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Go through with these crazy CO2 targets and the fleet car choice will be Citroen C1s or nothing, says The Insider
I'm in an EU-inspired rage and I haven't even been reading the Daily Mail. What's tipped me over the edge is this proposed new CO2 target for manufacturers come 2012. The more I think about it, the more angry I get. Basically, they're telling my company what to drive and I won't stand for that.
The gist is this: right now car manufacturers operating in Europe have agreed on a voluntary CO2 target of 140g/km by 2008 calculated on annual sales. From what I've been reading, it seems most are not going to hit this target, bar a couple. That's understandable, given that 140g/km is the equivalent of about 45mpg - roughly what a Fiesta 1.25 delivers.
But now the European environment commissioner wants to make the CO2 targets law, and has settled on 120g/km by 2012.
Think about that for a second. That's an average output for all combined sales. So a company like Land Rover will have to be selling of plenty of cars that emit less than a Nissan Micra diesel, just to offset Range Rovers sales. They'll go bust trying, surely.
Not that we have many Land Rovers on our fleet of course, but given that 120g/km is what diesel superminis put out, how many Ford Mondeo or Audi A4 models do you think will be suitable for fleet customers?
“Any emissions rule that makes an environmental enemy of the Fiesta 1.25 is intrinsically daft.” |
We'll all be driving either Citroen C1s or paying through the nose for hybrids that still won't offer anything like as good as a consumption as their totally unrealistic EU tests reckon.
That is totally unacceptable to me. If they go through with this, they'll have a fight on their hands. It's enough to make you want to switch to UKIP. Who are they to dictate what my drivers can choose? That's my job, not theirs.
I can sort of understand the need to limit CO2. All the other gases that cars emit - carbon monoxide, stuff like that - are regulated and rightly so, but there are no CO2 limits. But this is absolutely the wrong way to go about it. They should be set per car genre, so superminis would be 100, small hatches 120, big hatches 150, something like that. Tough enough to affect carbon emissions, flexible enough so we can drive cars fit for purpose.
The only way the EU is going to make this stick is if they force governments to apply huge incentives for cleaner fuels and technologies, and as we've consistently seen, that ain't gonna happen. So please, nix this proposal. Any emissions rule that makes an environmental enemy of the Fiesta 1.25 is intrinsically daft.
The Insider is a fleet manager with years of invaluable experience
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