Yes they want us to buy brand new green cars instead so we have to get rid of our cheap bangers So we are supposed to pay out for a new car and if we don't, get taxed off the road The present goverments road tax hike for post 2001 lager cars was about as popular as rat poison and now the EU are proposing some thing like the same thing.
This measure is supposed to help car makers back into profitability and they will be getting loans to develope these new green cars. But will we be getting any credit to buy them? and if we do at what price in terms of interest rates?
Come back Guy Falkes. All is forgiven we have arranged a nice little trip to the EU Commission for you

Hmm. I don't really want to get into debt just for the sake of buying a new car.

I believe they have been trying to do this for years and any opportunity to make buy new especially on spurious Green grounds. The fact is most people like us who buy big engined cars won't do that many miles in them.

It's far better for the planet to throw away our old working cars in landfill and borrow money from the crooked banks to buy new plastic ones that do 5mpg more.
The cost to the environment of building a new car is huge - sorry very small - honest - especially electric ones with their batteries that don't contain toxic compounds that are extracted using highly polluting mining techniques.
New cars are so much simpler that old ones and so with developments in material technology this also means they will be lighter, more reliable and last for 30 years or more with just basic maintainance.
It's also beneficial to the UK to support the car industries of Korea, France and Germany.

Surely you can see the benefits?

Yep makes huge sense as I've been banging on to everyone for some time now.

http://www.bangernomics.com/Bangertorial.html

For my rant on the subject and also the mainstream media who are rather scared of the subject

One thing magazines won't do is upset their advertisers. Witness the launch of duff online motoring magazine imotor who, to generate interest in their new magazine, did a survey to find the worst car ever made. Not surprisingly, all of the manufacturers on the check list were defunct, and the list even included several cars that were last sold 30 years ago!

In any case, one wonders how long free internet magazines and newspapers will survive as publishers struggle for revenue.

Ask the publishers of Auto Trader, who have seen a steady decline in sales of the weekly issue as buyers turn to the internet for a better choice of cars covering a larger area, all for free.

Anyway, back to the plot.

I had a stand at the Hampshire Pageant of Motoring last weekend and we were next to a company that sourced and offered information about electric cars http://www.batteryvehiclesociety.org.uk/wordpress/. They had a huge diesel generator chugging all bloody day long just to give the electric Citroen Berlingo enough power for its 50 mile journey home.

I can see the potential in urban areas, but for those of us who actually enjoy cars we will be looking elsewhere.

For now, electric cars seem to be a miserable experience.

Kev.

As usual Kevin you are spot on. As for your magazine rant I agree that no one knows where it is all going and yes saying an Allegro is a bad buy is a terifically easy and stupid target plus they had a stupid online game where you dented one. Ahh the days of a truly independent Car magazine which really did bite the hand that fed it.

I was also a member of the BVS because I am genuinely interested in alternatives and anything to stop paying a stupid amount per week on petrol. But I left as I could see very quickly that batteries were never going to be the answer. Please tell me more people about that generator it is absolutely hilarious.

Keep up the great posts.

Stupid £250 purchase coming in the next few weeks

J

I wish I'd taken a picture of the generator now! But we were so pissed off with it thrumming away all day.

The guy who organised the stand asked me why I don't use public transport and I told him that as I can afford to run two cars, why should I? Secondly, a car offers something that no other form of public transport can offer, and that's privacy.

He said that's the first time he's ever heard that reason.

As for the environment argument, it gets wheeled out too often by environMENTALISTS and the government as a reason why we have to change, and it's getting to the stage where the words climate change have become just two words and no one cares much for what they mean. I don't, and even Al Gore has gone quiet lately!

Electric cars have been around almost as long as the car itself, but no one has been able to make the battery durable enough for our needs on the road. The main weakness of battery power is that it still relies on fossil fuels for its energy.

Even if fuel cost £2 a litre, I'd still pay it.

Kev.

It would have made a great pic, but it is their holier than thou attitude which really gets you. If you remember it used to be the hole in the ozone layer which mysteriously got repaired. Climate change is the biggest tax con and the other agenda is control, governments hate people moving around if they don't know what they are up to. My privacy is absolutely precious to me and I leave at stupid times of the morning to get to places to do work and then come home again. Like many others if I relied on public transport I'd be stuffed.