Research conducted by the automotive advocacy group Transport & Environment (T&E) has revealed that the average size of new cars in Europe is increasing by 1 centimetre every two years. This trend is driven by the rising sales of SUVs across the continent, including in the UK.
The study found that in many nations, including the UK, the minimum on-street parking spot is already too wide for about half of newly acquired cars. The average width of new cars increased from 177.8 cm in 2018 to 180.3 cm in the first half of 2023.
In fact, 52% of the top 100 new cars sold in the European Union in 2023 were too wide to fit in major cities like London, Paris, and Rome, where the minimum required on-street parking spots measure 180 cm wide. This is posing challenges for both on-street and off-street parking, with large luxury SUVs measuring around 200 cm wide and leaving less space for drivers and passengers to navigate in typical parking spaces.
The data also indicates a consistent pattern of car width increasing over the last two decades, raising concerns about safety and the impact on urban areas. T&E has called for stricter limits on car width and higher parking charges for larger cars to address these issues, emphasizing the risk of pedestrian and cyclist fatalities in collisions with wider vehicles.
Barbara Stoll, Director of the Clean Cities Campaign, expressed concerns about the threat of “monster SUVs” to the urban environment, noting that without action, more public space will be taken away by larger cars. This sentiment was echoed by T&E’s Vehicles Policy Manager, James Nix, who highlighted the dangers posed by oversized vehicles parking on footpaths and endangering pedestrians and cyclists.