Drivers of luxury SUVs get €3.5m in 'green' tax breaks

probe

(Title = Headline taken from today's Irish Times)

Hybrids are a con (almost). Well engineered diesel cars are far more environmentally friendly. (Neither should be used in cities - good quality planning and public transport (eg Luas and express urban electric trains together with connecting shuttle buses) are the fastest, cleanest solution and lead to surprisingly breathable fresh urban air (compare metro-free Zurich's air quality with any other city you might care to pick in the un-environmentally friendly EU).

Environmental pollution/energy consumption comparison:

Lexus hybrid RX400h

Fuel consumption urban: 9.1 l/100 km
Fuel consumption mixed: 7.6 l/100 km
Euro fuel economy rating: F
CO2 emissions : 192 g/km
HC emissions: 0.010 g/km
Exhaust emissions: Euro IV

Performance:
Top speed 200 km/h
0-100 km/h 7.6 sec


BMW 530d

Fuel consumption urban: 5.2 l/100 km
Fuel consumption mixed: 6.7 l/100 km
Euro fuel economy rating: E
CO2 emissions : 179 g/km
HC emissions: 0g/km
Diesel particulate emissions: 0.001 g/km
Exhaust emissions: Euro IV


Performance:
Top speed 250 km/h
0-100 km/h 6.8 sec


.probe

mike65

I think the penny is dropping finally for those who thought hybrids were the way to get a decent nights sleep with a clear conscience.

The only thing I'll point to in those figuers is the lack of weight comparison.

Mike.

RedPlanet

On a related note:
GM likely to launch new plug-in hybrid
http://www.cnn.com/2006/AUTOS/11/10/bc.autos.gm.reut/index.html
:rolleyes:
It's exactly what they were saying in "Who Killed the Electric Car", which highly, highly recommend watching.
The feckers killed the project in the 90's just to sell more large SUV's!!

probe

mike65 wrote:

The only thing I'll point to in those figuers is the lack of weight comparison.

Mike.

Yes, the 109 kW (650 volt) generator, not to mention 173 kW of front and rear electric motors in the Lexus (on top of a 3,3 litre petrol engine) must weigh a few hundred kgs and use a lot of energy to transport these components around during the life of the vehicle.

The alternator in the BMW is a more lightweight 2,38 kW 12 volt job.

Personally I’d prefer weight to be used for safety features like a strong body which BMW and other German car manufacturers generally do (and the Japanese don’t).

It seems to me that there is still a prejudice against diesel cars in some circles in gov.ie which presumably dates back to the bad old days before the efficient PM10 filter was developed.

Over 60% of private cars in France are now diesel fuelled.

Ireland (which has almost no large scale heavy industry to speak of) spews out 11 tonnes of CO2 per capita – France 6.


.probe

piraka

probe wrote:

Ireland (which has almost no large scale heavy industry to speak of) spews out 11 tonnes of CO2 per capita – France 6.

France has nuclear power.

bonkey

mike65 wrote:

The only thing I'll point to in those figuers is the lack of weight comparison.

Is it relevant? Size might be (particularly either cabin or boot space), but weight?

If you were shown two equivalent-sized cars, and were told one beat the other hands down on efficiency, emissions, performance, and pretty much everything else, would you really be thinking "yeah, but how much do they weigh?"

optiplexgx270

bonkey wrote:

Is it relevant? Size might be (particularly either cabin or boot space), but weight?

If you were shown two equivalent-sized cars, and were told one beat the other hands down on efficiency, emissions, performance, and pretty much everything else, would you really be thinking "yeah, but how much do they weigh?"

think you missed the point completly there bonkey.

piraka

I can see bonkey's point. Does that mean I'm missing the point too.

prospect

I see bonkeys point also.

I also wonder why people have a hang-up on the physical size of avehicle (in green terms).
If it is economical, has no dependency on fossil fuels, and has little or no dangerous emmissions, then what difference does it make if it is bigger or heavier?

EDIT:
Oh, and back to the OP.
I drive a standard diesel car, and in terms of economy and emmissions, it wipes the floor with these new hybrids. Yet I get nothing back for it. It is a stupid situation.

bonkey

prospect wrote:

I drive a standard diesel car, and in terms of economy and emmissions, it wipes the floor with these new hybrids. Yet I get nothing back for it. It is a stupid situation.

Its something I've always been asking. People started threads complaining that there was no incentive to buy hybrids, and I always wondered why a hybrid that gets X miles to the gallon should be subsidised, whereas a non-hybrid that gets X+Y (where Y >= 0) wouldn't be.

Which leads one to conclude that subsidisation should be on fuel efficiency, right? The problem is that people won't accept that at whatever-horrendous-price-it-is-now that fuel efficiency is a subsidy all in itself. They want a double-plus-good situation where they get given money directly for choosing a solution which saves them money in the first place.

GO the opposite direction, and suggest that increasing tax on fuel will act as an incentive for fuel efficiency, and you'll hear complaints too. Apparently, even though lowering consumption is a good thing, punishing people for not lowering consumption is a bad thing. I dunno...its some "I did good, I want a reward" mentality, where "not being worse off than I was, unlike those who didn't do good" isn't a reward.

jc

air

The urban fuel consumption figure for the 530D looks incorrect, the urban figures are normally higher than mixed.
The normal results would be Urban Consumption > Mixed Consumption > Extra Urban Consumption.

Otherwise I agree that current hybrids are a waste of time but hopefully they will lead to improvements in technology that can be used in fully electric cars down the road - excuse the pun.

mike65

Hydrogen fuel cells are the only real option, crack that nut and we're home free, anything else has innate drawbacks.

http://www.kpua.net/news.php?id=9873

http://www.e4engineering.com/Articles/296864/BAE%20Systems%20joins%20fuel%20cell%20bus%20program.htm

Mike.

probe

air wrote:

The urban fuel consumption figure for the 530D looks incorrect, the urban figures are normally higher than mixed.
The normal results would be Urban Consumption > Mixed Consumption > Extra Urban Consumption.

You are correct. I was taking it out of a Spanish publication and messed up on my translation / copying from the tiny print!

530d:

9.4 l/100 km urban
5.2 l/100 km extra-urban
6.7 l/100 km mixed

.probe

air

mike65 wrote:

Hydrogen fuel cells are the only real option, crack that nut and we're home free, anything else has innate drawbacks.

I think figuring out a way to produce hydrogen that results in a net gain in energy is the big problem. To the best of my knowledge all current hydrogen production techniques use a lot more energy to produce the gas than is contained in the end product.

probe

mike65 wrote:

Hydrogen fuel cells are the only real option, crack that nut and we're home free, anything else has innate drawbacks.

Quite. I suspect the cars are very close to relatively large scale production. The electric motor / fuel cell ones will be very cheap to produce once the development work has been completed. (almost akin to pharmaceuticals and software).

The hydrogen "gas station" infrastructure will take some time to develop. Perhaps it is a good application for wind and other energy sources that vary in output due to weather changes? (e.g. wind to hydrogen, wave to hydrogen etc).

We might even end up with the fuel cell car sending power back into the electricity grids while it is parked at home/work etc. The nation's fleet of fuel cell cars might end up as a giant storage battery for variable wind energy!

.probe

emaherx

I wouldn't be to quick to put down Hybrid engine's. The problem with the lexus is it use's a fairly large petrol engine. I read somwhere recentl that GM are going to release a Diesel electric Hybrid which would make more sense.

And a Diesel hybrid running on vegtable oil, would that be geeen enough?

prospect

bonkey wrote:

I dunno...its some "I did good, I want a reward" mentality, where "not being worse off than I was, unlike those who didn't do good" isn't a reward.

I see your point, however;

If I am going out to buy a new car, and budget is high on the priority list, A prius is more affordable than most equivalently sized diesel saloons, due to the Government Hybrid Incentive.

So, for this reason, punters are more likely to purchase the less efficient machine because our government is incentivising them to do so.

probe

emaherx wrote:

I wouldn't be to quick to put down Hybrid engine's. The problem with the lexus is it use's a fairly large petrol engine. I read somwhere recentl that GM are going to release a Diesel electric Hybrid which would make more sense.

And a Diesel hybrid running on vegtable oil, would that be geeen enough?

While a well refined diesel hybrid running on bio fuel might be better than a gasoline hybrid, one has to take into consideration the inputs involved in growing the crop (eg energy intensive fertilizer, energy for crop processing machinery etc + energy used in the refining and distribution process). The other negatives remain – heavy electric motors (duplicated by a diesel engine), heavy generator plant, and a bulky (taking up storage space in the car) heavy battery system!

If you have a “jungle climate” where everything grows rapidly (eg Brazil and to a much lesser extent Ireland) and burn the bio fuel directly in an efficient diesel engine, I suspect the energy efficiency is as optimised as things can get within the constraints to current technology in the area of private car transport.

.probe

probe

prospect wrote:

I see your point, however;

If I am going out to buy a new car, and budget is high on the priority list, A prius is more affordable than most equivalently sized diesel saloons, due to the Government Hybrid Incentive.

So, for this reason, punters are more likely to purchase the less efficient machine because our government is incentivising them to do so.

The Prius is a much more energy efficient car [urban 5l/100km, extra urban 4.2l/100km] ideal for travelling in badly planned urban sprawl with awful public transport (North America and Ireland come to mind). A very different animal to the Lexus hybrid.

The Prius’s CO2 emissions are 104 g/km. Not as good as an electric tram or train where the CO2 emissions run about 50 g/ passenger km.

.probe

Ice_Box

Has anyone heard of the Tesla car?

http://www.teslamotors.com/

0-60 in about 4 seconds.
100% electric.
135mpg equivalent.
250 miles per charge.

Electric cars make sense in the states where the use nuclear but while old ireland still burns turf to generate electircity its pointless.

Capt'n Midnight

probe wrote:

While a well refined diesel hybrid running on bio fuel might be better than a gasoline hybrid, one has to take into consideration the inputs involved in growing the crop (eg energy intensive fertilizer, energy for crop processing machinery etc + energy used in the refining and distribution process). The other negatives remain – heavy electric motors (duplicated by a diesel engine), heavy generator plant, and a bulky (taking up storage space in the car) heavy battery system!

the battery in hybrid cars is not much bigger than a normal car battery, Li having 4 times the energy per weight as Lead Acid.

As for generator-motor, on a car it would be replace the alternator/starter, and electric motors are very powerful for their size, the motor would not have to be anything as powerful as the diesel engine as it would be used at low speed and for boost when over taking (electrics fast response being complimentary to diesels best efficiency at constant revs/load).
In large trucks (200 tonne - in mines) and locomotives motor-generator is preference to gearbox to transfer power. You could for example then put the engine/generator anywhere in the car (cruise liners may have them on top deck) and then put electric motors on each wheel. An electronic control system would replace all the gear boxes, differentials, you would have 4x4 drive and mostly frictionless braking. Without all the shafts / half-shafts there would be a lot more flexability in car layout


In other news Red Ken is talking about 0 congestion charges for some vehicles and up to £25 for SUV's

again I remind you that SUV's are no safer than other cars in the same price bracket, but are up to 6 times more lethal to other road users.

probe

Capt'n Midnight wrote:

the battery in hybrid cars is not much bigger than a normal car battery, Li having 4 times the energy per weight as Lead Acid.

As for generator-motor, on a car it would be replace the alternator/starter, and electric motors are very powerful for their size, the motor would not have to be anything as powerful as the diesel engine as it would be used at low speed and for boost when over taking (electrics fast response being complimentary to diesels best efficiency at constant revs/load).
In large trucks (200 tonne - in mines) and locomotives motor-generator is preference to gearbox to transfer power. You could for example then put the engine/generator anywhere in the car (cruise liners may have them on top deck) and then put electric motors on each wheel. An electronic control system would replace all the gear boxes, differentials, you would have 4x4 drive and mostly frictionless braking. Without all the shafts / half-shafts there would be a lot more flexability in car layout


In other news Red Ken is talking about 0 congestion charges for some vehicles and up to £25 for SUV's

again I remind you that SUV's are no safer than other cars in the same price bracket, but are up to 6 times more lethal to other road users.

Lithium Ion or not, the Lexus hybrid has a 45 kW battery which is enough to power a small vehicle using only an electric motor.

While the Lexus weighs 2013 kg empty (BMW 1665 kg), it only has a 440 litre boot (the BMW can hold 520 litres). Same seating capacity. Where is all the weight going?

I have no doubts about electric motors – just watch an electric train zoom out of a station (dozy DART excepted) while a diesel train struggles and makes lots of noise etc. My objection to the Lexus is that it is duplicating a large petrol engine with four large electric motors, the generator and the large battery – all adding to weight. Electric motors are great if you are feeding them from a non-duplicative green power source such as a fuel cell. That is why the fuel cell car will be so simple and cheap to manufacture once they have overcome the hydrogen production/distribution and fuel cell economics issues for mass production.

Congestion charges are ill conceived in my view and are a function of poor public transport and planning failures and a restriction on personal freedom for poorer people when they need to use a car.

Switzerland has one of the highest levels of car ownership in the world. It also has the best public transport system in the universe designed for rich and poor alike. Zurich is the biggest city in Switzerland – similar size to Dublin. Virtually everyone uses public transport all the time because it is so good. It becomes a virtuous circle – trams are frequent because most people use them. Most city centre streets are virtually empty of cars. About 18 tram lines, 10 express urban transport lines (s-bahn) that use double deck (duplex) trains that provide seats for everybody even at peak periods. They have buses in the suburbs that synchronise with train and tram arrivals to take people to their homes.

I lived in London for a few years and despite my green credentials I have to admit that I drove to my car to the office in the city of London every day because I had my own parking space there, and because London’s public transport is so awful, hot, overcrowded and bug infested (colds and flu pass quickly from person to person in the winter in a non-air conditioned congested train). The temperature in the London underground is increasing by about 1C per annum due to global warming and the insulation provided by the rock between the tunnel roof and the street above. They can’t install air conditioners because the tube is too small (they are usually mounted on the roof of trains). Even if they put the air conditioners inside the trains and removed seats to accommodate them, there is no free space between the train and the tube wall for the air conditioner exhaust to escape. Metro is expensive on energy – escalators, air con, tunnels, security, lighting, etc and people get pissed off going into a depressing hole in the ground every day to get to work. The tram provides a far superior solution.

While Red Ken can put his GBP 25 charge on SUVs in the undemocratic state that he inhabits – he needs to provide the carrot of non-cattle truck public transport that people can use in comfort if he really wants to get vehicles off the road.

On the safety front in my limited experience SUVs are unstable and dangerous. I rented one once (in the US because my travelling companion wanted to be high up to see horses in the fields around Kentucky). Never again – no feeling of control.

Porsche, maker of the Cayenne SUV reported profits of €1 billion today! The world’s most profitable car maker…. Fortunately they made most of the profits from products other than their SUV.

.probe

bonkey

prospect wrote:

I see your point, however;

If I am going out to buy a new car, and budget is high on the priority list, A prius is more affordable than most equivalently sized diesel saloons, due to the Government Hybrid Incentive.

So, for this reason, punters are more likely to purchase the less efficient machine because our government is incentivising them to do so.

You may have misunderstood what I was driving at.

Some time ago, before this incentivisation came in, people moaned that the government weren't offering incentives on hybrids.

Now the government introduce an incentive on hybrids and what happens...people moan that the government are offering incentives on hybrids.

I agree that the incentive is a bad one. I'm just amused how it was something that was being clamoured for by green-minded people not too long ago, before the reality of hybrid performance sank in and they were buying into the hype about how vastly cleaner they would be compared to regular cars.

The petrol-tax that I was putting forward is the most egalitarian solution that I can see, but its the one most likely to be rejected by green and non-green alike, because its an incentive based on "punishment-avoidance" rather than on reward.

You get punished the more you drive, you get punished for driving uneconomically, and you get punished the less economical a car you chose for the type of driving you need to do. Thus, you avoid punishment - you are "rewarded" - for driving less, for driving smarter, and for driving a more efficient vehicle for whatever it is you need to do.

Tell people to shell out big cash to buy lightbulbs to decrease the electricity bill...and increasingly they'll do it rather than complain that they government should pay them to change. Why? Cause it saves them cash in the long run.

Suggest a fuel-tax which would make the driving game somethign similar....and they'll say no. Why? Because they think they should be paid to buy the right car upfront, rather than to make their savings in reduced running costs over its lifetime (which they'll already do to a degree without the fuel tax anyway).

Now..to another topic close to my heart.

probe wrote:

Zurich is the biggest city in Switzerland – similar size to Dublin.

Zurich is nowhere near the population of Dublin.

It is also a far smaller city with a higher population density, meaning that even if its population grew ot that of the so-called Greater Dublin Area, it would still be far more compact.

I'm not just pointing this out because of pedantry. Population density plays a huge role in the success of public transport systems. If density is too low, then you need either too many stops on a transport-route, or the stops are so far apart that they'll be considered impractical for many people. If density is too high, then you've the opposite problem - too many people looking to travel on specific routes, flooding a system.

Similarly, population density will also allow more people to be within walking distance of their work.

The distinction between the numbers of home-owners should also not be understated. In Switzerland, at least until the last number of years, the trend was that people would regularly move to be close to where they were working. This is practical because of the historically low degree of home-ownership (and the relatively late age at which people typically bought homes). Today, there is somewhat of a reversal of that, as more people are buying homes younger, are facing less resedential mobility, longer commute times and are thus putting more pressure on the transport infrastructure.

Finally, its worth remembering that Zurich's situation is as a result of a strategy adoped over 30 years ago which has been built on fairly constantly since then.

In summary, the differences between Dublin and Zurich are manifold and many of these differences play a significant role in allowing the Zurich public transport to be as successful as it is.

Don't get me wrong...there are many things which can be transferred to the benefit of Dublin's public transport infrastructure, but my initial read of your comments was more along the "if they did it, why can't we" line, and there's good reasons why we can't even though they did.

probe

In Switzerland towns have precisely defined boundaries. If Zürich was Dublin, you wouldn’t regard Blackrock or perhaps even Donnybrook as being in Dublin – they would be the separate towns of Blackrock and Donnybrook. But that is just postcodes and communal boundaries and Politische Gemeinden.

If you look at the reality of the Zürich area, its DART system (S-bahn) serves a commuter area as far as Züg and Winterthur and beyond, and all the towns down lake Zürich (akin to Dublin coastal area from Malahide to Greystones). The Zürich commuter area bleeds into neighbouring cantons, in the same way as Dublin bleeds into neighbouring counties. This gives it a population of about 1.5 million – similar to Dublin. Dublin city’s population is only 500,000 if you take the legal boundaries of the city.

Zürich’s approach to public transport probably makes even more sense in Dublin than it does in Zürich!

The Dublin area is an unplanned sprawl which makes Metro a dumb choice. Public transport must serve people living far out in Kildare, Louth, Wicklow etc and get them quickly into town – and stop them from bringing their cars.

How do you do this economically? A system of feeder buses bringing people from near their homes to the nearest high speed urban train stop. They are then brought at high speed with few stops into the city centre where trams, buses, bicycles and walking gets the individual to their final destination.

Ditto for Dublin airport. It should have a proper railway station and most trains from suburbia going there before or after calling to a city centre station. Most of the growth in population in the Dublin area is not in Dublin city. A metro to Dublin airport will not serve these people – it will primarily serve a small market (in terms of the airport) who have business or work in the city centre. If you live in Dun Laoghaire or Naas or Greystones you will drive to the airport and ignore metro. If there was a train running from Naas to Dublin to the airport you would probably use it.

Transport planning in Ireland is clueless IMHO, and if I may say so Bonkey, it’s bonkers!

.probe

City public transport map ZH: http://www.zvv.ch/netzplan/liniennetzvbz2006/vbzplan_2006.gif

Metro area ZH transport map:
http://www.zvv.ch/pdf/SBahn_A4.pdf

Capt'n Midnight

probe wrote:

Lithium Ion or not, the Lexus hybrid has a 45 kW battery which is enough to power a small vehicle using only an electric motor.

That is the power rating of the generator, I'll have a dig up for the KWh or Ah of the batteries

also there have been fatalities amongst members of the emergency service because of the high voltage used (to cut down on the cost of electronics and use less copper on the wiring)

http://www.hybrid-vehicles.net/hyundai-accent-hybrid.htm

The 6.5 Ah / 144V NiMH battery pack is being manufactured by Panasonic EV Energy Company.

936 Watt Hour battery
By comparison a normal car battery would be like 13.8V x 44Ah = 607Whr

http://townhall-talk.edmunds.com/direct/view/.ef2b471/0

Toyota Rav4 EV had 28 KWH EV NiMH battery to achieve 87 miles range when travelling at 60mph. That's more than eighteen times larger than Prius battery. In order for Rav4 EV to have the same range of hybrids(700miles), Rav4 EV will need to have 225 KWH battery! To be fair, acknowledge that Rav4 is a heavier SUV and Prius is a mid-size sedan.

probe

Capt'n Midnight wrote:

That is the power rating of the generator, I'll have a dig up for the KWh or Ah of the batteries

The battery in the Lexus is 45 kW!

http://www.lexus.ie/lexus_cars/rx/rx400h/specifications/rx_400.asp

This battery is a MONSTER. You could run your house from it!

(with a DC to AC converter and a transformer to step DOWN the voltage from 288v to 230v)

.probe

bonkey

probe wrote:

The battery in the Lexus is 45 kW!

And just how long can this monster 45kW be supplied for?
It might be suppliable for a total of 2 seconds, or 1000 days for all we know according to the figures you supplied.

Thats why you need the kWh. That tells you how much total power there is in the battery, as opposed to the peak power attainable for one single second.

Imagine if this was a pure electric car. You;ve no way of knowing how far you can travel, because you've no way of knowing how long your battery will last. Why? Because you don't know the number of hours that your battery can supply the required kW for.

Repeating your data in big bold letter doesn't change the fact that it still doesn't contain the necessary information

Capt'n Midnight

http://www.eaa-phev.org/wiki/Toyota_Prius_Battery_Specs
( 06 HH & RX400h in right column )

288V x 6.5Ah = 1,872 Wh = 1.9 KWh
only a few times the energy contained in a normal battery off a diesel and a tad less than 45Kw

probe

bonkey wrote:

And just how long can this monster 45kW be supplied for?

While the Lexus.ie website is deficient in terms of providing the “h” variable, we do know that the batteries are capable of powering the car at low urban speeds for considerable distances so long as you don’t press too hard on the accelerator (or else the gas guzzling engine kicks in).

It takes a lot more energy to move a car than to power an average house. A 1.8 litre (gasoline) engine produces about 85 kW. The average home can run on 4 to 10 kW.

I’m not going down this alleyway to argue against the Lexus hybrid.

The power needs of a car are quite interesting in the context of future developments – particularly in terms of fuel cells. Volume manufacture of fuel cell cars is only a matter of time. Large volumes will lead to reduced prices. Fuel cell cars will be dirt cheap to manufacture due to the absence of mechanical components.

The average car is sitting idle most of the time. Hydrogen and fuel cells are a means of storing energy. If your average fuel cell car delivers say a 50 kW power output to the electric motors powering the wheels, it has enormous storage capacity when networked over the electricity grid with all the other fuel cell cars waiting in parking spaces at homes, at office car parks, or wherever. It is the opposite of an electric car charging while parked. Fuel cell cars would spew out huge quantities of electricity into the network. The nation’s car fleet could become a storage system for green energy, on the side. It has the potential to make the gas or coal powered electric power station into a dinosaur (does anyone remember the mainframe computer) before networks?

Many green energy sources (eg wind and wave) are variable in terms of output. Store their potentially massive (in the Irish context) output by converting it into hydrogen and feed it into car fuel cells and you have a massive ultra redundant power source to meet electrical energy needs. The main limiting factor is the electrical connection into people’s homes which typically couldn’t handle sending 85 kW back into the grid – but that’s not really a problem because if every house in the country created 85 kW of electricity there would be no market for it.

(While it looks as if it is freezing cold up there, according to eirgrid.com you were only using 4,600 MW at 18h00 this Friday evening). A national fleet of fuel cell powered cars could deliver over 100,000 MW of stored wind/wave/other electric power into the network at a push!

.probe

probe

Capt'n Midnight wrote:

http://www.eaa-phev.org/wiki/Toyota_Prius_Battery_Specs
( 06 HH & RX400h in right column )

288V x 6.5Ah = 1,872 Wh = 1.9 KWh
only a few times the energy contained in a normal battery off a diesel and a tad less than 45Kw

This threat is about the Irish state subsidised Lexus SUV - rather than the more frugal Prius!

.probe

mike65

Brian Cowen must have been reading this thread!

Cowen to end tax break for big hybrid cars

IRISH ministers planning to go green by changing their state limos to cleaner hybrid-engine cars will have to make the switch without a tax break.

Brian Cowen, the finance minister, is planning to close off a loophole that gives a €13,500 discount to the buyers of luxury saloons and SUVs (sports utility vehicles) operating on a combination of petrol and electrical power.

The decision will be announced in the budget on December 6. The tax break will remain for more modest hybrid family saloons, such as the Toyota Prius.

Mike.

Clare gunner

In other news Red Ken is talking about 0 congestion charges for some vehicles and up to £25 for SUV's

again I remind you that SUV's are no safer than other cars in the same price bracket, but are up to 6 times more lethal to other road users.

[/QUOTE]

Based on what stats exactly????
Thanks I'll have and will continue to drive the largest 4X4 going with the largest bumpers ,bull bars etc ,until FKwitted Irish motorists learn how to drive properly,and farmers in Ireland learn how to make stockproof fences and gates.Better chance of surviving a bullock hit,in a 4X4 than in an eco friendly tin can.

Capt'n Midnight

Clare gunner wrote:

Based on what stats exactly????.

http://lists.altnews.com.au/pipermail/green-activist/2006-June/000173.html

Previous studies have shown that drivers using mobile phones have four times
the risk of an accident. On that basis, 4x4 drivers are at 16 times the risk
of having an accident, given that they are four times more likely to use a
mobile compared with other drivers.
...
Dr Walker said: "In general 4x4s reduce the risk for their occupants but
increase the risk for everyone else. In using a 4x4, instead of a normal
car, one's chance of death or serious injury falls by four in 1,000 but the
chance of killing or injuring others rises by 11 in 1,000, with a resulting
cost to the community."
...
Churchill Insurance

4x4 drivers are 27 per cent more likely to be at fault in the event of an
accident than saloon car drivers.

Admiral Insurance

If a pedestrian is hit by a 4x4 they are twice as likely to be killed than
if they were hit by a saloon car.
...
Department of Transport, 2005

Drivers of 4x4s are most likely to have been in an argument with traffic
wardens (22 per cent), compared with 6 per cent of saloon car drivers.

RAC Foundation, 2004

The risk of a fatal roll-over crash is twice as high for 4x4s as it is for a
saloon car.

http://www.detroitproject.com/readmore/myths.htm

SUV occupants die slightly more often than car occupants in crashes. The occupant death rate in crashes per million SUVs on the road is 6 percent higher than the death rate per million cars. The occupant death rate for the largest SUVs, which tend to be driven by middle-aged families, is 8 percent higher than the occupant death rate for minivans and upper-midsize cars like the Ford Taurus and Toyota Camry, which are typically driven by similar families.
...
If you are in a collision, an SUV will typically provide more protection than a car if it stays upright because of its greater weight and because its height may allow it to override bumpers and crush the softer passenger compartment of the drunk's vehicle. But SUVs are more likely to roll over in multi-vehicle collisions as well as single-vehicle crashes.
....
driving a tall vehicle does improve a motorist's view, but at the expense of those driving behind. [This is one thing that really ANNOYS me about SUV's they block the view of the road ahead - which can't have a positive effect on road safety]
...
Myth: If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.

Reality: For the truly self-centered person who cares nothing about hurting other people in crashes, obscuring other drivers' views of the road, making smog worse and contributing to global warming, this might seem a viable option. But such drivers need to be aware that they are not improving their own safety, and must endure the aggravation of driving a vehicle that is harder to drive and harder to park than a car.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/17/business/17auto.html?ex=1250481600&en=ab39f99261bb8c6e&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland

People driving or riding in a sport utility vehicle in 2003 were nearly 11 percent more likely to die in an accident than people in cars, the figures show.

http://www.pibriefupdate.com/mags/latest/article9.php

When a Sports Utility Vehicle (SUV) strikes a car in frontal impact, there are four driver fatalities in the car for every one driver fatality in the SUV. The problem is even worse in side crashes. When SUVs strike passenger cars on the side, there are 22 passenger car driver fatalities for every SUV driver fatality. This discrepancy is due to mass of the vehicles and the tendency for legs rather than torsos to be injured if you are in the SUV – you are likely to survive a broken leg, less so a ruptured liver!

Clare gunner

GREAT!!!I have the perfect car to piss off all and sundry of the PC Nazis of the world:D .
It's dangerous,aggressive,needs experiance to handle one is big and nasty, and totally un PC.I'll be driving one then for ever then:D
[Amazing they didnt add that SUV /4X4 drivers ,all live in trailer parks,own guns ,beat their women and abuse their daughters as well.:rolleyes:]

What a fukwitted statement in one report.That it was blocking the authors view of the road so he/she couldnt react in time!! Thats called TAILGATING dimwitt.And it has nothing to do with the car in front.YOU ARE TOO DAMN CLOSE!!!!When I read that,that was enough for that link to be dismissed as balderdash.What do you do if an Artic is in front of you??Demand artics are banned because they block the road view from your eco friendly bio degradeable car?