Older vehicles face £10 'toxicity' charge in central London

[Bear]

London driving, meh. Park at High Barnet/Uxbridge, tube.

 

Having been poking new car things a lot lately, I noticed the /actual common sense EV/ - the Mercedes B-Class EV - is £33K. About the same price as a mid-spec B220d auto. Or many of the executive/posh cars people run about in these days.

 

If I could have leased one for as little as my new car (list price, £31K) and had to commute, rather than long runs in mind... yes. Absolutely.

 

Of course it just looks like a normal B-class, so no "look at my green status" in Waitrose like you get with a Tesla, Zoe or i3...

[dieselnutjob]

If we are serious about emissions and air quality then people should be using the best method of transport for the circumstances.

 

So in central London that would be something with zero NOx emissions, so an EV.

 

For the annual holiday that would be a diesel estate or MPV, rather than a Boeing 737.

 

This implies that people should be allowed to have multiple cars and pay for the emissions that they produce.

 

This then further implies that road tax should be scrapped as it taxes ownership rather than use.

[Fabergé Greggs]

If we are serious about emissions and air quality then people should be using the best method of transport for the circumstances.

 

So in central London that would be something with zero NOx emissions, so an EV.

 

For the annual holiday that would be a diesel estate or MPV, rather than a Boeing 737.

 

This implies that people should be allowed to have multiple cars and pay for the emissions that they produce.

 

This then further implies that road tax should be scrapped as it taxes ownership rather than use.

I see your point but then you've got the environmental impact of manufacturing 2 cars for everyone versus one. I do think that taxing use is a good idea though..

[Inspector Morose]

Assuming that the diesel cars will have, on average, five people inside them while going on holiday, that's still 43 diesel cars extra on the roads instead of one plane. The total fuel used would probably be roughly the same for somewhere like to Spain and back. I think the emissions augment would only stack up if every car is euro 5 or higher and that's discounting the other emissions cars produce. Jets, for all of their naysayers, are pretty efficient machines.

What about a 747? There's plenty of those ferrying families to far flung destinations. That would mean at least 100 extra cars on the roads. I'm not convinced of that argument.

EVs in cities? Yes, I do agree on that one but that means some people buying two cars instead of one, even if their need for a long distance car is only a perceived one.

[anonymous user]

Whilst accepting that jet aeroplanes are good at what they're good at, they are of no use to me as they don't go anywhere that I want to go and the nearest place to catch one is some distance away.

I like the idea of EV's, however renting/car sharing one is unlikely to be of much use as I doubt that you will be allowed to take a dog in one with you; probably won't be allowed to smoke/mainline heroin in them either.

[forddeliveryboy]

Assuming... probably be roughly... euro 5 or higher... Yes.... but

Mebbe. But planes represent a massively growing amount of pollution, expected to be 70% greater in 2020 than as recently as 2005 and around 500% worse halfway through the century. For every gallon of pollution spewed by some old crock on the ground, there's twice the damage done by burning the same gallon of fossil fuel up in the sky.

 

When you think about it, air transport is often the daft stuff in life, whether Nigel Farage flying back and forth to Brussels, businessmen taking a freebie and getting one over their colleagues stuck in an M5 on the M4, VW spare parts being flown in to keep customers marginally less miserable or Brits flying to Spain to annoy the locals and add to the NHS cancer bill.

 

Important stuff mostly comes by rail and ship, which are many times less damaging to our planet. But we're all* in that daft mindset where copying American habits is seen as virtuous.