The Best Car Finance Blog In The World

So what’s he up to this time I hear you ask? Well Mr Angry of West Sussex here is getting really annoyed that we don’t hear anything concrete from this Government regarding diesel cars vs petrol cars vs hybrids vs electric cars.

He’s called for a national scrappage scheme which I don’t disagree with. The real culprits are the very old cars and vans that can be seen spewing out thick smoke and soot which is clearly not good for the atmosphere and the health of our nation.

Having said that MOT testers now have to carry out a visual check on the exhaust of all vehicles and if they are spewing out smoke they fail – simple as. Back to Mr Khan, he’s calling for a national scrappage scheme, not to put people into newer petrol cars that would be a step in the right direction (not exactly as I’ll explain) but into pure electric vehicles.

Well, first of all, you don’t have to be a financial whizz kid to realise that people that are driving old diesel cars about are either eccentric multi-millionaires that are tight with their money but can appreciate a good deal when they see it or is it because they are financially stretched and can’t afford a newer car otherwise they would be driving one?

So expecting these people to swap their old diesel for either a hugely expensive new electric car or a used electric with a range of 3 miles, on a good day, is pure idiocy! And if we could incentivise the diesel drivers to move across to electric cars what about the infrastructure. I live in a rural Sussex town but with the remnants of an old marriage taking up space in my garage that couldn’t accommodate my car anyway (even if it was empty) and with no power to the garage – charging in my garage would not be an option.

Parking in the road is manic and with lamp posts located on the inside of the pavements, we couldn’t even mount chargers on the lamp posts. The idea that we can convert everyone into EV drivers is a pipedream and not possible until battery technology catches up. A lightweight battery pack that could be easily removed from the car and charged indoors then reconnected into the car when needed could be a solution – but we aint there yet!

In the meantime, the answer would be to get new car buyers, with the ability to charge electric vehicles, to buy EV’s or plug in hybrids, the more sold would bring down the cost of used cars and make them more affordable.

But as the Government has removed the subsidy on hybrids and reduced the subsidy on EV’s it’s hardly a move in the right direction. And even companies, keen to get their company car drivers into EV’s with zero emissions face the challenge from employees that BIK tax this year, even on cars with zero emissions, face a BIK bill of 16% of the car’s overpriced list price.

I should also mention that if you read my 3 part report into the findings by the Germans who carried out a large survey into latest generation diesel cars only to find that emissions of NOx, CO2 and particulates were less than petrol when tested on the road in real world conditions so if anything we should be moving back to diesel as an interim measure.

Sorry Mr Khan, consider the above then I would get back to the drawing board if I were you!  By Graham Hill