Tag Archives: bluemotion

Current affairs

Does @UKVolkswagen deserve the Greenpeace Death-Star treatment?

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vwgreenpeace

Scot points me at this very, very polished anti-VW campaign, a car maker whose eco-credentials we’ve been evaluating for a little while whist looking for a replacement for the ageing Skoda (aka Horse).

The essence of the Greenpeace upset is that:

  • VW is lobbying against lower carbon caps for its cars
  • VW doesn’t sell many eco-cars (6% of sales, apparently)
  • VW sells its eco-cars at a premium

Now, my initial reaction is what it was designed to be – shocking, we can’t get one of those. But the more I think about it, the more unreasonable that position seems to be.

VW has been selling its Bluemotion cars for a few years. Its brands pretty much all (with the exception of the high end sports car brands it owns) have Bluemotion variants. It markets those cars and their eco-credentials heavily. Despite the Greenpeace criticism on cost, the Golf we’ve been looking at costs less than £800 more than its non-Bluemotion equivalent (around a 4% premium). The question has to be asked; why are only 6% of the cars VW sells in these product lines?

Clearly, Greenpeace would like the answer to that question to cast responsibility on VW. But I think its our fault- the driving, car-buying public. Eco-efficient, no matter how well spun, sounds boring. If you were going to spend an extra £800 on a car, would you go for metallic paint and body coloured bumpers, or would you go for the eco-efficient version? Not enough of us would choose the latter. Similarly, if you were looking at a second hand car and had the option of different (second-hand) variants with better performance for a lower price – inevitable whilst the technology is new – how many people can afford to pay the extra there? This isn’t VW’s fault, this is a consequence of capitalism – whilst supply is low, costs will be at a premium. You remember what Emily has to say about market forces.

Regulation may need to play a part in addressing these issues, but I’m not sure the regulation is necessarily being applied in the right place. Forcing the manufacturers to lower carbon emissions caps before there is market demand will hurt the manufacturers. Forcing consumers to pay a premium to drive polluting cars – even more than the current tax band system does, perhaps – would be a more sensible approach, to my mind. It tackles the root of the problem – consumers that are largely indifferent to pollution – rather than penalising the organisations that actually are investing in R&D and manufacturing to reduce the CO2 output of their products.

Now I’m not suggesting for a moment that VW is blameless here, or that I have the insight or understanding of its lobbying activities and commercial business beyond the amazingly superficial. However, I can’t help but feel that Greenpeace has perhaps oversimplified here – picking on a more sympathetic target for its audience than its audience itself.

Cars

The ROI on @UKVolkswagen Bluemotion

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Dashboard 08

You’ll know from recent posts that I’ve been obsessing somewhat about the ‘new car’ decision. I thought I’d put the new ‘eco-efficient’ technologies to the financial test, trying to get a sense of how much money they’d save me on an average year.

This spreadsheet lays out the detail; but the essence of it is that I worked out the range of a Bluemotion VW Golf compared with a normal diesel car and divided it by the total estimated distance I anticipate driving per year (4000 miles or so). This gives me a theoretical number of refuels per year, on which basis you can estimate a saving.

Well, the saving, taking a pessimistic perspective on fuel prices and rounding up in a few other places to give Bluemotion the advantage, comes to about £250 a year. The tax-free status of the car saves you another £165 a year or so – for a total annual saving of £415.

Given that Bluemotion cars currently cost about £6,000 more than a slightly older, but not ludicrously less efficient 1.9 litre TDI Golf (30% odd), I’m trying to work out if the investment is justified. It comes to an effective return of 6.9% a year on the additional investment, which is not bad.

The resale value point might swing it though. If you enhance the rate of return with the possibility that Bluemotion cars will be worth more on resale (even if that’s only £100 a year more than the older car)  – on account of the desirability of the tax break and presumably the increasing expectation that a car is eco-efficient – then that 6.9% might be more like 8% or 9%- at which point it’ll be doing as much for me as a reasonable rate of return on a regular investment. And given that tax rates and fuel prices are only likely to go one way – it might make good sense.

Is my maths right? What does anyone think? I obviously haven’t allowed for inflation or modelled for tax / fuel price changes beyond fuel at £1.50 per litre.

Shopping

Looking at low emissions cars

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Volkswagen Golf BlueMotion

Hybrids have a bad rep. They’re inexplicably shaped like dinosaur eggs – closer to a Jetsons view of what a modern car should look like than any actual designers, one would assume – famed for sluggish performance, plagued by technology issues and challenged on their supply chain eco-credentials – after all, if the components have travelled the world seven times over to allow the car to be assembled in the first place, then how much difference to the environment does the ‘hybrid’ make?

This review sums it up:

Eco-friendly cars are often grim, hair-shirted things that you suffer as penance for your emissions, even though they pump out less CO2 than their standard brethren.

Which is why I think its fantastic – although depressingly late to market – that there’s a new wave of environmentally friendly cars rolling off production lines around the world – whether its ‘Greenline’ (Skoda), ‘Bluemotion’ (VW) or ‘EfficientDynamics’ (BMW), the (German, anyway) manufacturers have cottoned onto this eco-friendly thing and are rapidly revising their product line. Since 2007 or so these cars have been entering the market and whilst – in the used car market at least – they still command a premium over their standard rivals, they do provide a number of key benefits thanks to a number of cool bits of technology.

The benefits:

  1. Ludicrous mileage – over 80 MPG in some cases, which will top out older hybrids
  2. Tax-free, mostly, thanks to low emissions
  3. Some of the cars have even lower emissions than many hybrids
  4. (Relatively) normal handling – the car’s body mass index hasn’t been skewed by a heavy battery pack

The tech that gives it this awesome mileage:

  1. Stop/start tech. The engine switches off when the car rolls to a halt (say at a traffic light). For urban driving, this makes a big difference.
  2. Regenerative braking. The kinetic energy lost when the car brakes is captured, generally in the car battery, for later use.
  3. Sill extensions & other aerodynamic tweaks – help seal the car and reduce drag
  4. Engine refinements – high torque diesel, usually
  5. Gear shift indicators – to help you drive more ecofficiently

I’m looking for a possible replacement for Horse (our ageing 68 BHP Skoda Fabia) and am very tempted by one of these cars – specifically the Golf in the above review – but they cost much money. Anyone have any advice?