New Zealand looks at higher scrappage rate to improve emissions, fuel economy
New Zealand wants to improve the overall fuel economy of the nation's vehicles, and scrapping older vehicles is part of the plan. Automakers say lawmakers need to take action rather than continuing to review and discuss more options. Besides restricting the age of imported used vehicles, officials are considering a sales-weighted fuel-economy standard. Trying to adapt fuel-economy standards to the used-vehicle industry might be difficult, so a rolling 7-year age limit to all imported vehicles is favored by many. Critics say more efforts are also needed to increase the scrappage rate of older vehicles, possibly by offering incentives. Officials are also struggling with an exemption for large trucks.[Source: car.co.nz]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Cheezedog420 10:57PM (10/15/2006)
I don't quite get what are they doing. Are they trying to create a throw away car economy in New Zealand, or am reading too deep into this?
In any case... If they are creating a throw away car economy in New Zealand, it's a terrible idea. Sure driving a fairly old car is bound to polute the enviroment some... but it's going to polute the enviroment so much more to recycle the materials of a automobile back into something else.
Yes, you polute the enviroment just making a car. And you polute the enviroment twice as much to remake a car. You don't stick old rusty parts into car factory, and get a new car out the other end... The metal is old, rusted, and impure, so it must be pureified by heat, and new metal treatments.
The thing to remember is, it takes lots of heat to melt plastics, metals, and rubbers to be remolding, and shaped into a parts. The energy that is required to make that heat is rairly a green source. In most metal's cases it is created using coal, and coke to smelt the metal into a liquid form.
It must be granted that since the metal of a car is much more pure then that of raw pig, and does not require digging into the earth for, that smelting old car parts will more enviromentaly friendly then digging up new iron ore... but one still must take into consideration that it still will be smelted using coal energy.
On top of that, you must consider all the energy that must be spent moving around the part from scrap metal, to remelted iron ingote, and all the way back to a new car, (if it becomes that of course.)
This is not vary enviromentaly friendly on New Zealand's part to take into consideration.
Even if a car from New Zealand is not smelted down after 7 years, it still will be more valueable as old oil burner then recycleable materials. In all likelyhood the same boats that brings the cars to New Zealand will be used to start importing old New Zealand cars out to poorer countrys for resale.
This just exports the polution elsewhere. Or is this a plan on the automakers part to improve productivity of there auto sales in New Zealand? Make sure the boat is fully loaded on the trip in, and out.
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