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Roddy Graham's Blog: 17 April 2008
Date: 17 April 2008
The claim by UK Porsche MD, Andy Goss that "we always knew the environmental impact of this unfair tax would be minimal, now we know it will make matters worse", beggar's belief.
Questioning Porsche
The claim by UK Porsche MD, Andy Goss that "we always knew the environmental impact of this unfair tax would be minimal, now we know it will make matters worse", beggar's belief.
His comments in support of his formal judicial review request on the proposed £25 charge for cars emitting more than 225g/km of carbon dioxide just don't stand up. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to work out that a car emitting 120g/km of CO2 is going to add less to the capital's pollution than one of his high performance sports cars or Chelsea tractors!
As uncle Ken declares, "Porsche has a clear vested interest" in attempting to block initiatives to improve the capital's air quality. I'm glad to see that Transport for London (TfL) has won the backing of the Campaign for Better Transport. Its campaigner, Richard Bourn declared: "Porsche is trying to justify the unjustifiable by acting for unrestrained use of gas guzzling cars in London."
Taking away the emotive talk, TfL has stated the intent behind the charge is as much to do with reducing congestion. Apparently 17% of cars travelling in the congestion zone are in band G compared to just 2% in Bands A or B.
Latest round in the debate sees Porsche seize on a King's College report indicating that while CO2 emissions will fall within the zone they could increase overall across the capital due to increased mileage outside the zone. It has since come to light that the report needs to be refined due to ambiguity in assumptions made. It was never used for the TfL decision.
Meanwhile, most of those living in London are all for measures to reduce emissions, including the proposed £25 charge.
As I've stated in an earlier blog, Porsche would do better by trying to make its model line-up more environmentally-friendly. It has probably more engineering know-how at its R&D facility at Weissach than anywhere else in the world.
Why doesn't it put it to worthwhile use rather than bitching about a charge that any Porsche owner could afford anyway? Perhaps the cynical side of me thinks the whole matter has more to do with sliding Porsche sales in the UK.
