Hybrids give Taxpayers 1m Bill

[Biker1]

Nearly £1million of public money is being “wasted” by the Govern­ment on hybrid vehicles, it was claimed this week.

Campaign group the TaxPayers’ Alliance says such “green token­ism” has little environ­mental benefit, and the Govern­ment could save £888,000 by switching its 110 hybrids to 1.4-litre petrol Ford Focus cars.

According to the TPA’s figures, the dual-power Toyota Prius is £8,555 more than the Ford and the Honda Civic Hybrid £4,163 extra. Both cars are on the fleet. Policy analyst Matthew Sinclair said: “The money would be better spent on planting trees. There’s only a marginal difference in carbon emis­sions saved from switching to hybrids. But trees breathe in 730kg of carbon dioxide over a lifetime.”

The TPA said the money saved by switching to the Focus could buy 74,028 trees, which would remove more than 54 million kilogrammes of CO2 from the air. Sinclair added: “You would have to drive a hybrid car nearly six million miles before the carbon saving would equal that achieved by planting these trees.”

What do you think?

[Kremmen]

I spotted that earlier.

I suppose it's the additional cost of the vehicles v "the environment" for those that believe that cars are doing that much damage.

[Greedy]

Yeah, received the same in my Automotive News Email this Am.

I think it's a valid point looking at the facts alone - especially when it can be argued that if you spent the difference between the 2 on trees every time you bought a car then the inpact is even greater. However is the point of the concils move ( as in USA) not just CO2 but also city air polution, fosil fuel usage and the encouragement of other to use more envirometally friendly options - leading by example which we seem to ahve forgotten how to do in the UK. We all seem to hanker on abotu CO2 but there are the other issues as well.

However the price difference for hybrids is always going to be the issue but I guess that until the OEM's have the capacity to make larger volumes then they want the price to be kept high (irespective of manufacturign costs) to keep the market small and until the market proves it's self and justifies the investment needed to reduce the price to a normal car level.

And anyway - why does it have to be a 1.4 Focus - surely anyone with enviromental concerns should be suggesting the purchase of cars built in the UK which cause less CO2 during the delviery process than cars from mainland EU plants - OH! the 1.4 Honda Civic would do nicely.




And Andy, I just noticed your location - will be down in Witham in a few weeks time so will have to pop in and see if you can do me a better deal on replacing my wife's Jazz with a new one. Local dealer not impressive even with putting my company business their way too.

[Biker1]

I welcome all deals with open arms, it will be a pleasure.

See you soon.

Regards

[sectionswitch]

I might be wrong here but the whole idea of using low emission vehicles to is change the way we think about our energy usage?

You would get a benefit from planting trees, however thats just a short term carbon sink and isnt a long term solution.

I've never been a fan of the 'carbon sink' theory, its too flawed and is more like a 'get out of jail free card' for carbon emissions, it doesnt change our overall psychology of energy usage one bit.

Saying that, Nuclear power stations generally emit more carbon per kilowatt than gas, oil and coal power stations .

Its all the associated industry that ramp up the emissions.