Re: End to high-performance cars on streets of London?
Quote:
LondonGuy said:
Our Marxist mayor, "Red" Ken Livingstone, has today announced plans to charge car drivers Pounds25/day (Pounds6500/9000euros/$12000 a year) to drive "high-emissions" cars into Central London, on weekdays, 7am - 6pm.
This will cover cars registered:
a) pre-March 2001, with engines above 3000cc.
b) March 2001 onwards, with CO2 emissions above 225g/km.
Good-bye all V8s, SUVs, petrol prestige cars, (private) limos, hypercars, beautiful classics, all Ferraris, Porsche 911s etc etc (unless the owners are *extremely* wealthy).
The mayor hates 4x4/SUV drivers and wants to remove them from our roads.
Cars with emissions of 120g/km or below will be free of charge.
How have we got to this ridiculous position?
- The Congestion Charge was inititally introduced as such - a congestion charge. This has now become nothing of the sort - it is now an "emissions" charge. Owners of affected large cars will simply buy a small car with low emissions, and evade the charge, adding to congestion.
- This will decimate the value on the used market of high-emissions cars.
- There are massive inconsistencies and anomalies - a 2000 2.5TD Range Rover will escape the penalty, a 2005 Ford Mondeo Automatic will be clobbered.
- This charge penalises against large families (hence people carriers or 7 seaters), or people with elderly vehicles.
This will mean far fewer nice vehicles on the streets of The City, West End, Kensington & Chelsea very soon. No residents 90% discount. There will be uproar!
Ironically, the 4x4s will survive - the new BMW X5 35td engine has emissions of 216g/km - much to the annoyance of Red Ken! But the 911 may be banished for a few years until a "cleaner" version is available.
My beloved Porsche Boxster S was sold last month in anticipation of this announcement. :-(
New "clean" BMW turbo diesel coupe on order...
I wonder if Ken will be re-elected in the summer election?
We can only hope not ...
DISCUSS
As somebody familiar with London I don't think it is practical to go to London by private car never mind in your Ferrari or Bentley etc. Use your large expensive fast vehicles for where they were intended and go to inner London either by public transport, taxi or get a cheap supermini or better a Smart ForTwo. Most of the expensive cars circulate in the West End for show off and for no practical reason, mostly owned by wealthy Arabs and Asians or companies. All those will not be compromised by a charge of Pounds25. Red Ken wants to raise some more revenue it seems for the benefit of the many. Take from the few and give to the many.
