Exclusive: UK climate campaign group Possible calls for ‘polluter pays’ tax based on vehicle size

The increasing popularity of ultra-heavy SUVs in England means a conventional-engined car bought in 2013 will, on average, have lower carbon emissions than one bought new today, new research has found.

The study by the climate campaign group Possible said there was a strong correlation between income and owning a large SUV, which meant there was a sound argument for “polluter pays” taxes for vehicle emissions based on size.

  • Kecessa@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    113·
    1 year ago

    If looking at carbon emissions only… Well, no shit? No need for a study to know that, it’s purely based on fuel economy. Look at other types of emissions though and a 2023 SUV with a brand new catalytic converter will be much better than a 10 years old car.

    • paintbucketholder@lemmy.worldEnglish
      61·
      1 year ago

      How so? Cars have to pass emissions tests, and ten year old cars have to pass them, too.

      Also: what significant improvements in filtering out “other types of emissions” have there been made in consumer vehicles in the last 10 years, and what “other types of emissions” are those?

      • Kecessa@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        2·
        1 year ago

        https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_emission_standards

        A 10 years old car would fall under Euro 5b standards instead of Euro 6d, there’s also a level of tolerance when a car gets tested so it might have beat the standard by a good margin when it was new, it still passes the test 10 years later because it’s still under what’s allowed but not as good as it was when new.

        CO2 emissions don’t get filtered by the anti emissions equipment, they’re the by-product of combining the CO emissions with unburnt hydrocarbons, it’s 100% based on how much fuel is burned by the vehicle and that’s it. Anti pollution systems do reduce NOx emissions by splitting it and Euro 6 tolerates less than half the NOx emissions that Euro 5 does while also reducing the tolerance for HC+NOx (talking about diesel here, since the standards were the same Euro 5 to Euro 6 for petrol vehicles).

        Euro 6 also introduced particle emissions for petrol cars, which only existed for diesel vehicles under Euro 5. Euro 7 is coming in 2025 and will add NH3 and brake pads particles into the mix.