Adverts for a Toyota SUV have been banned in the UK on environmental grounds as Paris looks to push big cars out of the city with higher parking fees.
ADVERTISEMENTAdverts for a Toyota SUV have been banned by the UK advertising watchdog for condoning driving which “disregarded their impact on nature and the environment”.
A 2020 campaign included a video featuring dozens of Toyota Hilux cars driving at speed through offroad terrain including a river.
A voiceover describes the scene as “one of nature’s true spectacles”. It also included a similar static poster with the sports utility vehicles (SUVs) in the foreground and dozens of others in the background crossing rocky terrain.
Campaign group Adfree Cities filed a complaint with the Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) arguing that the adverts condoned environmentally harmful behaviour.
They claim that off-road driving is a common theme of SUV ads which gives the “false promise of rugged adventure” - despite a majority of new vehicles of this kind being registered in wealthy urban locations in the UK.
“These adverts epitomise Toyota’s total disregard for nature and the climate, by featuring enormous, highly-polluting vehicles driving at speed through rivers and wild grasslands,” Veronica Wignall, co-director at Adfree Cities, said.
‘No regard for the environmental impact’
Toyota defended the claim by arguing that the Hilux was designed for the toughest environments, being used by those working in industries like farming and forestry who have a genuine need for offroad vehicles.
The ASA said “those scenarios were not represented in the ad” and the message was “one of driving regardless of its purpose, across off-road environments and natural ecosystems which had no regard for the environmental impact of such driving.”
“As a result, they had not been prepared with a sense of responsibility to society,” it added.
Wignall welcomed the ruling by the ASA but added that the regulation of SUV adverts is not enough.
“The promotion of SUVs should be terminated altogether.”
Toyota has said that it does not condone behaviour that is harmful to the environment. The company adds that the video was filmed on private land with all necessary permissions in a non-ecologically sensitive environment and the static image was CGI, having no environmental impact on that land.
SUVs in the city
Research by Badvertising, a project by The New Weather Institute and climate charity Possible, backs up Adfree Cities’ claim that most new SUVs are registered in urban environments. In 2021, it found that 75 per cent of SUVs in the UK were registered to urban addresses.
The top three areas for these large new vehicles were the wealthy London boroughs of Kensington and Chelsea, Hammersmith and Fulham and Westminister.
And London isn’t the only city where SUVs are causing problems. Paris is aiming to drive out these large sports utility vehicles by hiking parking prices for heavy cars.
It isn’t easy to distinguish these vehicles from other models so the French capital is looking to link charges to weight. Parking fees would increase for petrol and diesel cars over 1.6 tonnes and electric vehicles over two tonnes.
Scanners would be used to determine the car’s weight from the information linked to its license plate.
A citizens’ vote will be held on the proposal next year to determine the ‘place of SUVs in the capital’.
