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Going green
Gina Inman finds out what it takes
to help the environment and still get around town.
You’ve heard of green cars, you know a bit about them, but what
would it take for you buy one or pay to turn your own car into a green
car? Call it global warming or the greenhouse effect: transport emissions
account for 30% of destructive climate change. You don’t need to
fully understand green issues or what is contained in the Kyoto Protocol
to know what is best for your children’s health and for the environment
today and tomorrow. If no CO2 emissions was your priority you would not
be buying a car, you’d probably buy a bicycle. So, car manufacturers
are balancing what is important with what is realistic. And back in the
real world we still need a car.
There are a number of different types of Green Cars (defined as low carbon
emitting cars): cars powered by LPG, by Natural Gas, by Bio Gas or a fuel
cell; battery or electric cars; or the easiest ones to get hold of, Hybrids,
which use both an electric motor and a petrol engine.
Cleaner cars currently represent less than 1% of all car sales.
The Government has set a target that green cars should represent 10% of
all car sales by 2010 and are offering incentives to get you to buy one.
You can save up to £100 a year on your tax disc: cars are now banded
A to F by the DVLA based on CO2 emissions and fuel tax is set to favour
the use of cleaner fuels such as LPG, natural gas and biofuels. But best
of all, there is a 100% exemption on the congestion charge. Yes, it’s
true, you pay a £10 registration fee to have your car on the so
called Power Shift Register (www.est.org.uk/fleet/funding/ powershift)
which includes all vehicles powered by an alternative fuel such as Liquid
Propane Gas (LPG), all electric cars and most hybrid cars and you avoid
the congestion charge. So if your child is at school in the zone, and
you live just outside, that is a saving of £1,600 a year. Although
here’s an anomaly: not all Band A cars, i.e. really low CO2 emissions,
get congestion charge exemption. I don’t know why, I didn’t
make up the Register of exempt cars.
The hybrids
LPGs
Other alternatives
The
Hybids
There are currently three hybrid cars available for sale in the UK.
All run on petrol and electricity. The Honda Civic
IMAS, the Toyota Prius (pronounced Preeus) and the Lexus
RX 400h. I drove all three.
The
Honda looks very nice and sporty from the front. It’s a four-door
saloon, but the boot is roomy enough for a week’s worth of shopping
or a buggy plus a load. Available in metallic colours with leather interiors,
comfy in the back. Electric windows are standard, with a locking feature
in the driver’s door. ISOfix as standard for easy fitting of car
seats (this is a bar that is integral to the backseat in the car, but
can be raised to enable you to click in a child’s car seat.) It’s
only available as a manual.
The engine is so quiet I thought I had stalled several times. It doesn’t
pretend to be a racy car but drives as a 1.4 should. The IMAS works by
using petrol until you idle when it switches to electric or battery power
and turns the engine off. As soon as you start off again it goes back
to using petrol. When decelerating or braking the engine cleverly converts
the energy to recharge the battery. A gauge on the dash shows you when
you’re charging and when the engine has stopped. It’s DVLA Band
B, so you will save £90 on your Tax Disc and best of all it is 100%
exempt from the congestion charge.
The
Toyota Prius looks fantastic in the brochure.
There are three versions with a variety of accessories. The top of the
range T Spirit Hybrid comes with everything you’d expect from the
Car of the Year 2005 winner. It costs £20,000 on the road with all
the extras including: Satellite Navigation, 6 CD autochanger, ABS, electric
windows. There is a push button brake and a really easy to operate, space-saving
gear stick. The top of the range T spirit has a voice recognition system
as standard to control the sat nav, air con and radio. It drives well
and Toyota claim 0-62 (100kph) in 10.9 seconds. There is a 7 inch screen
above the dash to show you fuel consumption, warning messages, air con
details and importantly whether you are using the engine or the electric
motor to turn the wheels.
A flashing arrow shows how the car is driving and that it is recharging
the battery when you decelerate or brake. So when you are idling in traffic
or crawling at a snail’s pace your Prius will be completely quiet
as the engine runs off the electric motor. This is tax disc Band is A,
only £65 per year (£100 off), due to the low CO2 emissions
(104 g/km) and 100% exempt from congestion charge. I fitted two boosters
and a child seat in the back. Without the children you can fold the seats
down to get an enormous 408 litres of boot space.
The
third hybrid available on the market is the Lexus RX
400h which was just fantastic and so it should be for a £45,000
SE-L top of the range. The basic model without extras is £35,000
on the road. Toyota and Lexus are brother and sister as such, the technology
for driving the Lexus is similar to the Toyota and is displayed on the
dash screen using similar graphics. You can crawl under 30mph off your
electric motor saving you fuel but put your foot down on the open road
and the 3.3 litre V6 engine roars to life. It was a complete pleasure
to drive. Very smooth and easy to handle on urban and fast roads. 0-62mph
in 7.6 seconds. Again 2 boosters and a baby seat in the raised rear seats
with the sophisticated electric motor underneath. Infra-red headphones
in the back for the in-car DVD which comes as standard in the top of the
range.
Congestion charge exemption is a grey area I’m told by Lexus. They
are waiting to hear if the car will be included in the Register of exempt
cars. The only drawback I can think of is the 6+month waiting list to
get one of these beauties.
Top of page
LPG's
The range of cars that run on LPG or Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) is getting
bigger all the time: Vauxhall Corsa, New Astra,
Vectra and Zafira; Volvo V40, V70, S70, S80
and a fabulous sporty 3CC Concept Car (for a life without children).
If you’re not in line for a new car, you can have your car adapted
to run on LPG for a fee (£1,800 + VAT for a Mercedes Estate). The
conversion adds a second independent fuel system to your car so that it
can run on either petrol or LPG. This can take up a considerable part
of your boot space, where the large LPG cylinder will sit, or you can
have a doughnut tank fitted underneath your car near the petrol tank,
or the second tank can be installed in the spare wheel well. If you are
unlucky enough to get a puncture, all conversions using the spare tyre
well give you a fully approved tyre foam. This reflates the tyre and seals
the puncture until you can get it properly repaired. If you run out of
LPG you can still use your petrol engine.
The adaptation must be done by a registered garage. The cost of changing
your car should be recouped in the savings on a year’s fuel. The
cost to recharge an LPG canister is approximately £25 compared to
£50 or £60 to fill up on petrol. Once your car is adapted
where can you refuel? Currently there are over 1,400 garages where you
can fill up with LPG in the UK including a number in central London.
At the moment EuroTunnel does not allow gas-powered vehicles through the
Channel Tunnel. All other UK tunnels do allow gas cars. The EuroTunnel
ban is being reviewed and this will hopefully lead to a reversal of the
current ruling. Also some privately owned under-ground car parks have
restrictions on gas cars. Another drawback
is that at the moment the resale value of cars converted to run on LPG
is low.
Other
alternatives
Diesel cars are being developed to be as environmentally friendly as possible.
Kia prides itself on its green company ethos. All their cars are made
using recycled and recyclable materials. The cars are made to be as economic
as possible and so that CO2 emissions are low. Lots of Kia cars fall into
the A Band Car tax, which means £100 off car tax each year. These
are small cars and they do not qualify for congestion charge exemption.
Mercedes have developed fuel-cell cars but they are not available in the UK as the manufacturing bases are abroad and it would be too costly to fly in Herr Fuel Cell expert from Stuttgart whenever there was a problem. So, Mercedes have, they reckon, the lowest carbon emission diesels available here. Also they are developing a hybrid electric and diesel S class which will be available here within 5 years.
All of Honda’s manufacturing plants are
committed to reducing landfill waste to zero and follow their ‘3R’
concept – ‘reduce, reuse, recycle”, Honda claims that it’s
i-series petrol and diesel engines are among the cleanest and most efficient
conventional engines ever made, in most cases meeting worldwide exhaust
emission and fuel consumption targets well ahead of required deadlines.
New on the market this month, the battery-powered G
Whiz.
Not a family option (two seats in the back for very small children). This
plugs into a standard 13amp socket and will travel up to 40 miles from
one charge. You must charge it once a week and it has a top speed of 40mph.
Test drives can be booked online at: www.goinggreen.co.uk or ring 020
8574 3232.
Given all of the above it would appear that going green is not as difficult
as you might think. Setting us all a good example are the Queen (she has
four), the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister (presumably either
one of or in addition to his two Jags) and the American President, all
of whom use LPG fuelled cars. So there’s no excuse. You can have
any car you like, as long as it’s Green.
First published in angels & urchins, Summer 2005