The self-defeating VRT changes

pburns

Like everyone else I've been busy poring over the possible price changes which will take place in July and wondering if any tasty motors will come within price range. In general I think the move from a CC based tax system to one based on empirically-measurable emmissions is a good one.

However listening to the greens the other night rabbiting on about how the turnover of the 'national fleet' over the next 6 years (to lower CO2 cars) would have huge benefits to the environment I had to laugh.

It's bollocks!

There seems to be a big impetus to push us into newer, 'greener' cars yet the most environmentally friendly thing a motorist can do is buy a car and run it into the ground - based on the fact that more energy and natural resources are used in the manufacture of cars than takes place during the lifecycle of the vehicle. And even if the VRT changes are going to be largely positive for new-car buyers don't think the government are not going to find another way to recoup the loss of revenue...

Scrapyards are full of perfectly servicable cars yet we're constantly hassled to re-cycle household waste. Can anyone else see the utter hyprocricy?? :eek:

mike65

True, and some of the old arguments regarding safety dont hold much water these days either - a 10 year old saloon is still pretty safe and probably quite clean running if looked after. But thats not good enough for the finger waggers for whom the car is basicly evil and so can never be clean or safe enough.

Mike.

Esel

Bangernomics ftw!

colm_mcm

What will be interesting is if we do all change to more economical cars, and the net take on VRT revenue goes down, will they increase all the VRT bands to compensate?

you bet they will.

Gumbo

colm_mcm wrote: »

What will be interesting is if we do all change to more economical cars, and the net take on VRT revenue goes down, will they increase all the VRT bands to compensate?

you bet they will.

and also increase the yearly tax rates too :mad:

E92

I'd say what they'll do is lower the CO2 bands,by this I mean if at the moment a car pollutes 226 g/km or more, it gets 36% VRT, in a couple of years time, don't be surprised if a car with 211-226 g/km also qualifies for 36% VRT(and €2k road tax as well). An ever increasing number of petrol cars are getting direct injection and other advanced technologies, there are more and more cars available with diesel engines than ever before, lots of hybrids, including BMW, Merc, Peugeot, even Porsche have hybrids on the way, even diesel hybrids(Peugeot), there are the likes of BMW's EfficientDynamics, and VAGs Greenline/Ecomotive/Bluemotion/e models, Ford's ECOnetic etc all on the way, so the emissions of cars are going to fall hugely in the coming years, and the Government are definitely going to require lower emissions from cars to get into the cheaper VRT categories, sub 120 g/km cars are few and far between now, but in in 1 or 2 years time, there will be plenty of them around, so I'm sure the Government will move the goalposts, and require that cars will have to pollute less than say 100 g/km to get 14% VRT in a few years time.

JHMEG

pburns wrote: »

Scrapyards are full of perfectly servicable cars yet we're constantly hassled to re-cycle household waste. Can anyone else see the utter hyprocricy?? :eek:

One of my best mates owns a breakers yard... in the 8 years that I've been visiting the yard I've only ever seen maybe 3 cars that were there just cos they were old.

While I take your point, for the sake of human health, and lung cancer in particular, it is better to get all our existing fleet of diesels replaced. Like smoking, every single current model would illegal if this was in California.

E92

The Government should have made DPFs mandatory for diesels, since we'll all be buying them come July.(or they should have said if a diesel wants the new VRT rates, then it will have to be fitted with a DPF).

Victor

pburns wrote: »

It's bollocks!

Wrong, or rather, not quite. Let us say John's commute produces 2kg of CO2 per day and changing to a more efficient car would change that to 1kg per day.

Let us say producing a new car take 2,000kg of CO2 (I don't know what the exact figure would be, but thats a generous amount). It would take 2,000 days for John to get into a carbon neutral position. Thats it sorted in about 6 years.

You do have a point where the change in CO2 production would be neglibible (or an actual increase) compared to the amount of CO2 involved in production.

More in the FF book than the Green book, all the fuel CO2 is made in Ireland whereas the car manufacture CO2 happens elsewhere.