Mr. James Nix:

Choice was deliberately eliminated from the market and we know this because towards the end of the recession, car makers started to plan a clear SUV strategy and rolled it out increasingly from 2017-18 onwards. We know this particularly from the advertising spend. It increased by an order of magnitude in those years when we look at French data. For every SUV sold in the years 2017 to 2018, between €2,000 to €3,000 was spent on advertising to sell each SUV.

There is now a belated push by some car makers to make smaller, battery electric vehicles. In large part, that is coming as a belated response to Chinese imports, and a realisation that there is still a demand for smaller cars. The European manufacturers made a strategic decision during the last recession to try to move away from that market altogether.

Industry will not change voluntarily. It will be countries like Norway, France, Ireland and others implementing weight-based taxes that will bring those bonnet heights back down. It will not happen by itself. Cities are also acting. Lyon and Paris are good examples. They followed the national example set by the French Government and will apply higher monthly and annual residential parking tariffs to heavier passenger vehicles.