Measures like this always seem unfair to me if they aren't announced a few years in advance. A car is a large investment and people may have made different choices knowing that the rules will change. Same with the tax per mile for Electric cars in the UK.

Instead of encouraging motorists to make better choices, they just end up feeling part of a money grab

Large cars impose heavy many negative externalities on people (take up more space, make it difficult to get through a narrow street when they park there, higher mortality when they drive into pedestrians or cyclists, reduce visibility for others, aesthetically offensive). Policy is slow to shift those costs onto the people causing the externalities but it is predictable that it will happen eventually.

Very sorry for drivers' inconvenience, but if they hadn't realized how bad SUVs are for health, climate, and basically anything that's going on in the city, then announcing it early wouldn't have registered either, I think, since they clearly haven't been following any news.

Hidalgo has been very clear about her plans for Paris for many years now, and people are still in favor of them. People shouldn't feel entitled to driving their oversized trucks in and out of our city, when we have such a dense and efficient network of public transit that doesn't make everyone else's lives worse through noise and pollution.