In times where a flood of the century in the Eifel (Germany) last year or the drought of the millennium currently prevail in Southern Europe and in German media SUV's are seen in one breath as co-triggers, you can certainly guess how you are noticed as a Grenadier driver in the big cities.
In addition, serious personal accidents in urban traffic are attributed to SUVs and a picture is drawn that SUV drivers are careless contemporaries with regard to the environment and fellow human beings.
As I have already mentioned elsewhere here in the forum, I was already insulted at the traffic lights in Cologne with the classic car (40 years) as an environmental polluter. Yet the classic car has a much better environmental balance and does not consume more fuel than so many hybrid vehicles that move significantly more weight through the area without electric charge and consume more fuel than comparable models without hybrid electrification.
Of course, there has to be a change, but it won't happen overnight and it will be even more difficult in rural areas.
A small example: oil heating systems are certainly not state of the art, and gas heating systems are no longer really state of the art either, at the latest with the war and the enormous dependencies. The flood last year gave me a good chance to switch to geothermal heating, since a new installation was necessary anyway. I wait a year later, today still, for the technology which is not available and these days you heard also in the media self-critically from the handicraft: we do not have at all in the quantity the trained people around alternative energies to force. According to our environment minister, everyone should have solar cells on the roof, waiting time for offers currently here about 6 months, delivery and construction at the earliest 6-12 months after order.
At the end of the day, I hope it will also depend somewhat on the vehicle itself, and that a Grenadier may not be as polarizing as a Mercedes G-Class, a GLE, or a Porsche Cayenne, etc. because you will not see so many on the road or cities. With the Defender, I've never been met with hostility - on the contrary, in Portugal I've been given a thumbs-up a few times.
As an example, a contribution from public television in Germany from a few weeks ago, unfortunately in German, but the pictures alone certainly clarify the focus already of the report. In the report, city dwellers were asked about their SUVs, or in a small town, the parking fee was determined as a fake according to vehicle size, etc.:
https://www.ardmediathek.de/video/quarks-und-caspers/der-suv-boom-stadtpanzer-im-klimawandel/das-erste/Y3JpZDovL2Rhc2Vyc3RlLmRlL3F1YXJrcy1jYXNwZXJzL2QyNThmODUzLTBjZDYtNGRhNy1iNWQ0LWY1MDRjNzA1ZjE4OQ
The whole article ended with an illustration of how cities would look if cars were smaller and narrower again (screenshots from the ARD report):
We future drivers of a Grenadier still prevent this idyll....
