4x4 Prejudice 04 Apr 07
As owners of a 4×4, we’re now facing a higher road tax bill next year, thanks to Mr Brown’s token green gestures in this year’s UK Budget. Thankfully ours is not in the most polluting category, within which the road tax will almost double to £400 by next year, but we still feel that its a misguided move by the government.
Take a look at our annual mileage and you’ll find that we travel about 6,000 miles in a year, around half of the suggested national average (10,000 to 12,000 depending on source). Its obvious then why we’d like to see vehicle tax based on actual usage rather than just emissions test results. With the current system, you might encourage people to buy a car that produces less Carbon Dioxide per mile, but if it creates a mindset of then being able to travel as many miles as you like and still be “green”, doesn’t that defeat the purpose?
Its annoying that 4×4 vehicles are being demonised by certain groups and parts of the media. Granted they’re hardly the most eco-friendly vehicles, but they’re also not alone in that category. The big difference seems to be that 4×4 vehicles are easy to single out as, due to their size and styling, they’re not exactly hard to miss.
Enter 4×4 Prejudice, a website that aims to re-educate the masses with cold hard facts. In statistics borrowed from the BBC, they point out that the Ford Focus 2.0i Zetec is actually more polluting (in CO2 produced per Km) and achieves fewer miles per gallon than the Land Rover Freelander (2.0 Td4), the Toyota Rav4 (2.0 D-4D XT2) and the Nissan X-trail (2.2 dci 136 Se). I haven’t heard many calls recently for the Ford Focus to be banned, have you?
Of course, statistics can always be twisted to suit the argument being made, but that’s the whole point of “4×4 Predjudice” – its trying to show that the figures we’re normally presented with are already skewed to fit the anti-4×4 campaign. The fact remains that all fossil-fuel powered vehicles are bad for the environment to some extent and so singling out one particular group to blame for the problem really achieves very little.
Posted by Nev in Transport with tags 4x4, car, eco-friendly, tax, transport
