda
Apart from a general shift away from inefficient private motor vehicles, are there any specific policy levers that could reverse this trend? Here are some possible ideas for discussion:
Local: Cities and Municipalities
Cities have to pick up the pieces of all the externalities and costs of carspreading first, with lost parking, collisions on residential streets, and space taken from cycling and walking. They also have some direct levers.
- Introduce size- and weight-differentiated parking charges, as Paris voters approved in February 2024 and Lyon has applied since 2024.
- Reallocate kerbside space to cycling infrastructure, pavements, and trees/vegetation, not to additional or bigger car parking.
- Restrict advertising and marketing for oversized and high-emission vehicles, following the lead of Amsterdam, The Hague, Haarlem and Utrecht.
- Use low-traffic neighbourhoods, school streets and 30 km/h zones to reduce the speed and dominance of the largest vehicles where children are most exposed.
- Set local fleet procurement rules that exclude oversized vehicles from municipal, delivery and contractor fleets except where absolutely necessary.
National Governments
Member States design the tax, registration and licensing rules that determine which cars Europeans actually buy.
- Reform registration and annual circulation taxes so that they vary by vehicle weight, footprint and bonnet height, extending and tightening the French ‘malus poids’ model.
- Overhaul company-car taxation and benefit-in-kind rules, which currently promote and support a large share of new SUV sales across Europe.
- Require vehicle length, width and bonnet height on the registration certificate, so dimension-based local and national rules can actually be enforced and researched.
- Introduce a driving-licence category, training or test for the largest passenger vehicles, recognising that an oversized SUV or pickup handles very differently from a typical car.
- Public-sector fleets cap dimensions in government, agency and state-owned company purchases.
European Union
Motor vehicle safety and emissions type-approval are set in Brussels. How manufacturers build their cars with regard to safety and environmental performance is an EU competence.
- Set EU-wide dimensional limits for new passenger cars, including limits on bonnet height and overall width.
- Adopt a Child Vision Standard for passenger cars, measuring and regulating what a driver can see of a small child immediately in front of the vehicle.
- Strengthen pedestrian and cyclist protection requirements in the EU General Safety Regulations and UNECE Pedestrian Protection Regulations, including front-end design rules that take into account today’s much taller bonnets.
- Use the revision of the car CO₂ legislation to direct regulatory benefits only to genuinely compact electric models, not oversized ‘eco-SUVs’ that simply shift the problem.
- Reflect mass and footprint in CO₂ standards and weight-based incentives, so that lifecycle emissions and material use are not rewarded by the formula.
- Require Euro NCAP to publish a dedicated rating for vulnerable road user vision, aligned with the EU Child Vision Standard.
- Improve and update Individual Vehicle Approval so that large, imported vehicles failing EU VRU-protection requirements cannot be placed on the market through grey channels.
UN / UNECE Level
Most vehicle technical standards in Europe point to regulations at the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE).
- Update UN Regulation No. 127 on pedestrian safety to reflect the rising bonnet heights and reduced forward visibility of modern SUVs and pickups.
- Modernise Global Technical Regulation No. 9 (pedestrian protection) so that test procedures and head-impact zones genuinely protect children, not just adult pedestrians.
- Develop a Direct Vision Standard for passenger cars under UNECE, extending the logic of the London/EU truck Direct Vision Standard to cars, vans and small pickups.
- Add explicit dimension thresholds for the ‘light-duty’ category so that vehicles built to North American light-truck standards cannot be sold as ordinary cars in Europe.
- Strengthen UN rules on aggressivity and compatibility in car-to-VRU collisions.
