How can anyone justify the fact that a SUV or any *passenger* vehicle puts out 6 times the pollutants that a normal non-SUV car does?

I think thats about the level that the average 40 seater diesel powered bus emits - and a SUV only holds 7 or so people maximum.

This means that each mile driven in a SUV is the same as six cars driving the same distance or 1 car driving 6 times further.

Also, the oft quoted justification of "I can fit 7 people in my SUV so thats gotta save gas/be more efficient" doesn't really stack up when those same 7 people could each drive their own cars seperately and emit only slightly more pollution than the SUV would if it had 7 people in it".

And as many people have pointed out, most SUVs are not full with people or cargo - they are empty most of the time, or with a few kids in them maybe and the gas and pollution emitted is not a lot different I'd bet in either case whether its full of people or not.

Nobody is saying don't ever drive/buy SUVs - what people are saying is use them appropriately - and given that 1 in 4 sales of new cars are now SUVs there are a lot of inappropriate users/uses that those SUVs which make up 25% of the vehicle sales each year are being used for.

Each SUV will last probably up to 20 years, so once you sell it, it will still be giuzzling gas and emitting lots of pollution for a lot longer than your ownership.
So, 3 years of driving a SUV will emit the same pollution as driving the same car for 18 years.

And these figures only occur if the SUV is well maintained and kept properly tuned - as the SUVs age their pollution emission will sky rocket - thats how come old bangers produce the worst pollution of the lot as they are rarely properly maintained, with (new) SUVs not that far behind in the pollution stakes, and they (new SUVs) have 120 "car" equivalent years of polluting ahead of them if they last 20 years.