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Best car for the environment?

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6 Months? I can't see that to be honest, it seems far too quick.

 

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/06/140616093317.htm

 

This study concluded that a 2 mega-watt wind turbine with a working life of 20 years would offset its environmental cost within 5 - 8 months.

 

This figure comes from 35% working capacity of the turbine. I don't know enough about turbines to know if that is a realistic capacity.

 

Every manufacturer must also complete a LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) - which must be published (for example, Siemens have a website here where environment impact reports can be downloaded, which include their LCA http://www.siemens.com/global/en/home/markets/wind/facts/environment.html)

 

Picking one of the Siemens turbines at random I got a payback time of 5.5 months.

 

I therefore don't think that the 6 month figure is unreasonable, and like I said, even if it was a few years, it would still be pretty good. Seems a bit odd for people to complain about the initial environmental cost of wind turbines unless they also complain about the initial environmental cost of power stations etc..

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6 Months? I can't see that to be honest, it seems far too quick.

 

Land Rover claim to "offset 100% of our manufacturing assembly emissions".

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Land Rover claim to "offset 100% of our manufacturing assembly emissions".

 

Offsetting is just crazy. That's like paying someone to be nice to some kid in Kenya so you can punch someone in the nose. Far better to not actually punch someone in the first place

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Offsetting is just crazy. That's like paying someone to be nice to some kid in Kenya so you can punch someone in the nose. Far better to not actually punch someone in the first place

 

Which poses an interesting philosophical question:

 

If a tree is planted in the middle of a field and no one is around, does it count?

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It is an interesting conundrum, isn't it. The straightforward and honest answer is: None. All cars, including electric, drain resources whereas public transport is far more efficient.

 

That out of the way - electric is better in terms of emissions for obvious reasons, it does not have any at the point of use and, with the right sort of contract/supply can be totally emission free. However, the production of batteries is and remains a very harmful operation that causes similar or even worse damage to the planet as extracting oil does, not to mention what to do with used batteries.

 

We are currently at the tipping point though, low-emission/usage petrol cars, like the VW Bluemotion Polo are still very viable and certainly give electrics a run for their money, especially with the premium priced models. But as more and more people are making the switch the price of electric cars is coming down and infrastructure to charge up is becoming more mature.

 

I am close to going electric for the daily commute, just waiting on the purchasing price coming down for more... desirable cars. I won't drive a Zoe or Leaf on a daily basis...

 

Do you know... I'm not sure I'm really sold on this bit. Whilst it is undoubtedly true during rush hour and even during most of the daytime, I often go out on an evening to the pub and quite regularly there are only one or two of us on the bus in both directions. This clearly isn't at all economical. Environment wise I would be better getting a taxi. But of course that comes at cost.

 

I don't know what the answer to this is as, clearly, you don't want a regular bus service stopped because it isn't viable both economically or environmentally, because as soon as you can't rely on a regular bus service people will stop using them all together.

 

On most train services these days you can get a CO2/km report for your journey. However I would be interested to know the actual cost per passenger over an average day, especially on the buses, before I'll buy into the 'public transport is more efficient' argument.

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Thinking about diesel cars, the ones that use adblue will be the cleanest?

 

I believe its been mandatory in cars for a couple of years, are there any cars that have been using adblue for many years?

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Thinking about diesel cars, the ones that use adblue will be the cleanest?

 

I believe its been mandatory in cars for a couple of years, are there any cars that have been using adblue for many years?

 

The cleanest ones are the ones that have particulate filters in the exhaust, not all of them need to use Adblue.

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On a budget, a small petrol engine, the newer the better in good order not revved to death at every opportunity. Really new ones are tiny with a turbo bolted so you get reasonable performance.
My wife and I recently bought a little Kia Rio, with a 1.5 litre engine, our first small car in a long time. We are thorughly enjoying it. We get about 35 miles per US gallon,and it rides there with the big guys up hill and down dale wiithout panting for air. We don't have a lot of trunk space, but nobody rides in the back seats, and everything goes back there. The only trouble with electric cars is distance. We don't go down to Florida every month, but its nice to be able to.

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The cleanest ones are the ones that have particulate filters in the exhaust, not all of them need to use Adblue.

 

The Diesel Particulate Filter is in the exhaust system of all diesel-powered cars sold new since 2009.

In stop/start traffic, or on short journeys, a regeneration may not get time to complete. This will cause the DPF to block partially and an orange light (left) will come on in the instrument cluster. Ignore the light and continue driving slowly or in traffic and eventually the engine will lose power and stop. This will prompt a trip to the garage and things will get expensive. And I mean really expensive: if the car needs a new DPF, we’re talking more than £1000.

 

Before you buy a car, consider the kind of mileage you do. If most of your miles involve short journeys or sitting in stop-start traffic where the car never really gets going, plump for petrol rather than diesel.

 

I dont do a lot of miles, so maybe a petrol car is better for me.

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