AA modifies recovery kit to cope with trend for heavier and wider cars (video)

A trend towards heavier and wider cars – so called ‘carbesity’ or ‘carspreading’ – is impacting fleet operations, with the AA having to modify equipment used to recover vehicles from the roadside.

The AA’s fleet director, Duncan Webb, told Fleet News at 10 that the breakdown and recovery company has been forced to adapt its equipment to cope with the increase in weight and size of vehicles, with the situation getting “progressively worse”.

Its compact recovery trailer (CRT), which it deploys out the back of its vans to recover vehicles, used to be regulated at two tonnes.

“All the latest ones are now 2.4-tonne, so we can drive a heavier vehicle behind us, subject to total train weight still being acceptable,” explained Webb.

The CRT has also been redesigned to allow it to work with wider vehicles. “I won't tell you how much further we've gone out, but we have redesigned that whole asset to extend further so we could recover more casualty vehicles,” he added.

A further issue the AA is having to deal with is overall train weight availability is down on diesel vans, according to Webb, and is also down on fully electric and plug-in hybrid electric versions.

Heavier and wider cars

Issues around the increasing weight of cars has added fuel to the fire of an anti-electric vehicle (EV) rhetoric, with claims that bridges or multi-story car parks faced collapse due to the growing number of plug-in cars.

The latest story to hit the headlines is that outdated safety barriers are not designed to withstand impacts from heavier EVs.

The Vehicle Restraint Manufacturers Association (VRMA) has written to the Government highlighting that current barriers may fail to contain electric cars during collisions, which could lead to vehicles breaking through barriers and ploughing into oncoming traffic on busy roads.

While conventional petrol or diesel cars typically weigh around 1.5 tonnes, electric vehicles can be significantly heavier, at between 1.8 and 2.2 tonnes, it says.

Transport and Environment (T&E) calculates that EVs are, on average, between 300kg and 400kg heavier. For every 150km (93 miles) of range, it adds about 100kg of battery weight.

The VRMA argues that this poses a problem because the metal barriers lining UK roads comply with standards dating back to 1998, which were tested using 1.5-tonne internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles.

It warns that the increased kinetic energy from heavier electric cars travelling at the same speeds will “increase the force exerted on safety barriers” during collisions, creating a “higher risk of a barrier breach” on motorways and A-roads.

In terms of vehicle size, a report from T&E, published last year, found that new cars, on average, are getting 1cm wider every two years in Europe, due to the rising sales of SUVs.  

The environmental lobby group’s report - Ever-wider: why large SUVs don’t fit, and what to do about it - suggested that around half of new cars sold are already too wide for the minimum on-street parking space in many countries.

Comparing the top 100 cars sold in 2018 to the top 100 in the first-half of 2023, T&E said that the average width of new cars has grown from 177.8cm to 180.3cm over the five-year period.

Data compiled by the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT) confirms the same trend in the two decades up to 2020.

New cars in the EU are subject to the same maximum width, 255cm, as buses and trucks.

Too wide to park

Among the top 100 models in 2023, 52% of vehicles sold were too wide for the minimum specified on-street parking space (180cm) in major cities, including London, Paris and Rome, according to the research.

Off-street parking is now a tight squeeze even for the average new car (180cm wide), while large SUVs no longer fit.

Measuring around 200cm wide, large SUVs leave too little space for car occupants to get in and out of vehicles in typical off-street spaces (240cm).

A YouGov study, commissioned by Clean Cities, found that drivers were worried about the phenomenon of ‘carspreading’ in urban environments.

Carspreading is said to occur when modern SUVs are too large to fit inside parking bays designed for regular cars. This leads to the SUV ‘spreading’ beyond the space. 

More than two thirds (71%) of drivers agreed that SUVs make parking more difficult - only 15% disagreed.

Last year, residents of Paris voted to triple the cost of parking for the heaviest SUVs entering the French capital. Even fully electric models are included in the tariffs, which took effect in October 2024.

But the suggestion that some fleets could consider employing vehicle width restrictions on choice lists, was not met with any enthusiasm by the Fleet News at 10 panel. 

Lorna McAtear, head of fleet at National Grid, said if she had to take every vehicle off the fleet that was two or more metres wide, she would lose 60% of her vehicles.

Dale Eynon, director of Defra Group Fleet Services, told Fleet News at 10: “What we’re finding in our fleet now is that, because the smaller cars have got bigger, people can now go to a smaller car which is almost the same size as a big car.”

However, he still believes there is a general trend towards people wanting bigger cars, and the downside is the bumps and scrapes he is seeing in insurance claims.

“50% of our insurance claims are probably relating to parking, which is related to the width of the vehicles,” said Eynon. 

“We get an awful lot of corner scrapes on vehicles, hitting things while parking. A lot of it is to do with the size of the vehicles these days.” 

“I think EVs are heavy, but not necessarily bigger,” he added. “However, as a nation, we cry out for bigger cars and if we don’t buy bigger cars, they (the manufacturers) won’t make bigger cars, so the market is there for them unfortunately.”

Appearing alongside Eynon on the monthly webinar, Chris Connors, head of fleet and travel at ISS, said that the trend towards larger and heavier vehicles has been something he has witnessed over the past 10-20 years. 

“Now, the Volkswagen Polo, for example, is the same size as the original Volkswagen Golf,” he added. 

“We’ve also seen vehicles get heavier with various things added to them, such as air bags, for example. So, I think vehicles have been getting bigger and heavier before – it’s not solely down to electric. 

“I also think people have moved towards preferring that higher driving position, that more SUV-sized vehicle.”

Watch the full Fleet News at 10 ‘carbesity’ debate below