Your impression seems correct. I haven't manged to get to Paris yet, but the numbers I found align with your experiences. From a transport in Paris article:

"Paris has one of the most sustainable transportation systems in the world (private cars are only 12% of the overall traffic)"

"According to a 2018 INSEE survey, a majority of Parisians (64.3 percent) use public transport to get to work. Only 10.6 percent commuted to work by automobile. 10.5 percent walked or used roller skates; 5.5 percent commuted by bicycle; and 4.4 percent commuted by motorbike"

The local residents use public transit or walk/bike for work. They likely do exactly the same for daily errands, shopping, and entertainment. That's how it was in Berlin, London, and Helsinki when I was in those cities and it's wonderful.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_in_Paris

But also fuck those pickup truck monstrosities.

This is both not enough and better than nothing.

Are you against any sort of tax for oversized vehicles? Do you also believe that congestion pricing "hurts poor people"?

Also, giant SUVs are only accessible to the rich anyways. No poor person is driving around an Audi Q8 or a Cadillac Escalade, they take the train.

If nothing else, its making the "Pro-Driving Big Things Just Because I Can" people mad and I'm all for it.

No one drives in Paris who's not already rich, the public transportation there is great

"Punishable by fine" is just another way of saying "it's legal if you can afford it."

The question was if heavier cars should pay more. Heavier cars are more expensive to buy, so this means that people who can afford a big car, will pay more. It's a sort of progressive taxation by proxy.

For context: don't forget that this isn't the US: not everyone drives an SUV/pick-uptruck. Here you can see the size of the most popular car in France, compared to a pick-up truck.

tyre extinguishers are based as fuck and they have caused a nonzero amount of people to reconsider their purchase of an SUV or to not drive their SUV downtown

I had this idea of putting construction foam into the exhaust.

Indeed! It's really hard to explain just how much smaller the traffic feels in European cities, even when there's lots of vehicles they're still less massive overall. I have taken video footage of traffic in a few different European cities just to show people how much smaller, quieter, and less dense rush hour traffic is. Even when comparing it to my US mid-sized city's traffic.

It's just nicer to be around roads with fewer and smaller cars.

I was wondering how they would define what an SUV would be. If they're using weight, won't they be charging a bunch of electric cars extra too?

Yup. EVs also run into the tonnage limit quickly too. A Tesla Model 3 single engine is 1.75 tons (no extra parking costs), but the dual motor is over 2 tons.

The US has way too many vehicles that should be about 20-30% smaller and lighter for basic city driving. Even the "small" vehicles aren't small anymore.