Ten quick ways to encourage small vehicles

Let’s imagine we want to encourage the use of small vehicles. Here are 10 simple suggestions:

1. Sort out the vehicle tax system to encourage smaller, lighter cars.
2. Charge less for miniature car parking spaces. Or more for SUVs which is what cities such as Paris and Lyon are doing. Paris has reduced the number of SUVs that park in the centre by more than 60% due to tripling their parking charges. You can base the cost on size and/or weight if you have the available data and suitable technology.
3. Design more parking spaces for micro vehicles and put them near entrances to car parks.
4. Provide free electric charging at car parks for any of the tiny vehicles described here– after all, they need so little juice you could charge the whole of London for less than a tenner! Honest, guv.
5. Create a load of financial incentives for miniature vehicles. Designing them, manufacturing them, importing them. Make it pay to start working on futuristic designs rather than tweaking the same old, same old.
6. Have car club schemes for the mini beasts as well as the mega fauna. That way people can either own a tiddler and borrow a mammoth, or vice versa.
7. Get serious about segregated cycle paths for bikes, e-bikes and scooters.
8. Sort out the Goddam rules for electric scooters and hoverboards. It’s clearly ludicrous that they are not allowed on the pavement or the road (unless as part of a trial). We’ve created laws to allow people to drive several tons of car so we can do the same for tiny mobility tools.
9. Invent a specially designed train carriage to transport tiny vehicles. Drive on and zoom away at the other end.
10. Start creating a world where we can zip around easily, cheaply and safely in tiny vehicles or on (e-)bikes if it suits us (see here for seventeen options) leaving more space on the road for those that actually need their Dacia Bigsters.