Incentivising switch to cleaner vehicles

Oh My God you all really need to look at these figures !! Looks like someone,s been telling porkies !!
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/fil...
Pay particular attention to the NOx emissions you know the ones that are bad for you-they are going down every year NOT UP !

Hi think if the Mayor wants to do something really significant for the pollution he should read Naomi Klein's book "This changes everything". Cleaner vehicles are always welcome but they won't make a real difference. Is less vehicles the solution, not better vehicles.

Rather than forcing people to buy new vehicles, the "scrappage" scheme should focus on helping fund modifications to make older vehicles compliant with the higher Euro standards,

e. g. exhaust gas treatments and systems to allow engines to stop and start automatically in stationary traffic.

This is because the total environmental impact of upgrading an existing vehicle is less than scrapping an old vehicle and buying a new one. Scrappage schemes often end up being marketing ploys for the vehicle manufacturers.

I own a Euro 3 compliant van but it was built before the mandatory date, so it was initially looking like it would be non-compliant for the Low Emmission Zone. I looked into after-market emissions reduction solutions and they were not cheap, but they were available.

What I would really like would be the vehicle manufaturers offeing an after-market engine upgrade service so I could get a newer cleaner engine fitted to a vehicle that has a fair bit of life left in it. But I'm realistic enough to know that won't happen.

London has 8 hydrogen buses. It has no natural gas powered buses. Los Angeles has 100% low carbon buses, mostly on natural gas. RATP runs London United Buses. It's parent in Paris is buying 1000 natural gas buses. Very low nox and sox , zero particulate emissions. Natural gas buses, trucks, garbage trucks and taxis are very common worldwide. They can run on bio gas too. Why does London not have any? New York, Brussels, Madrid and even Reading have very big programs.
And they also have 20% less carbon emissions. Why are they rejected in favour of electric buses which barely exist.

People on low incomes should not be punished for having older cars. There must be a sensible and thoughful way forward to air polution. Encourage those that can to invest in less poluting and electric cars, but not stigmatising or punishing lower income people. A radicle aproch is needed, electric charge points in residential streets across the city, form suburban to inner city and central London, solar panels and solar water panels on domestic and comercial properties, wind terbines along the Thames, tidal genration along the Thames, geothermal energy. All of these things will promote massive investment into green technology, resulting in more jobs and better standards of living in London. Radical and forward thinking.

It seems to me that the main anxieties I have seen are because people have invested in diesel cars which are old enough to fall foul of the suggested cut off dates. Perhaps those cars registered inside London (or a designated London region) could have a longer grace period than cars registered somewhere else.

Vintage vehicles are so rare that they make if a very small percentage of the engines on the roads. I think there should be exemptions for anthing pre 1970. They will phase themselves out naurally, and there is a cultural value in keeping certain models, which would be a shame to lose.

Everyone knows that deisel vehicles are a problem now, especially in the light of th VW scandal. With several proposals on the table to curb the use of deisel, i urge anyone who has one to flog it asap before it loses it's value completely. No one is going to want them in a year or so, and in the current economic climate i doubt that we can realistically expect grants to switch, or for a scrappage scheme. Presumably you would want more than the scrap value anyway? Sell now if you are wise. Prices already falling fast!