London Mayor Sadiq Khan has suggested that the UK government introduce a diesel scrappage scheme in a bid to encourage drivers to give up polluting diesel vehicles for more environmentally-friendly alternatives.
It’s a possible move that’s been being discussed for some time, since it became clear that the UK was falling well short of meeting emissions targets. In London specifically, pollution has been at extremely high levels at various points this year, leading the authorities to go as far as advising citizens to avoid strenuous outdoor activity on certain days, especially if they suffer from breathing-related health issues.
According to a report in The Evening Standard, the proposed scrappage scheme would pay out up to £3,500 for each scrapped vehicle, at a total cost to the government of up to £500 Million. The headline figure would apply to van drivers, with up to £2000 offered to “low-income families” with vehicles that meet the (as yet precisely defined) criteria.
It’s important to note that, at this stage, this is merely a proposal for the government and not yet something under formal review. However, as soon as it became clear in recent months that extra taxes for diesel drivers (and perhaps even diesel bans in cities) were potentially on the cards, it was almost inevitable that such a suggestion would rise to the surface.
How will drivers react?
At PetrolPrices.com, we know for a fact that this proposal will be highly controversial. Past reports relating to the future of diesels and their drivers have resulted in huge numbers of member comments.
The reason this subject is so emotive is that previous governments actively encouraged people to choose a diesel vehicle. There were even tax breaks in place to act as incentives. The fact that the prevalent scientific research at the time has now been proved wrong provides little consolation to those who only did as they were advised.
On the face of it, it seems highly unlikely that this proposal would appease everyone, even if it were to become law. While some people with particularly old vehicles would be able to “cash in” and buy something slightly better, for many £2000 would be nothing more than a token gesture, after buying a far more expensive car that they would feel penalised for driving in the event of future tax increases.
How do you feel about this proposal? Let us know your views in the comments
Disgraceful. Once again we have seen authorities switch there stance on major issues.
There is no point in folIowing advise by our Government anymore.
If they do decide to hit diesel cars, are they going to do the same with lorry’s, buses & trains ?Furthermore the proposed scrappage amount falls way short of most diesel car valuation & people will lose money.
Like other members of the Labour party, our lord Mayor has clearly forgotten his roots & is looking to batter the working class in this crass proposal.
I keep hearing how “Oxford Street is one of the worst polluted streets in London”. Petrol prices – please download the air quality stats and review how pollution levels were on 13th January 2015. I did and the pollution levels monitored here were half the normal (non bus strike day) levels.
Does that mean we should take buses off the roads to half pollution levels? Probably not, but they are a huge contributor. Cars don’t make up the other half of course, lorries, black cabs and vans take a great proportion of that. All are vehicles that London needs to keep ticking over. I would argue that private diesel cars are probably contribute less than 10-15% of the pollution in central London (I’m defining that by the congestion zone). I’m gauging that not by scientific measurements (not that it stops the mayor), but by the make up of traffic on the roads.
In reality, pollution levels have been dropping for 50 years, but our targets by which we gauge “illegal levels of pollution” have fallen even faster. The “attributable deaths” to air pollution keeps being quoted by anyone banging this drum as a fact, but we don’t see how the numbers would have been improving. It would give some context to have someone estimae how it’s changed over the years (because it’s all estimates anyway). We didn’t used to have hybrid buses, we didn’t used to have particulate filters on diesel cars, we didn’t used to have the low emission zone in London that keeps older lorries and buses out.
Note – 13th Jan 2015 was a day most of the buses in London weren’t running due to a strike
You are right, they want us all driving petrol engined cars and vans to grab more taxes and vat from everybody,
People bought diesel engined cars and vans because the owners got more miles to the gallon some times almost 50% more miles to the gallon compared to the petrol engined model,
They do not see yet all the damage that this unleaded damage is doing to all the buildings, the exhaust fumes coming out of a petrol engined vehicle is like an acid,
I was a truck driver a while back before I was made disabled after being knocked of the top of my load,
But I was once called up in my cab and was told to pick up this rented out steel beams and plating from the south side of Leicester not far from the center on the ring road, and I could not stand on the back of my truck to load this return load up because of the PETROL fumes, this was about 17.00 or 5.00 pm, I did not smell any diesel fumes just PETROL fumes that made me feel very sick,
I live in Gainsborough , Lincolnshire, and our pollution comes from the coal burning power stations were are surrounded by, but the government say there is nothing wrong with all this DUST & ASH that covers all our homes and cars and us Gainsborough residents every time we step out of our homes, this government have not got a clue that they have to demolish most of the center of London to get the pollution levels down, and they have got to stop the penalizing the diesel driver, DIESEL is a waste product of making petrol, what will they do with all this WASTE product if every body goes petrol?????.
In answer to your question, if demand for diesel goes down, then the excess will be catalytically cracked to turn it into petrol, like the USA has been doing for fifty years or so.
John Prescott, former Deputy Prime Minister with an expanded brief as Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions. Another gift from Tony Blair. “The Government had at first been so convinced that diesel was bad news that in 1998, John Prescott introduced a transport regime heavily penalising the fuel for its polluting qualities.”
“But in 1998, urged on by EU transport commissioner Neil Kinnock, welcomed by environment secretary John Prescott and acted on by chancellor Gordon Brown, Britain happily signed up to an EU agreement with car makers that they would cut carbon dioxide emissions by 25% over ten years. This suited German car makers, specialists in Rudolf Diesel’s engine design, because diesel engines have 15% lower CO2 emissions than petrol engines.
“The EU agreement was “practically an order to switch to diesel”, says one clean-air campaigner. As subjects of Brussels, Britain obediently lowered tax on diesel cars, despite knowing that they produce four times as much nitrogen oxides as petrol, and 20 times as many particulates, both bad for human lungs.
“The story is almost a textbook case of why top-down regulation can be so dangerous. It lets single-issue pressure groups set targets with no thought to collateral damage, and imposes regulation that inevitably gets captured by those with a vested interest.”
What is the overall contribution to pollution of a Diesel car compared to Petrol ? Genuine question. All the press is about particulates and rarely is even carbon dioxide mentioned.
As I understood it, diesel fuel has less environmental impact to make than petrol.
Diesel cars (well, engines) tend to be on the road for a few more years
They still typically use less fuel.
So this debate is purely about air quality.
As far as I am aware Diesel Engined cars can’t be converted to LPG! PLus the cost of LPG has risen by around 50% in recent times, (has some Goverment Department cottoned on the something coming along?)
The other matter to think about is the fact that your Car’s Boot Space disappears as the LPG Tank has to be located in there!
Sadie Khan is only interested in one thing…… promoting the Sadie Khan political brand, with a view to being labour leader one day. He needs to come and live in the real world.
I’ve driven diesel cars for 30 odd years,get diesel they said. Better mpg they said and waaay less polluting than petrol.
It’s taken me till now to get a really nice car and I know to a lot of people 16 grand isn’t a lot of money,but to us it is. So this political poser wants to give me a poxy two grand for my nice shiny car and scrap it. He’s having laugh,surely?
Why not use a little intelligence Mr.Khan? I know it’s difficult you being a politician and all.
Instead of giving people £2000 to scrap perfectly good cars,why not give them £1000 towards the cost of having them converted to LPG? If we are to believe the stats again,LPG is cleaner greener and cheaper.. plus it would save the government ( according to the figures quoted in the article £250 million) and people get to keep their beloved cars.
Damn, I’m good,perhaps I should run for office?
I went in to a BMW mail dealership yesterday. It has a very large showroom displaying 12 new cars from across their range. Of the 12 only 2 were petrol models. Obviously they, and I am sure many other manufacturers, are now desperate to sell their diesel stock at full price before the market completely collapses.
So why isn’t London and other big cities running ELECTRIC trams and electric powered trucks around London,
Also why aren’t this clever buggers that are STILL building very high buildings in London instead on building all these high rise buildings,
You have roads and streets full of buildings well over time for demolition, open the bloody city up so air can blow through it, don’t blame diesel engines all the time, how many airports have you around London with jet engines taking off every two or three minutes spewing their cancer ridden fumes out ALL OVER London, have you told them to move their airports further away from your city, no of cause not cos you are making millions out of them so it is so much easier to blame us car and truck drivers, do ferries get charged with making all this poisonous fumes that blow all over the ports, no of cause not, do these diesel engined railway engines get charged over the poisonous amounts of fumes they chuck out when they start or when they are pulling a full load up gradients, no of course not, so tell your buses to change to electric engined buses and the truck delivery companies that deliver in and around London to change to electric trucks, and stop bullying us small town folk that drive diesel engined vehicles, our towns are mostly open and we get a lot of wind because we demolished a lot of builds to let the air blow through, so pull your fingers out of your arses and get that big ball swinging and let some air through that dirty city of LONDON and stop trying to rob the rest of the country because of your own faults.
What is not clear is definition of old diesel engine. My own car is less than a year old with a very clean burn. If a old car passes MOT emission test, what’s the problem. So we have to define what is acceptable or we have to phase out diesel completly. If we did that, petrol engines would come under attack, maybe.
The public discussion of this matter which I have heard over the past few months is lacking in information about exactly which sorts and ages of vehicle are causing a problem. I guess that there is a huge difference between diesel engines from badly maintained old ones to well designed and maintained new ones. I know that MOT tests on my diesel car describe its emissions as “too low to measure”.
The pollution they measure during the MOT is not that which is causing problems in towns and cities. NOx and small particulates are the problem, the MOT measures ‘smoke’ (which are, very generally, larger particulates from poorly combusted fuel)
Will this “stupid” tax include hgv’s, coaches, buses & black cabs – between them they must emit far more pollutants than private vehicles.
Sound expensive for the government – how are they going to pay for this? Withold funds from the NHS – again? Surely the more obvious route is to just massively increase the tax on diesel, and then let public “freedom of choice” take its course?
Any proposed ‘scrapage’ scheme so far is falling way short of the versions in other European countries where they have been tackling the problem for some time. In France they are offering drivers of old diesel cars €10000 to trade-in against an electric vehicle.
The trouble of offering ‘£2000’ (or £3500) is that the people who own old cars, generally, do so because they are not wealthy enough to have already bought a newer one and the incentive will not be enough to tempt them to change and those who are wealthy enough and have a nearly new car that is going to become worth less (and worthless) that cost them ten times what they are being offered to trade and will not be happy about any scheme.
But the government, having provaracted for too long, has to do something and given the sort of people in charge at the moment, I expect that will be too little too late and help very few.
If the issue is air pollution, then surely it should be addressed by pursuing the worst polluters, namely large diesel lorries and buses, not forgetting diesel railway locomotives, which are frequently left running between duties. The more miles covered, the larger and less efficient the engine, the greater amount of diesel fuel burnt causes the greater harm. Why not add a tax to diesel fuel at the pump? Those who pollute most pay most, which seems fair to me. On a personal note I tow a twin axle caravan with a diesel Land Rover Defender for our UK holidays. The mileage is, I suppose, around 10k annually. The excise duty is in excess of £500. The engine is that fitted to a Transit van. The van, perhaps travelling 80k miles annually (at a conservative estimate) pays £280 in excise duty. I struggle to follow the logic there.
I think the Demonisation of Diesel and Diesel Car Owners is yet another “Knee Jerk Reaction” (Same as Global Warming, don’t start me on that one!!!) Unfortunately I am in the process of changing my Car, I have been driving Diesels since the late 1990’s, the cars on offer are still at full price, but there is now the undermining worry that Diesel Cars built before 2005 will be Scrapped. If I buy Diesel which is the sensible Fuel to consider as I drive over 500 + Miles a week, the subsequent Trade in MUST be affected by the time I decide to change again! If I buy a Petrol Engined Car I lose Torque, MPG and I will be filling up twice a week.
Apparently I can opt for a Hybrid, Petrol – Electric Motor in the Car of my choice supposedly does 135 MPG!! Yeah Right, that MAY work if I stay under 20 MPH thus using the Electric Motor, but that can ony manage aroung 30 Miles before a Re-charge, I work 50 Odd Miles away????
As a footnote, my Car Manufacturer of choice ofer Hybrid Models, (MUST be Petrol) some of them are subject to a £2,500 Government Grant AND assisted funding to cover the installation of a Home Charging System, but if you opt for 18″ Wheels or a certain Sport Accessory, the deal is off??
By my calculations, 17″ Wheels = More Revolutions = More Power/Petrol/Electric Used????
So how is it that the luxury end of the car market is bringing out new diesel vehicles? Companies such as Maserati, Mercedes-Benz, Bentley and so on. Are their new diesel engines “cleaner”? Having recently bought a diesel engined C-series Merc I don’t feel very happy about a few thousand for scrapping my vehicle.
And how would we who live and work in the countryside (in clean air and a long way from city pollution) find a suitable vehicle that can tow a 12 foot trailer filled with cattle? Only a sizeable diesel 4×4 can fulfil that requirement…. Once again, these politicians choose not to acknowledge lives and livelihoods outside a city!
What ever happened to LPG as an alternative?
BP are getting rid for their pumps!
How about London buses ,
In the 1950s car manufacturers said that it was impossible to improve Petrol Car efficiencies. What they meant was it would be costly for them to do so NOT that it was implausible as has been proved by modern petrol cars achieving over 50 mpg compared with the 30mpg of much smaller engines in the 1950s.
So Diesel Car Manufacturers can and will improved the efficiency and reduce the diesel pollution rather than lose out to other forms of fuel.
Batteries have improved over the decades simply because Manufactures saw demand and profit.
Years ago when working for FORDS i was asked ‘What do you think is FORDS business’ A naive question with an obvious answer?
The answer expected was MAKING MONEY. So the same applies now Diesel vehicle pollution can be reduced – as can coal power station emissions – but at a cost and if Manufacturers can make money then it will be achieved.
So politicians and the Lord Mayor look to the more obvious and ultimately less costly and quicker solution. Subsidise Diesel vehicle pollution scrubbing systems??
I bought a diesel car not so long ago.
It uses far less fuel for a given mileage compared to petrol.
The government encouraged the use of diesel, and has not issued any statement to change that.
The costs of a ban on all ready purchased diesel cars would be astronomical.
If the government wants to change its rules, it should do so for all newly built diesels.
But again, the costs would be prohibitive. What about the UK factories now building these cars?
This is all well and good for the mayor of London, but what about us that live in the country, most farm vehicles run on diesel is he expecting farmers to get rid of tractors , builders to get rid of earth movers etc. Why should any of us be penalised for what the government advised us to do in the past, if they want us to change then it should be a proper compensation deal not a token gesture.
I bought an expensive Diesel BMW with an emission figure which is better than the EU cat 6!
Of course it is very apparent that the large capacity Diesel powered trucks and buses are the main pollution problem, but politicians will never tackle that. Instead they always home in on the motorist, the easy target! They encourage us with lower VED on Diesel cars whilst taxing us on the fuel which is dearer in the UK than the Continent!
If these ridiculous proposals are adopted, I would want the difference in residual value of my car as compensation, not a meager scrappage payout. If I am banned from accessing certain roads, which as a taxpayer I have already contributed to, I would want compensation or a free alternative.
There is obviously a problem worldwide, but we need some joined-up thinking (based on scientific fact with engineering input) and long term planning to come up with a solution……..oh dear I was forgetting we are dealing with politicians!!!
is the government aware that there are diesel cars such as the Citroen c4 piccaso which give lower emissions than the petrol version they should be encouraging car manufacturers to produce engines whether it be petrol or diesel to fit this criteria
Having advised us to buy diesels the government have an obligation to to reimburse us for the extra cost we have incured not only when purchasing diesel engined vehicles but for all the additional tax we have paid when buying diesel fuel.
If this is by way of a scappage payment it should also apply to changing engines rather than the whole vehicle, a massive environmental issue, and motor manaufacturers should be encouraged to inform the public which engines would be directly exchangeable for their models and/or produce engines that could be exchangeable at cost price. They should also encourage them to develop ways of recyling the engines for use in newly produced vehicles and then some payment could be made for the old engine in addition to the scrappage payment which would encourage more people to make the change.
My understanding is that diesel engines are more damaging to health than petrol because of particulates, and specifically nano particles. However, carbon monoxide and dioxide emissions are lower, meaning less greenhouse gas production. DPF filters vary in efficiency as regards removal of these damaging particles. Surely, monitoring diesels more rigorously at MoT stage could lessen the problem. Is the Mayor of London aware of the complexities of the issue regarding diesel pollution, or is this simply a knee-jerk reaction which will simply kick the can down the road?
My zafira has a particulate filter fitted from factory, they say it is very clean, however the down side is the MPG goes down. The previous one had the same engine minus this filter and the best MPG was 60 with 40 urban, now its 40/46 on a run. Whilst being cleaner it now takes more fuel to cover a journey. When we all have electric vehicles bet the government come up with a tax then when they realise how much they will loose. The mayor is trying to mayor a name for himself and is really only talking about London. Lets have a national No Driving In London with a Diesel Day, no buses/taxis/lorries/trains/cars etc etc. Very quite but NO deliveries or transport. This would be a very powerful demonstration. Maybe Petrol Prices could organise this.
Sorry but this latest “hit” on the car driver is too much, time for a revolution !!!!!!!!!
I have to disagree with you Gordon, we were told by the then government that this was the way to go, lower CO2, less global warming, which is now climate change. So we followed the advice and bought diesel, guess what, we were badly advised, yet again. It’s not so simple.
The government does not have any money of its own. Instead it forces people to pay taxes under threat of conviction and imprisonment. So why should I be forced to pay taxes in order to bribe polluters not to pollute? Why is this any better than having to bribe people not to commit vandalism? The solution is obvious: the polluter must pay.
Define “polluters”. How are you going to make cows pay for farting?
If diesels are scrapped, how much pollution will be generated by manufacturing their replacements? Then it becomes a choice – run a diesel and kill people or run a petrol and kill the planet.
Its about as silly as claiming that electric cars don’t cause any pollution.
Great a scrappage scheme, that worked well last time?
I cant afford to change my car, 3 grand of the price of a new one is nothing. What’s going to happen about all the taxis, buses, vans, lorry’s, trains, construction equipment? And what are they going to do about the pollution that comes from ship’s?
Diesel cars should pay the same road tax as petrol cars do – as of now. That could not be said to be prejudicial to diesel whingers.
Then there should be strict emissions testing systems – which are not conned by Volkswagen-type cheating (surely our scientists are up to that sort of challenge?) – and if it fails it fails . . .
No scrappage – why should I pay towards someone else’s new car?
These so called plans by our esteemed politicians make me so angry. This joker was part of the government that talked us into buying diesel cars, they actively encouraged us, now that the real dangers are apparent they want us to get rid of them all. What a complete waste of space these people are. To make things worse, the EU are saying they will fine us because of our hi emissions, surely it would make more sense for them to offer us cash to help solve the problem. Another way of extracting money from us.
Just another govt ploy to prop up the new car industry & get more taxes. If they were really interested in the environment, they would see that making new cars is less environmentally friendly than repairing or modifying existing ones.
This witch hunt of diesel is rubbish; a 2litre petrol Ford C-Max Zetec pollutes TWICE as much as a Fiesta Econetic Diesel 1.6 TDCi, & the diesel gets more mpg too ! The BMW 320i M-sport X drive is 1&1/2 more polluting. WHERE IS THE LOGIC ?
What about all the large “status” cars swanning around London & the fashion trend for everybody to want SUVs?
Buses, trains, planes & lorries are the biggest polluters but are they going to do a scrappage scheme for them, or tax them more ?- I don’t think so.
I’ve heard that 50% of pollution is caused by 10% of vehicles. Wouldn’t it be better to MAN UP to the political forces and tackle that Mr Khan?
Absolutely shocking, I have a Volvo XC90 largely because I live in a very rural area and a 4×4 is often a very necessary vehicle and it’s worth considerably more than the £3500 potentially on offer, but sadly it’s the old story never listen to a word the Government says!
The Government again. What has the Government got to do with all this? Can’t we live a life where the Government is a bit less present?
What they did by ‘encouraging’us to drive diesels is irrelevant. Slightly lower road tax is hardly any incentive. The cost of diesel fuel in the whole of Europe is lower than petrol and this is a real encouragement, not a few quid on an annual tax.
I didn’t buy my diesel because the Government supposedly wanted more diesels on the road, but because diesels are better engines and with all catalytics and dpf and tons of sensors, the polution is FAR LESS than that coming out of petrol cars.
This is the truth, but somehow Government and Mayors have to do something so decided to blame diesels. Just like they blamed the shopping bags and we now buy them.
The real polution doesn’t come from shopping bags ot even private vehicles as much as from industrial and military operations.
When the public authorities come up with their proposals to dupposedly do good, make no mistake, it’s always always paving the way for more tax, inconvenience, expense, trouble for the ordinary man.
If there’s a ban on diesels I’ll take the mayor to Court.
…except England where petrol is cheaper than diesel fuel. Also diesel cars are more expensive to buy in the first place and more expensive to service and repair.
What encouragement?
Further Diesel can run on vegetable oil. What cleaner than that?
F**k the stupid Government and even more stupid Mayor.
Sounds like potential grants to persuade people to scrap old diesels will just about cancel out the new vehicle tax hike for new cars on 1st April (unless you buy an electric vehicle):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbV7Yfud1dE
In short, it looks like you can add a couple of grand to price of a new car over £40k.
If your motor is a zero-emissions vehicle, then there will be no tax to pay. For everyone else, things get a bit more complicated… and potentially, far more expensive.
According to Whatcar.com , the hardest hit cars will be low-emission combustion-engined cars and hybrids.
Bizarrely, cars which had sufficiently high emission levels to be in the top tax band of the current system will actually work out cheaper under the new system so long as you keep them for more than five years.
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-vehicle-tax-rates-from-1-april-2017
As ever the Government has elected to take the stick approach to persuading us to use environmentally friendly transport (along with a slap in the face with spiralling public transport costs)!?!?
I should like to know why buses and lorries are allowed to belch black smoke, it is necessary to use the air recirculation system ( if your vehicle has onr ) to stop the terrible fumes entering your vehicle. when I was in the motor trade a diesel engined vehicle had to pass a smoke test. This has obviously been scrapped. I should also like to know why lorries have their exhaust pipe outlets positioned to cover pedestrians and windscreens of following vehicles with the filthy exhaust fumes etc. This is a health hazard and must be stopped, Is it because in the USA etc they do this, we always seem to follow such countries blindly as what they say to our governments is taken as gospel.
Does the so called Mayor of London ever look up in the sky, if not why not, the aircraft passing over do just as much pollution damage as any vehicle, and now we need another runway at Heathrow so more aircraft can be accommodated causing even more pollution. Cut this down and pollution will fall dramatically.
Modern diesel cars do less harm than petrol.
I’ve read a lot of good comments on here,and I think we should all send our comments to our local MP, I have a diesel car which cost me a lot of money, but it is not cheap to run as diesel fuel is going up steadily but I will not accept a token £3000 compensation I will want a replacement petrol car, I took the governments advise now they tell me they got it wrong, well I afraid it’s going to cost you Mr government.
Another brilliant idea from Mayor Khan. Trouble is he expects everyone else to pay for his spending. If he believes that diesels are bad then ban ALL diesels FROM LONDON. Fines are his way of financing his grandiose ideas which will come to nothing if nobody incurs a fine.(much like smoking and drinking alcohol, they won’t ban them totally because they’ll have to find the money they lose in tax somewhere else) Lets see how much the price of goods in the shops(and online) go up and the council tax rates( that pay for all the refuse trucks). I know they’re slowly introducing all electric buses but the life of a London bus seems to have been getting shorter. It’s alright keeping fares down(it’s still cheaper for me to travel 2 up in a petrol car than it is to travel by public transport) but if the only way you can do that is by subsidising it from people who don’t use it then it’s wrong.
If the users of public transport actually paid realistic fares then he might be able to increase his environmentally friendly bus fleet quicker and he might also be able to spend more on increasing the capacity of the Tube. He should be encouraging firms to move OUT of London so that their staff don’t have to travel in thus reducing overcrowding and the need for HS2.
Khan wants to run Southern but he can’t even stop multiple strikes on his own rail system.
If the EU can accept diesels(and it must because it keeps bringing out laws for controlling them), shouldn’t the Europhile Mayor of London?
Six years ago I bought a used van to convert into a campervan. As Diesels had been promoted by the Government I was happy to buy a (Cat 4, 2007 reg) diesel van. I spent nine thousand pounds on the conversion, on top of the £8,000 purchase price. What use would a scrappage scheme be to me? If I’d known we were going to be demonised I would have thought twice about diesel in the first place. And if they were wrong the first time about diesel being better than petrol, how long before they change their minds again?
The case against diesel dates back to the 1970s, and all we motorists should be as aware as possible of the impact of our driving choices on other people. I am not happy about massive government subsidies or penalties designed to produce a sudden change in purchasing trends; such measures usually end up penalising the most vulnerable, encouraging unwise expenditure, and offer easy profits for those who see means to exploit the system. The financial incentives put in place to promote diesel use at the beginning of the century have come home to roost.
The clock cannot be put back, but we should all expect that there will be a progressive disincentive to use diesel fuelled vehicles, mainly perhaps through differential fuel tax, and, other things being equal, let us hope for a substantial shift to the least polluting vehicles. The immediate need to charge extra or to totally exclude inessential diesel vehicles from city centres is twofold: it is at the lowest speeds that the pollution generated is greatest, and the worst harm to health is where the population is densest.
As most Taxi drivers run diesel cabs in London, this will not go down well!
Only fair if the payment under the scrappage scheme is equal to the market value of the vehicle being scrapped!
Terrible dilemma for diesel drivers and perhaps the fairest and most just way would be to get the Green lobby and the rest of the climate science lunatics to foot the bill as payback for their flawed alarmist idealogy that has brainwashed everyone into thinking that CO2 is a danger to our planet (perhaps if plants could talk they would also beg to differ). Real science would tell them that increased CO2 is a result of warming and not the cause (probably natural cycle of teh earth anyway) – from what I understand teh man-made climate change lobby rejected the views of scientists who disagreed with them and pointed this fact out. That’s politics for you and leaves us with diesel cars of no value, ugly windfarms, power shortages and destruction of forests and crops to make way for “renewable” fuels. A disaster!!!
it was only a few years ago the government was incouraging you to buy diesel vehicles now we know y another tax on the motorist
I think whatever we are told it’s going to be old news, as others have said we were told by the labour government to swap our petrol vehicles to diesel for the environment, but if I remember John Prescott was on TV the other night saying that the government’s reason at the time was you could get more mileage with diesel, so my question is do we believe them again or are we being scare mongered again by the government or the so called do-gooders as this seems to be or is this another money scheme to get more money out of the poor people again, with todays prices no one rich or poor is going to gain except the corporate car company or government, needs more research if you think about it, if this scheme goes through you the people will not be getting anything for nothing, its the people who don’t own cars will pay as much tax to fund this scheme is that fair.
What I would like to know is how bad a diesel is compared to a comparatively sized petrol engine regarding emissions. Take for example a 2010 1.6 Ford Focus estate. Information suggests the diesel emits 109 g/km and averages 64.2 mpg with a tax of £30 whereas the equivalent petrol engine emits 159 g/km and averages at 42.2 mpg with a tax of £185. Details on used car websites don’t show Nitrogen Dioxide (?) emissions. What is the comparison between these two vehicles. With a working particle filter on the exhaust of a diesel, could someone please quantify the other noxious gases and particulates emitted so we can see a ‘level’ playing field between diesel and petrol.
At the rates mpg rates stated above it would cost me 1.5 times as much to drive a petrol engined car of this type.
This has to be the start of what the Government really want – they won’t be happy until everyone barr the chosen few are riding round on bicycles.
OK so I am going to scrap my wheelchair accessible vehicle for £3500
And I’ll cost me £37,500 to replace it !!!!
Not going to happen Mr Khan, maybe if the government PAID to convert diesel vehicles to LPG as this would be cheaper and more environmentally friendly than building new cars, does Mr Khan not know how they make Aluminium it is an environmentally disastrous process !
Read yesterdays Times (Wednesday 15th Feb 2017) in the article it seemed to support the bias against the Diesel. So when I came home to Lincolnshire, I looked at my old working area of Bermondsey London SE1. It comes as no surprise to me that the white collar brigade have taken over the once busy warehouses and clearing away the evidence of the working man and Woman. So they do not like a dirty collar from all these black soot particles. My God they are so anal, in the 60’s we suffered days of smog. It was a good day if you could see across the road. But today they come into the city and do not like the smell and aroma other than those over priced Coffee shops. Diesel are a choice for the mileage they provide. They are fuel efficient vehicles giving better miles per gallon per load they carry. To switch to Electric would be too soon and the Road Transport Industry isn’t making enough profit to afford the outlay and re training of the people who would upkeep the vehicles. So for now, unless King Khan wants no deliveries to all these people then Diesels are the best option by far.