Car Buyers' Guide 2008
Tuesday, 06, Jan 2009 12:08
The mainstay of this year’s Green Transport Week is the launch of the ETA’s 2008 Car Buyers’ Guide, a free online directory of the environmental performance of over 1300 cars.
**Use the ETA Car Buyer's Guide and find out which are the greenest cars and which are the least environmentally friendly**
The top ten greenest cars
The top ten gas guzzlers
The Car Buyers' Guide has never before been so topical; as motorists are warned to expect record petrol prices for up to 8 years, research has revealed that eighty-four per cent of British drivers are unprepared for the radical changes to road tax rates which will see a million people pay more than double over two years.
Future prices of oil, which for the most part are usually lower than current prices, have hit a record high of $140 a barrel. This price is being paid for oil to be delivered up to 2016, leading to warnings that petrol prices will stay at record levels for much of the next decade. These continuing high prices will in 2009 come on top of the graduated rates of revised emissions-based vehicle excise duty; research by the ETA reveals that only 16 per cent of people know the current tax band into which their vehicle falls.
Prices sustained at this level are likely to alter not only our driving habits, but the type of vehicle we choose. Many people will decide they need to be more flexible about the way they travel – the 4 million people who currently use their cars to drive less than 3 miles to work may decide to occasionally cycle.
The new system of ‘road tax’ aims to encourage drivers to choose the least polluting car, but millions of drivers are likely to get a shock as tax bills land on doorsteps next April.
The research into drivers’ attitudes reveals that some regions are ‘greener’ than others. The environmentally least-well-informed drivers are in the south, and particularly London, with 67 per cent and 68 per cent respectively not having any idea how much CO2 is being emitted by their car. Drivers in other areas of Britain are slightly more aware; 56 per cent of drivers in Scotland have no idea how much CO2 their car produces. The figure rises to 64 per cent in the north of England.
The debate about emissions and climate change moves on, but the results of the ETA survey show it may be leaving people behind. A large proportion of people are aware that cars pollute, but may not know how to take the first step towards more environmentally-friendly driving.
Another key finding of the survey is that 33 per cent of drivers in London do not feel that their car produces an unreasonable amount of pollution, a figure which drops to 25 per cent in Wales, the midlands and the north. The figure for the south of England is 32 per cent.
Green Transport Week is intended to be a timely reminder that alternatives to the car, and the increasing costs associated with driving, do exist.