At 80mpg+, our CO2 emissions ought to put it in the “free” bracket no?
It’s to offset the extra cost of clearing up the accidents you cause and treating smashed up motorcyclists in hospital.

*runs away*
But in all seriousness the emissions limits on motorcycles are slacker than on cars. That said, the tax system is based on CO2 emissions, so yeah, bikes should be tax free if they’re low enough emissions.

Would it not be more effective to just reduce the number of cars. We treat them as a right not a privilege. And that’s coming from someone living in the country, not on a bus route and no option but a 20 mile each way commute. Stopping leisure driving wouldn’t half help. I’d love to see the hgvs reduced by a factor of 10 and everything on trains. Tough luck if we couldn’t have next day delivery.

Mazda taking 3kg out of the loom is them doing the same as everyone else but making noise about it.
I’m not talking about the sort of weight savings that come from reducing production costs but a cap on private vehicles of say 2000kg or a weight per passenger of say 400kg. No need for anything above that and result would be more efficient safer transport.
Oh and weight is rarely listed even car tech specs people with an intrest in cars may be slightly aware but for most its just not on the radar.
Also..even an ardent car person surely doesnt still believe all that nonsense about polution being from industry, that was backward calculated from VW and the likes emmision stats which as we all know are fiction. Where I live there is absolutely no industry but I can smell a road from 100m and they stink.

Subaru just need to get better at fiddling the emissions for their petrol engines and bring in a 2.0 levorg, I would then be pursuaded back to proper fuel. As it is with the mileage I do anything petrol is much more expensive to run.

The problem is tax policy. It’s crazy that you need to have loads of batteries and motors just to pay less tax. A Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV does 150 odd MPG and about 50g/km, yet when actually driven on a road gets 15MPG less than my Diesel X-trail. How does that make any sense!

People do seem to forget that the pollution caused making a new car is quite significant. Perhaps we should all drive 2cv’s? Oh no, the tax would be too expensive!

How does that make any sense!

It can be driven in pure electric mode, hybrid mode or pure petrol. In electric mode you can do 30 odd miles or something. If your commute is less than 15 miles or you can charge at work, you need never get petrol at all. This is clearly a benefit.

Hybrid mode afaik is parallel hybrid mode. My mate who’s just got one reckons he gets 60mpg in that mode. It’s pure petrol only mode that’s not so efficient.

So seems to make sense to me. The only thing that doesn’t make sense is that it’s shaped like a jeep, which is a stupid shape to be if you want to save fuel.

Regulate all vehicles so that they can only do 30mph maximum . That would stop people commuting miles a day , increase MPG , virtually eliminate deaths on the road , stop people driving like dicks . Police vehicles could be limited to 40mph so that they could catch other motorists easily . Massive extra spending on the railways which would become a much quicker option for travelling thereby reducing congestion on the roads .

Regulate all vehicles so that they can only do 30mph maximum .

Or make them have a man walk in front waving a red flag?

I’d love to see the hgvs reduced by a factor of 10 and everything on trains.

That will work well for all the distribution depots sited beside motorways. Around here all the former railway marshaling yards are houses. Given the nimby shouting over 1 new high speed rail line through rural England good luck getting a national rail distribution network re-built in the suburbs.

Regulate all vehicles so that they can only do 30mph maximum . That would stop people commuting miles a day , increase MPG , virtually eliminate deaths on the road , stop people driving like dicks . Police vehicles could be limited to 40mph so that they could catch other motorists easily . Massive extra spending on the railways which would become a much quicker option for travelling thereby reducing congestion on the roads .

Excellent, and with the money saved we can build all the hospitals needed to be within a reasonable ambulance ride of potential cases. Genius.

Speed isn’t the problem.

Speed isn’t the problem.

Well, that’s true but in a country where the speed limit is 70mph why does anyone need a car which makes more than 50bhp or so? If everyone was driving 750cc cars engineered for low emissions the problem would be massively reduced, and actual journey times would be almost totally unaffected.

People do seem to forget that the pollution caused making a new car is quite significant.

Which is why stuff like scrappage schemes are the least environmentally friendly option to sort the problem. The best way to reduce your pollution impact is to keep the car you’ve got, keep it well maintained, drive it sensibly and use alternatives for shorter journeys. I’m still seen as the oddball weirdo* who rides to work and back every day despite me having done so for over 7 years and it being only an 8 mile round trip. It’s even faster on the bike 95% of the time.

If everyone was driving 750cc cars engineered for low emissions the problem would be massively reduced, and actual journey times would be almost totally unaffected.

But the general public refuse to try and get their head round this. They’ve been conditioned so well to believe that more power=faster car=faster journeys that they cannot see the logic in having a ‘slower’ car. Years ago I was driving a 956cc Citroen AX and my mate refused to believe it when I would regularly match his journey times with him driving a 3 series. The fact that it just meant he got to the next queue faster than me was completely lost on him.

* even more so than normal, it’s not just because I ride bicycles!

You only need to spend a few seconds behind any vehicle over 10 years old to realise keeping old vehicles going is not the answer. I would still argue low cost, low weight functional transport frequently recycled as something better comes along is the way to go.

First step is to remove the car idolatry though and this forum if nothing else shows how difficult that will be, it’s like prising the needle of a lifetime junky.

WELL OVERDUE!! The nox effects lungs and respiratory system. Heart attack can result from damage to cardiovascular system over time. What really grinds my gears is the derv drivers who boot it when going passed when on the bike. Do we have to be like chinese and wear masks or is the damage done?

Excellent, and with the money saved we can build all the hospitals needed to be within a reasonable ambulance ride of potential cases. Genius

won’t need as many hospitals… won’t be any RTA’s needing critical care, only clinics to diagnose the extreme whiplash suffered by parking incidents 😉

Can’t wait for the day that all those bikes that the whole nation will be using are shipped from Taiwan by tea clipper, and then transported from Southampton docks to bike stores via rickshaw.

Idiots are idiots.

Burning any fossil fuel for transportation is by definition Not Green.
Neither are electric cars. Are you aware of the huge environmental costs of mining the raw materials for the batteries and the magnets used in wind turbines?

You only need to spend a few seconds behind any vehicle over 10 years old to realise keeping old vehicles going is not the answer. I would still argue low cost, low weight functional transport frequently recycled as something better comes along is the way to go.

Any vehicle? Or any large commercial vehicle? And how can scrapping a perfectly good car that’s less than ten years old, with probably a decade or more of useful life left, if maintained correctly, be seen as environmentally friendly?
That won’t come anywhere near getting a good return on the cost of construction and the cost of scrappage combined.
What I think you mean is electric vehicles with lightweight construction, viable range from each charge, ie up to 800km, and easily replaced and recycled battery packs once efficiency drops below a certain percentage.
Scrapping the entire vehicle is madness, and people just couldn’t afford to do it.
I could maybe get £2000 scrappage for my ’51 Octavia, but where am I going to find the rest of the money to pay the £15-20k for a new car?
Are you going to give it to me? Is the government going to give it to me? I certainly can’t afford it.
I picked up a car yesterday, a BMW 520d that is three years old, in beautiful condition, well maintained, with a shade under 103,000 miles on the clock. Looked after, that car has at least another ten years life, and could easily treble its mileage, should it be scrapped at ten years of age?

We have Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV’s at work and what a load of shit they are. Poor build quality absolute crap mpg when on petrol and shit range on electric.

tom200 – Member
A Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV does 150 odd MPG

Honest John says 68mpg.

Honest John says 68mpg.

Mitsubishi recon 158! I don’t know anyone who gets better than 34, quite a difference. Also about 6 miles range on electric only, so if your commute is that short you would be better off cycling anyway.

Does anyone know how much a new battery is for one of these hybrids costs?

Mitsubishi recon 158!

NO THEY DON’T

They are obliged to do the official government test cycle, and that’s what the results say. They even say that on the website. They are NOT claiming that it will do 158mpg!

Bloody hell, people.

I don’t know anyone who gets better than 34, quite a difference. Also about 6 miles range on electric only,

I know one person with one, and in *hybrid* mode, he gets mid 60s. And the electric range is 30 miles.

You only need to spend a few seconds behind any vehicle over 10 years old to realise keeping old vehicles going is not the answer. I would still argue low cost, low weight functional transport frequently recycled as something better comes along is the way to go.

Don’t forget that the original diesels were designed to run on whatever crap combustion oil was thrown at them.
Yours SVO.

Why don’t VW, etc re-program the cars with the emissions/pollution algorithm that they used to fool us?

And I still think that we need roads czars in each city to reign back private car use.
If you ran a delivery company, would you place each parcel, destined for a city, in their own car.
Or would you just place them in as few vehicles as possible?

A lot of the problem is down to suburbanisation.
The cities are less densely populated, and people still need to travel into the cities, but the public transport infrastructure to permit this has been lacking.

Easy on the drama Grips. Have you seen the Explore PHEV page on Misubishi’s site? The big bold 156MPG? That’s not Mitsubishi protesting about the rubbish euro tests they’re forced to use.

They are obliged to do the official government test cycle, and that’s what the results say. They even say that on the website. They are NOT claiming that it will do 158mpg!
Bloody hell, people.

Your are right. Definitely not claiming 158mpg.

Have you read their website?

Ok fair point, it might be hidden a bit more than those other numbers, but there’s a FAQ answer that all but admits it’s bollocks.

Only the big bold letters. Are you telling me that figure taking up nearly 25% of the front page is misleading?

@Countzero if cars where just transport they would be much cheaper.

if cars where just transport they would be much cheaper.

Your wright, cars r just **** fodder 4 us fikko nobbas who no nuffink

Of course, on the other side of the coin, had you actually studied this whole problem as I have you would see that there isn’t a single simple solution. It’s actually quite complex and requires a complete change of attitudes and behaviours that have been ingrained (in the UK at least) over the last 40 odd years. We need a multi-modal public transport system that is convenient, reliable and afforable for those in high population density areas whilst in low density areas we need priavte transport solutions that cover the same bases. Some of that can be covered by legislation (but requires the backing of popular consent) whilst others require innovation.

Whoever called out suburbanisation – spot on, another problem.

sited beside motorways. Around here all the former railway marshaling yards are houses. Given the nimby shouting over 1 new high speed rail line through rural England good luck getting a national rail distribution network re-built in the suburbs.

Explain that no new railways = no goods in the shops. Especially if the limit on car speed was run ahead of this. It would require some proper planning though which our politicians are averse to.

Yup. A tactical error, that- a lot of the anti-carbon debate became about peak oil and lifespan, because it was seen as a persuasive argument to transition away. And it was persuasive- just that instead of persuading people that we should stop burning oil, it persuaded people that it’s OK to obtain it by any means from any location, because we’re running out.

Unfortunately, green activists don’t tend to understand economics – once necessity dictates enough demand then the economics of scale kick in and it becomes economically viable to extract materials that would have once been incredibly expensive. It’s the same drive that will one day see us mining asteroids and the moon – what did these people expect?

They expect a more thoughtful world that can grasp the damage being done. Their mistake is that the world is full of people that don’t (want to) care or understand, oblivious, not inteligent enough, or who think it’s a con.

Hmmmm so far we have very few real world alternatives (given the laws of physics they are very difficult to deliver) that don’t have massive price premiums (real and exploited for profit), require subsides to work, have hidden and not so hidden compromises of use, use massive amounts of embedded energy, require fossil fuel burning maintenance and parts, don’t deliver the power and/or endurance required with vested interest groups and evangelical early adopters distorting and lying about real world performance.

The whole energy situation is plagued with the same problems. Currently it’s all just band aids and moving the problem around, whilst the smug I’ve got a hybrid and walk to work, draw up punitive measures against the rest of the environmental terrorists 🙄 same old same old.

Aside from commuting, I think a lot of difference could be made if more people could be persuaded to replace short journeys by car with walking or cycling. Too many people think nothing of taking the car on a 2-mile round trip.
Not far from us, Next have built a large out of town store adjacent to a pre-existing M&S and Tesco with a massive car park. Next have built their own car park separated from the pre-existing one by a huge long fence, effectively forcing you to move your car if you want to visit both shops. Except I scrambled through the flowerbeds and over the fence
😀

Modern retal parks are a nightmare.. many a time I’ve scrambled through a bush because they’re so badly designed.. do they really expect people to drive from M&S to KFC when they’re only 50 feet apart as the crow flies?

we have very few real world alternatives

I think that’s the real problem. Lots of people out there who actually believe that and it becomes self fulfilling.

I was staying at a hotel in Charlotte NC and wanted to go to a little shop just over the highway. I asked the receptionist the easiest way to get there and it involved a 3 mile drive. She just couldn’t understand I wanted to walk and, to be fair to her, there was no way of getting there on foot without scaling two high fences and running across 6 lanes of traffic.

Mattyfez- it reminds me of being in the US on business and my hotel was separated from the shopping mall, restaurants etc, by a 50 m stretch of grass with a fence down the middle. No footpath by the very busy highway at the front. No path across the grass. They actually expect you to get a cab! Of course, I walked across the grass and scrambled over the fence. Must’ve looked a right idiot!

Madame would like a T6 Cali with a petrol engine, I’d like a 40kWh Zoe. We’ll stick with a petrol estate until a clear winner emerges.

Someone mentioned the petrol bills with a petrol T6 but if you can afford a Cali you won’t even notice the fuel bills on the bank statement. The battery hire and charging for the Zoe cost about the same as the petrol for a T6, buying an electric is a public health choice not a financial one.

Of course the production of batteries for hybrid electric vehicles is horrifically environmentally unfriendly not to mention the human cost involved in mining things like the lithium but given the mining and the ultimate disposal of the batteries takes place in third world countries we can all sit back and be smug about how ‘clean’ our vehicles are becoming.

Until they master hydrogen powered cars I’m sticking with petrol.

Only the big bold letters. Are you telling me that figure taking up nearly 25% of the front page is misleading? [/I]

Would it be better if it was on the side of a bus? 😉

Agree about the car park thing. There seems to be zero consideration for pedestrians in most new developments. Separate car park for everything making sprawling sites. Then the planners complain about someone’s extension not matching the mock Tudor Barret homes.

dannybgoode – Member

Until they master hydrogen powered cars I’m sticking with petrol.

This is one thing that I wonder about… I think awareness that there’s a transition away from carbon coming is now pretty good. But we seem to be doing it in little half-assed chunks. So frinstance, if we push people from diesel today, it’s largely going to be to petrol not to zero emissions. And if it’s to electric, it’s still a fairly flawed electric with its own private environmental catastrophe. (though, o’course, car-sized lithium batteries are very recyclable) Realistically it’ll lead to the scrapping of perfectly good cars and the production of more new cars, some considerable costs to individuals, for a short term air quality improvement but no progress- in fact, probably setbacks- towards the longer term goals. So where is the cutoff point? Incremental gains may not be worthwhile but we can hardly say “let’s do nothing til we’ve got the perfect answer”

These things have often run into unintended consequences. The one that always half-amused, half-appalled me was catalytic convertors for sports bikes- in the mid-2000s they rapidly became ubiquitous, and then a huge percentage of owners took them off and sold them to scrappies or stuck them in the garage, sometimes completely unused, and fitted race cans. Often the cats were specifically designed with easy replacement in mind. Total madness.