Paris aims to drive large sports utility vehicles (SUVs) out of its centre by hiking parking fees for heavy cars in the French capital, and it plans a citizens' vote on the proposal early next year.
Depends on what the goal is. Heavy vehicles do disproportionately more damage to the infrastructure.
They might want to encourage smaller, lighter cars, regardless of type. They certainly make small city EVs, as well as just encouraging walking, biking, public transportation, etc.
It doesn't work like that when you have exponential damage with weight. Cars use road capacity, but damage from cars just isn't there. You get damage from seen semi trucks, freeze thaw cycles, etc.
trucks don't travel in certain areas in most cities so these vehicles can cause problems in hard to reach areas including inside parking structures. They also tend to limit visibility by being taller than an average person, which can make life more dangerous for pedestrians. There's a lot of reasons to want to limit SUVs.
A small city car (Kia Picanto) weighs about 900 kg (~2000 pounds), a regular Ford Mustang weighs just under twice that, a Mustang Mach E weighs over twice that and then some.
Damage done will go up.
If you take into account the amount of people a bus transports, or the "useful work" a small semi and garbage trucks do, not even a small city car can win in terms of damage done– let alone a monster of a vehicle carrying one to two persons.
The fourth power equation you're talking about is weight per axle. A semi truck will weigh much more in total. But the difference in weight per axle isn't as high as you seem to think.