The negligible improvement in the second quarter of 2010 could be a sign of significant problems ahead for the car industry. As Clean Green Cars pointed out three months ago, "Much of the recent gains have come from scrappage incentives that have led people to buy a lot of small, economical cars. With the scrappage scheme now at an end, the manufacturers need to "lock-in" those gains and carry on moving forward.
At present, they are failing to achieve this. Indeed average CO2 actually rose slightly between April 2010 (when the scrappage scheme was drawing to a close) and June 2010, from 144.93 g/km to 145.26 g/km. Given that car manufacturers need to reduce CO2 by around 5% per year to meet the EU target, this is a serious setback.
Jay Nagley, Publisher of Clean Green Cars commented, "Car manufacturers are swimming against the tide now that the scrappage scheme has ended. They are going to have to redouble their efforts to meet what is a reasonable overall target."
To check out your fleet co2 emissions, come to the Fleet News co2 section.
adamrollins - 22/07/2010 16:17
The Clean Green Cars article slightly contradicts the ALD Automotive study that paints a brighter picture. There could be more validation of the statistics by showing how many vehicles each study has evaluated. I would agree with David Yates from ALD though that there are significant environmental and financial savings to be made by looking at aspects other than CO2 emission figures. This is just one of many boxes to tick. Mileage management, journey management, driver behaviour, maintenance, etc should all be considered to achieve best value for money and the environment. For those put off by thinking mileage management, etc is for companies the size of ALD, these measures are all available to small fleets just as readily as the large through systems such as can be seen at www.midas-fms.com