mart360

Once again its open season on motorists, specifically 4X4 owners..


http://cars.msn.co.uk/carnews/suvsfeb06/

and everytime you get the oppertunity to get rid of them, you vote em back in...

how much more do you want to be removed from your wallets before you decide enough??

And an open admission that fuel prices will rise!!!

wtf

Mart

v8voodoo

Watch this space.

First it was smoking....

Now they're chipping away at motorists again.

Won't be long before modiying your car is against the law.

B*stards.

Wurzel

iTrader: (1)

Correct me if I am wrong but do trees and green plants not breath in Co2 and breath out oxygen?????

So if we cut our Co2 output then the green stuff will stop breathing it in, hence stop breathing out oxygen so in the long run we will all die of suffocation due to lack of oxygen!!!

So surely it is in our human interest to polute the air with as much Co2 as humanly possible

fast bloke

missed a bit about cars using up oxygen wurzel - otherwise you have a flawless plan

Dracoro

What you mean to say, is that the more C02 there is, the more trees we need and what are we cutting down much of? The trees etc. can only turn so much co2 into oxygen.

Anyway, it's mainly pointless whilst we have big planes flying everywhere that do far more pollution.

Whether done rightly or wrongly, for the right reasons or not, the REAL reason behind all of this is money. Motorists can and will afford to run cars so they will and the govt. can add to the cost (which, incidentally, it's cheaper to own and run a car now than it was many years ago) at will. I don't see people not driving places. On top of that, the airlines are a more formidable 'enemy' so they won't tax their fuel.

Believe it or not, the govt. WANT you to own big SUVs, gas guzzlers etc. as they can use the 'environmental argument' to charge you more and more. They WON'T like it if everyone bought Prius's as they'd lose a fortune.

Wurzel

iTrader: (1)

So in that case the car is a perfect example of the circle of life and causes no body any harm!!!

It uses petrol that mixes with oxygen and gives of Co2, the tree breathes the Co2 and gives off oxygen that the car uses to generate more Co2 for the tree to breath, and on and on and on so in actuall fact we need cars to continue the circle of life, in the same way a human breathes in oxygen and breathes out Co2 and 15% of the oxygen they breathed in in the first place! so as long as we have humans, cars and trees there will never ever be a shortage of oxygen!!! and the Co2 levels are proportional to the amount of oxygen used anyway so what is the problem???

Carbon Monoxide on the other hand is a different kettle of fish and I have no answer to that one

Paul3446

I think all SUVs should have to pay double road tax. I'm sick of them!

Dracoro

MPV's as well I assume?

Tripple'O G

Getting rid of suv's isn't a bad idea though as they're normally driven by 5 foot tall house wives that push the seat right up to the steering wheel and need a booster seat to see over it, don't even do the job they were meant to do (4x4? don't make me laugh) or are liked by dealers cause it makes 'em feel hard innit....

53

iTrader: (41)

Cars are such an easy target. What about better building regulations for new build houses like triple glazing or solar roofs. All these millions of new houses being built will leek far more wasted energy than worrying about 4x4's. You can't generalise about 4x4's either, my MY00 honda mpv FWD only did 26.9mpg combined !!! That is less than the Honda 4x4 CRV - go figure!

v8voodoo

I am too, with the school run blocking the pavements and roads every weekday, BUT once they've done the SUV's and got rid of them, then no doubt it will be on to those pesky high performance cars that murder the environment and innocent people....

Dracoro

If there were no SUV's, there'd still be the same people blocking the pavements and roads, just in different cars that's all. The real issue isn't being adressed is it? Car sharing, school buses, walking/cycling, parking a few streets away and walking the last 100yds etc..

Paul3446

I propose:
SUV £300 (BMW X5 £500)
Above 3.0 litre £200
1.5 - 3.0 litre £150
below 1.5 £100
Classix silver Subaru Impreza £25

Dracoro

Incidentally, how would you define a SUV? (if you're gonna make this legislation you need definitions).

kingofturds

iTrader: (1)

Ban em, school mums in **** of great 4x4 s are evil, evil i tells you

drumsterphil

iTrader: (1)

I can think of no other industry that has made steps to cut emissions like the car industry.

Getting fed up of this obsession with CO2 figures - compared to what mother-nature throws out per year, mans efforts are puny in comparison. Stop picking on the motorist and start going after the aircraft industry (or all those lovely Chinese coal-fired power stations!).

Unfortunately, this country's infrastructure is such that we have no other option but to use cars - public transport is a joke, and will always be a joke irrespective of how much money is thrown at it. Teh government know this and will continue to charge, charge and charge some more.

Paul3446

There would be a test to define SUVs. If it drove accross a muddy field and got bogged down, it's almost certainly an SUV.

kingofturds

iTrader: (1)

Compared to the tens of millions of tons of co2 spewed out spewed out by volcanos each year car emissions are the least of our worries. If these ******* do gooder mp's want to cut harmful emissions they should keep their fooking bull**** spouting mouths shut

Lets see if they put their money where their mouths are and opt for the Toyota Prius as their new run arounds, or a Jaguar limousine

Diablo

Your classic Scoob's emissions are on a par with many SUV's...

unclebuck

For once I'm (almost) in agreement. Nothing to do with CO2 emissions of course, but it's about time the real profligate wasters in our society were made to feel a bit of pain for their actions. It might wake them up to the realities of what they are and what they do.

speedking

The figure of 250g/km has obviously been selected so that new Impreza WRX

are not caught by the proposed new rules

Anyway the total number of miles travelled is far more significant. Doing four times the miles in a car that pollutes half as much is bad news. I bet the annual mileage of a lot of these school run 4x4s is low, so they are not that much of a problem in total. The tax should be shifted onto fuel to make it fair for all, and to encourage high mileage users to consider alternative forms of transport (e.g. cheap flights ).

AndyC_772

iTrader: (2)

The tax already is on fuel!

CO2 production and fuel economy are directly linked: Carbon out = carbon in.

Whatever the argument about the exact level, fuel tax is at least fair. Drive twice as far, you produce twice the CO2 and pay exactly twice as much tax. Drive a car that does twice the mpg, you produce half the CO2 and pay exactly half as much.

The suggestion of putting up road tax for cars that produce over a particular amount of CO2/kg is silly and pointless - owners of those cars are already paying more fuel tax per mile.

Do the maths: compare amount of fuel tax paid over 10000 miles in a car that does 20mpg vs one that does 40mpg. With fuel tax at (roughly) 50p/litre, the 40mpg car incurs £568 in tax against £1136 for the 20mpg car. Do they really think people don't realise how expensive fuel is and can't do these simple sums?

Leslie

Interesting to see how many ministers opted for the Jaguar choice on ministerial cars, for security reasons of course!

Les

OllyK

Same applies to all the eco friendly cars as well.

OllyK

And there lies part of the problem I suspect and will end up netting other non SUV vehicles as well.

Ennoch

So the people that use 4x4's for their proper purpose will get stuffed by the same rule intended to catch the bints that drive their kids the half mile to school every morning in their 4.4l X5? Wonderful. I am considering a Discovery to replace my current car (although a WRX estate still ranks highly), the reason? So that i don't destroy my car as I am doing currently getting and out of dirt tracks etc. The Discovery can handle it with ease. I am not the sort of city person that drives it to be cool, but rather to save destroying road cars.

They also miss the point that a large engine in car A is going to be better than a small engine up to a point. I currantly drive a V6 vectra. It does the same fuel economy as the 1.6. Yet my car won't be stressed nearly as much keeping up with the flow of traffic as the 1.6, the 1.6 will be working further outwith it's optimium efficiency range. So in real world driving my car is probably polluting about the same amount as the 1.6...yet no doubt the 1.6 will be classed as the clean one.

They are forgetting about the millions of cars around the world that probably do 15mpg, drink oil like it's going out of fashion and are generally badly cared for...therefore a really bad source of pollution. Places like India/China etc have cars like these in their millions. Add into that theCoal power stations in china etc and you see that improving vehicles in the same stringent way they have done over the last 15 years is not a good spend of money. The law of diminishing returns begins to apply and we end up spending lots for little gain where the same money spent in china etc would bring about a marked improvement in pollution levels.

And do you see the ministers turning up in a 1.1 Fiat Seicento to reduce the amount of congestion caused? Do you bugger, they turn up in their 5.7 litre stretched XJ Jag.

AndyC_772

iTrader: (2)

Actually the thermodyamic efficiency of an engine increases with throttle opening, which is why small engines tend to be more efficient than big ones. Suppose it requires 50bhp to keep a given car travelling at a given speed, the smaller engine has its throttle open wider than the big one, so it runs more efficiently and consumes less fuel.

There are other effects, of course. A small engine tends to require shorter gear ratios than a big one, so at a given speed it's revving higher and therefore incurs greater friction and pumping losses. Also small cylinders lose heat faster than large ones.

Typically, though, small engines do burn less fuel and therefore produce less CO2 per mile than big ones.

dpb

indeed and all those diatoms in the sea will go without....


having said that i think we should heavily tax 4x4 mothers collecting children from school...

Ennoch

Fair point. What I was getting at though is that engine size does not necessarily dictate the pollution that it put's out. This all pales into insignificance though when you look at the older cars on the road. Most modern cars are very clean, even a big V8 X5.

Paul3446

This tax is purely about revenue raising, they just hide behind the green argument to get more people onside.

Why don't all new houses have solar panels, why is there no tax on aviation fuel, why build half a million houses in the south when we're running out of water. etc. etc.