The Guardian24 Jun 2026Macro
Automatically composed with AI from the cited sources
Cars sold in Europe have grown 1.2 cm longer, 0.5 cm taller and 0.5 cm wider each year on average since 2000, a Transport & Environment analysis has found. If the trend continues unchecked, the supersizing is projected to cause an extra 400 deaths among vulnerable road users each year by 2040, 79 of them children, compared with a scenario that returns average car size to 2015 levels. Cities could lose 8.5–14% of on-street parking, with London and Berlin each forecast to lose about 100,000 spaces. The larger fleet would demand an extra 100m barrels of oil imports and 22.5 TWh of electricity, an energy need equivalent to 1,500 offshore wind turbines, according to an unaffiliated researcher.