January 2009 Car News - GBCarLoans.com

6th January 2009

Four Year delay on carbon dioxide emissions ruling

Car manufacturers have won a four-year delay to the European ruling designed to force them to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from new cars. It had been proposed that the ruling would be enforced in 2015, now however the enforcement will not happen untill 2019.
This move however will mean that vehivle manufacturers will be able to pospone expensive investments in carbon reducing scientific technology. It is the smaller manufacturers such as Lotus, Aston Martin and McLaren, that Britain believes will suffer and quite possibly go under if the original CO2 reduction ruling could not be re thought.

Jaguar Land Rover has already been granted a special deal by Britain and the EU, Land Rover have been given more time to reach the fuel efficiency targets proposed last year.
The original agreement between MEPs and the 27 EU member states was to force the industry to reduce average CO emissions from around 158g/km last year to 130g/km by 2012. Now the 130g/km target will be phased in over three years from 2012.

Jaguar Land Rover will have to comply with a much less onerous target of a 25 per cent rather than the original 38 per cent reduction by 2015 from its 2007 CO2 average. During the first week in January 850 agency workers, all in the West Midlands were layed off.

Fines incurred for failing to comply with the new compulsory target have been reduced dramatically, they will start at 5 Euros for the first 1g/km over the target and the full fine of 95 Euros per gram will not be imposed until 2019. It is believed that companies will have to pay the lower fines as they will be unable to afford to meet the targets. Under the readjusted deal, the fines for failing to comply with the new compulsory target have been reduced to a fraction of the level proposed by the European Commission last December. They will start at 5 Euros for the first 1g/km over the target and the full fine of 95 Euros per gram will not be imposed until 2019.

Many manufacturers are likely to choose to pay the lower fines rather than meet the targets because the total paid in penalties will be cheaper than investing in new carbon-reducing technology or phasing out their least efficient models. Car companies tend to make most of their profits on their bigger, more expensive models.
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