Shamed! UK luxury car buyers opting for higher-CO2 models in 2007
If you're in the mood to lash out at the rich, here's some argument ammunition, thanks to Clean Green Cars: CGC data shows that for the first half of 2007 luxury car buyers are buying higher CO2 vehicles when compared to the first half of 2006. CGC publisher Jay Nagley breaks it down why part of the problem lies with the British government's definitions of CO2 road-tax bands. As I'm woefully under-informed about UK road tax bands, I'll let CGC's press release clue us in:
The recent increase in Band G road tax (technically known as Vehicle Excise Duty or VED), has led to buyers trading down from models just over the threshold. That would be very good news - except the threshold is in the wrong place. Virtually all cars currently on sale (99.8%) emit somewhere between 100 g/km and 450 g/km CO2 - yet the top band is set at just 225 g/km. Therefore someone wanting a large off-roader is going to pay the same tax on a Land Rover Discovery TDV6 (244 g/km) as a Range Rover Supercharged (376 g/km). With no incentive to downsize, luxury car buyers are actually buying higher polluting cars in the first half of 2007 than they did in the equivalent period of 2006.
Nagley is suggesting a new Band H set at around 275 g/km to give luxury car buyers a reason to take CO2 emissions into account when they're shopping. As Nagley concludes, "luxury car buyers decide they may as well be hung for a sheep as for a lamb." A financial incentive to opt for a car somewhat lower on the CO2 scale is good news even for the wealthy.
Read the full report here.
[Source: Clean Green Cars]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Joe stalin 10:35AM (7/31/2007)
Dear GOD!! The F**king Ludites are everywhere! Green = Red.
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Paul 8:25PM (7/31/2007)
The UK Government has a benefits tax on cars related to the original price and the fuel consumption. It makes big cars very expensive. People are buying smaller cars so this saves a small amount of fuel. The really big win for the UK Government is to drive Jaguar and Landrover out of business. This will have knock on effects in the UK economy that will save huge amounts of fuel in the UK as industrial base shrinks and products are imported and the people who once made these things sit at home and watch day time TV. It is all about jealously not the environment and the fact that the British Civil Service hate and despise UK enterprise. The UK is no longer a civilized place to do business and people are walking away.
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Paul 8:50PM (7/31/2007)
How much energy is really saved by smaller cars? If people drive smaller cars, then they have more money to spend - where does that money go? Perhaps they drive more miles, or take a second holiday by plane, or buy a bigger house, a second home or heat or cool their house more. If I lived in the UK, a nice, extremely well heated swimming pool might make up for the fact the jealous little Hitlers try to stop me driving a Range Rover. In time the little Hitlers will cotton on, but their fix will be to ban swimming pools. They just can't believe that ordinary people are fit to make their own decisions. Already, for many in Brown's utopia, houses, schools, hospitals and jobs are allocated 'according need.' It is getting to the point where only a minority will have any real freedom to choose how they will spend their life. It is time to recogise that civilisation is over in the UK and unlikely to return. Smart people are already leaving in droves. If you are British, rich and sucessful in the UK in 2007 you are made as welcome by Brown's socialists the the Goverment in Berlin made a substantial proportion of their successful citizens in the 1930s. Sadly, many of these Socialist biggots haven't learn't a thing from history and they are antisemitic too.
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