Motoring News

The UK’s independent advisory committee on climate change have recently published a report that recommends a national road pricing system as well as a significant hike in fuel duty and a separate vehicle excise duty. This is contrary to what a lot of people thought would happen if a road pricing system was proposed because it was argued that if such a plan was introduced the price would be offset by a reduction in fuel duty.

However the committee says

“From a carbon perspective, however, this would result in increased emissions (i.e. fuel consumption and emissions are potentially more responsive to fuel duty than to road pricing). From an emissions perspective, therefore, road pricing should be introduced as a complement to fuel duty rather than a substitute.”

The report also suggest a significant increase in road tax as well saying that higher fuel duties could be a powerful tool in encouraging purchase of lower carbon cars, they say

“A 10% increase in petrol prices through a fuel duty increase could result in a 4% decrease in fuel used per kilometre”

It’s the old chestnut again that seems to be the answer to all climate change problems, buy a new car. They say it will stimulate the economy, provide jobs for car factory’s, get everyone in safe cars and get everyone in cleaner cars. I say it will cause people to go into more debt trying to buy a brand new car (which is the reason we are in this economic mess anyway!) and it will mean more cars get scrapped instead of reused, aka recycling. A word they seem to love everywhere except in the car community, where recycling old cars is a bad thing and you just have to buy a new car. Everyone knows all new cars are made in factory’s of marshmallows and run on the power of dreams alone so obviously don’t cause any pollution.

The report gets even more baffling though because they also suggest a stronger enforcement of speed limits and want to lower the motorway limit to 60 mph, which apparently will help to reduce emissions. So I suppose they have checked that with every car ever made and found the average speed with the lowest emissions was 60 mph? Yeah I highly doubt it. I know for a fact that my car is between gears at 60 mph and is labouring in 5th and revving in 4th so will always be more polluting at 60mph  than the limit at the moment, 70 mph. To make things even worse they suggest the use of intelligent speed adaptation devices that would physically enforce these ridiculous speed limits. The term nanny state gets used all over the place now but….

The Committee on Climate Change call themselves an independent   advice to Government and if the government take their ludicrous ideas on board, which they would probably do because it would mean more money in their pockets, then the motorist could soon be in for a very hard time.

There are so many questions that this report brings up that I don’t think they have actually thought about. How would the massive rise in costs effect businesses? Both in the company car aspect and the businesses that exist within the motoring world. used car lots would go out of business because everyone would have to buy new, car rental and van hire companies would struggle to cope with having to get whole new fleets that met CO2 guidelines. The overall cost they would be able to hire cars or vans out would suddenly sky rocket and people would not be able to afford it as much therefore meaning, car rental businesses, especially those on a smaller scale would struggle to stay open.

To put it simply pricing people off the road would just result in a massive class divide with the rich still affording to swan around in Range Rover’s ( FYI most of the committee that wrote the report are either privileged Chief Exec types or Lord’s.) Whilst everyone else would struggle to afford a new ‘eco’ car and would either get in debt or be forced to walk everywhere, not to mention people who rely on a car for work would probably lose their jobs as a result of it all. But hey at least that would mean less congestion…

Fancy getting rid of your old banger? Well, now you can thanks to the government scrappage scheme, launched by Alistair Darling in his April budget in a bid to help the UK car industry. Any purchaser of a new car with a qualifying old vehicle (registered before 31st August 1999), will be entitled to a minimum £2,000 scrappage allowance. £1,000 will be provided by the government and the remaining grand will be given by the manufacturer. Some companies, like Citroen, are offering more on certain models.

The new scrappage scheme has been launched to help the struggling automotive industry recover from the recent (and ongoing) recession the UK is suffering from at the moment and to sell some of the many thousands of brand new and unsold cars we have scattered across the UKs unused airfields. Only time will tell if the UK scheme will be as popular and successfull as the German scheme launched recentlty, but with the major car firms getting fully behind the palns it seems there is a good chance of it having a positive effect on the UKs new car sales over the new 6 months.

With the announcement that the government are considering pay-as-go lanes on motorways, meaning that the wealthier motorist will be able to pay their way out of a traffic jam. So while you are sat in your Robin Reliant making little progress at 10 mph crawl, some git in a sports car can jump the queue and race off into the distance.

These contraversial plans would include stretches of the M1, M4, M5 and M27 amongst others. a fee of £5 would be levied per queue jump. The extra lanes would be provided by either utilising the existing hard shoulder or widening roads to incorporate more lanes. The government are planning to have this scheme up and running by 2014.

I have stumbled across this depressing graph showing the average prices of petrol and diesel starting in May 1999, all the way to May 2008. All on a day when the haulage firms are clogging up London in protest, and the next 2p increase on fuel tax is only a couple month away.