Green agenda – choosing a car

It may seem perverse to look at choosing a car as analogous to Transformational Government, but when thinking about changing my car I realised that it illustrates that focussing on the right holistic outcome can result in apparently illogical choices.

All the publicity is about fuel efficiency and low emissions, with small cars and hybrid cars receiving tax advantages and freedom from congestion charge. There has been some recent debate on keeping your current car longer, but often that is balanced by comments about the increasing emissions from older cars.

In my experience big engine / quality cars tend to be used for more years / miles that smaller more apparently economical models, my current car (a 2 litre Saab) is almost seven years old and after 142k miles is still performing efficiently (with fuel consumption pretty much the same as when new). One only has to look at used car adverts to appreciate that older Mercedes and BMWs etc. go on for years longer that many other cars. So in minimising my impact on the environment I’ll probably choose a relatively powerful Saab again.

There is a balance of economy, predicted life and the emissions caused during the manufacture of a larger car are greater. I’d favour incentives based on the holistic lifetime impact rather than the more easily measured emissions figure. In the same way measuring how long it takes to handle a telephone call or respond to a letter says little meaningful about the service level the citizen experiences.