Brake time?

We might be prepared to fit new lightbulbs and recycle our cans for the planet, but it seems that it takes major fuel price hikes to get us looking at low-carbon cars. Sarah Irving attempts to infiltrate the sacred space of the family motor...

This report looks at the ethics behind the major brands of car on the UK market, as well as some alternatives – both eco-friendly cars, and ways of avoiding vehicle ownership altogether. For other ways of getting around Britain and Europe, see the Travel report.

Sixteen per cent of the UK's climate change emissions come from the cars, motorcycles and other petrol or diesel fueled vehicles we get around in.(1) That means that cutting our car use, or thinking seriously about how our cars are powered, offers us huge opportunities to reduce our CO2 contributions. Reducing car emissions also lessens vehicle pollution which, according to the World Health Organisation, kills more people than car crashes through conditions such as asthma and cardiovascular disease.(2)

‘Eco-cars’ such as electric-petrol hybrids and those running on liquefied gas, or simply cars with high efficiency and low emissions, have been on the market for nearly a decade. But it has taken an oil crisis and rocketing petrol prices to make most consumers really take notice of these possibilities. Brad Pitt and Cameron Diaz might be whizzing around Hollywood in Toyota Prius or Lexus hybrids, but Joe Bloggs – in the UK, as well as our stereotypically gas-guzzling cousins across the Pond - has not been following suit.

Only in June 2008, in the midst of panics about petrol price hikes, was the Energy Savings Trust finally able to report that sales of low-emissions cars had ‘surged’ in the previous month, rising 120% on the same period in 2007. Sales of high-mileage 4x4s had also dropped by 18% and Halfords reported rising sales of bicycles.(3)

This report looks at the climate change impacts of cars, some of the best choices to reduce emissions, and other ways (besides the obvious on yer bike/bus) to reduce personal impacts. But what about other ethical issues? So much of the press about cars concentrates on this one – admittedly vital - issue. But car manufacturers’ impacts on human rights often go unnoticed, and are discussed below.

Human Rights

Cars are so often advertised and written about as the epitome of personal freedom. They bestow on individuals the ability to escape their immediate environment at the time of their own choosing, to travel long distances, and to do so in a personal box, unaffected by fellow passengers. In Saudi Arabia the fact that women are forbidden to drive is held up (at least by the Western media) as symbolic of the suppression of their rights.

So it is ironic that many car corporations are closely entangled with oppressive regimes and the arms trade. But, given that most of them are massive multinational corporations, its perhaps not really that surprising.

Of the car companies on the table, a number appear in the Burma Campaign UK’s current boycott list for involvement in this most notorious of military dictatorships. A Toyota subsidiary is involved in a joint venture which produces vehicles used by that very military regime.(6) Suzuki lists a ‘Myanmar’ (the regime name for Burma) subsidiary on its website, Daewoo Motor (part of General Motors) has a joint venture in Burma, and Tata has oil operations in the country.(7,8)
And while the UK government is campaigning for international sanctions against the government of Robert Mugabi, several of the car companies covered here have operations in Zimbabwe, including Mazda and Tata.(9,10)

In addition to operations in oppressive regimes, a number of car companies are also still involved in military production. Many of the names of the table, such as Volvo and Saab, have separated high-profile military production from their consumer car brands and there is now little or no connection. But Lotus, Daimler Trucks North America and Suzuki all still provide some level of services, such as engineering consultancy or vehicles intended for non-strategic military use, for armies and arms companies.(11,12,13) Meanwhile Subaru’s owner, Fuji Heavy Industries, is still a major military manufacturer, making army helicopters and ‘drones’ – unmanned planes used for spying.(14) And Volkswagen still has significant shareholdings in MAN AG and Scania, truck producers which make lorries used by armies, including MAN AG models described by the company as “primarily deployed as a carrier for sensitive weapons systems.”(15) And Daimler AG has a 15% stake in EADS, one of the world’s biggest producers of military aircraft, including transport planes, helicopters and fighters.

Supply chain issues

In line with the attention being given to the climate change emissions of cars, most of the companies in the report now have good environmental reports, most of them including targets, wide-ranging discussions of developments in emissions and alternative fuel technology, and in a number of cases are independently verified.

It’s a very different story when it comes to guaranteeing workers’ rights in car supply chains. Most car companies do a good proportion of their own manufacturing, so labour rights issues arise further down the supply chains than might happen for, say, Primark clothes or ASDA electricals. But that doesn’t mean that car companies shouldn’t be improving their practices.

The need for better monitoring of labour standards in car supply chains was illustrated in 2006 when a number of US car companies, including Chrysler, Ford, Nissan and Toyota, were all accused by campaigners of sourcing metal from suppliers in Brazil which used slave labour, with bonded workers housed in appalling conditions.(20) The case was enough to spark a US car industry anti-slavery initiative.

Only top scorers Peugeot Citroen managed a middle rating in Ethical Consumer’s Supply Chain Policy category, with a policy which included issues such as child labour (defined as over 16 and in most cases over 18), freedom of association and a pay policy which showed some awareness of the need for a decent wage.
Of the other companies covered, many had no policy at all, or stated that they were signed up to the UN Global Compact, a corporate responsibility scheme which has come in for major criticism for its lowest-common-denominator standards. Its labour commitments include provisions on forced and child labour, discrimination and freedom of association, but are vaguely worded and often only ask companies to adhere to local legislation, which can mean that children as young as 14 might be allowed to work in factories, and that union activists may still be oppressed. Signatories to the Compact are ‘encouraged’ to ‘support’ the elimination of labour abuses – not necessarily to pro-actively cut them out of their supply chains.

Car share clubs and liftshares

More and more organisations are offering ways for people to cut their car use while still having access to a motor for longer journeys or when they have people and things to carry.

• Car clubs allow you to book time to use a car as and when you need it, via various types of membership or pay-as-you go schemes such as www.citycarclub.co.uk and www.carclubs.org.uk;

• Car sharing is when car owners take passengers with them, usually on regular runs, such as giving a colleague a ride to work. Some people work it out informally with friends and colleagues, but many companies and some outside organisations may help to link people up who live and work in the same area;

• Lift sharing tends to be less regular, and can be organised through dedicated websites like www.liftshare.org or www.freewheelers.co.uk. Car drivers log their planned journeys, whether local, national or international, and passengers find someone going their way...

Information on car clubs and car sharing schemes: www.carplus.org.uk

True Lies

Despite fairly poor sales figures for ‘eco-cars’ in recent years, green advertising has boomed. Market research suggests that ads which promote one ‘green’ product from a company can improve the image of its whole product range, even if the eco-item is a tiny proportion of outputs.(25) So big ad budgets might not pay off on the hybrid or low-emissions car they’re meant to represent, but they can give a warm, fuzzy feeling to customers picking even the most planet-trashing model from the same brand.

But many of the glossy double page spreads and expensive TV slots have been falling foul of the UK’s advertising regulators. The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) investigates complaints by members of the public, organisations and other companies, and in the past few years has upheld all or part of complaints about the environmental claims in car adverts from: Toyota (2007), Lexus (2007), Volkswagen (2006), Citroen (2007), Saab (2008), Daihatsu (2005), Suzuki (2005) and Renault (2008).(4) Claims slated by the ASA ranged from using dodgy numbers to generate comparisons with other brands of car on emissions, claims that lower-emissions cars were ‘Zero Guilt’ and extravagant assurances that using biofuels instead of petrol ‘did not significantly raise atmospheric levels of CO2’.(5)

Something old, something new?

In the case of big purchases like cars and white goods, thinking green often mean considering not just the environmental costs of running it day-to-day, but also the impacts of manufacturing. Life Cycle Analyses suggest that between a quarter and a half of the impacts of many cars, driven for the average four years, come from making it – which means that buying a low-emissions models is fairly pointless if you’re going to trade it in every couple of years for something shinier.(26) Although it’s difficult to find a consensus on this, because the conclusions are so dependent on the age, model and mileage of a car, the best advice appears to be to go for the lowest emissions model available at the time you need to buy, and keep that car for as long as possible. And that buying second-hand is still a good option, if you’re going for efficient, well-maintained models and keeping them for as long as they run, not just until they go out of fashion.

If you are looking for a second hand car, the Society of Motor Manufacturers & Traders handily provides emissions data for all models going back to to 1997 on the their website.

Go Electric?

With climate change and peak oil on everybody’s minds – if not their wallets – car manufacturers are competing to see who can churn out the cars of the future. No corporation wants to be obsolete, and even companies which a few years ago were energetically denying climate change and lobbying against emissions reductions are now jockeying for position on auto show podiums with alternative-fuel cars. Some of the big names even look set to get these out to the general public in the next year or two.

At Ethical Consumer we’ve been writing about these ‘cars of the future’ for years, and watching their slow progress to the garage forecourt. So while there’s plenty in the press, there’s still precious little for an actual car driver to consider.

The G-Wiz electrical car from Indian company Reva has been on the market for several years in the UK, but apart from a boost in London due to its congestion charge exemption, it hasn’t been widely picked up. Its limited range and speed have always been an issue for many drivers, but safety concerns emerged in 2006 and 2007, with the Department for Transport observing that legal standards for ‘quadricycles’ - which the G-Wiz is licensed as - had never been intended as a basis for city car-style vehicles.(16) New safety features, including reinforcements to the passenger space, better brakes and airbags, were introduced early this year.(17) The G-Wiz isn’t included on the table in this report, as we didn’t feel that it was comparable enough to the mainstream cars covered, but it currently has an ethiscore of 11.

Another electric car, the Think, was launched in Norway in spring 2008 and is predicted to be available in Britain in 2009, and the US Tesla group looks set to release an electric sports car in the near future. But although electric cars may improve local air quality by not emitting particulates and other pollution, from a climate change standpoint they are no better unless they’re charged using entirely renewable electricity. Otherwise, the CO2 emissions are just being moved from your tailpipe to a power station – potentially a coal-fired or nuclear one. And the same goes for many hydrogen-fueled prototypes, which require electricity sources to generate the gas fuel.

‘eco-driving’ and ‘hypermiling’

According to the Energy Savings Trust, changing your style of driving can save fuel worth up to £200 a year. Simple actions like keeping your tyres inflated, checking your revs when driving and remembering to remove unused roof and bike racks, which increase drag, can make a big difference. See www.energysavingtrust.org.uk/what_can_i_do_today/efficient_driving for more information.

Some drivers are taking this advice to its logical conclusion. If, say hypermilers, you can’t pander to the usual competitive instincts of drivers – speed, noise and acceleration – then why not make minimising your emissions the goal? Like eco-driving, the main principles of hypermiling include driving slowly, avoiding braking and acceleration, and keeping your car in optimum condition. It also involves pinpoint planning to avoid red lights or jams, which also means that, although it sounds like a surefire way to turn up late, it’s actually nearly as fast as normal journeys. For more information, see www.hypermiling.co.uk.

Low impact cars?

The table in this report looks only at the corporate record of the companies making the cars. The sheer numbers of different models of car made assessing them on the table as individual products too complex, so this page attempts to find the best models on environmental grounds. The report Best Buys are an attempt to combine these two sets of information.

The Environmental Transport Association (ETA) makes annual awards for the most sustainable car and looks at emissions, fuel efficiency and noise pollution, not just climate change impacts. The winners for 2008 were:
• supermini: Toyota Yaris
• small family: Honda Civic Hybrid
• small MPV: Renault Modus
• city: Citroen C1, Peugeot 107, Toyota Aygo
• large family: BMW 3 series E90/E91/E92/ E93
• sports: Vauxhall Tigra MY2008
• executive: BMW 5 series E60/E61
• MPV: Ford S-Max
• off-road: Toyota RAV4
• luxury: Jaguar XJ

The ETA’s buyer’s guide for 2008 also ranks the majority of the car models available in Britain under a star rating, with models from many brands on the table also scoring the maximum 5 points. Hybrids and efficient diesel models come out best. See http://www.eta.co.uk/car_buyers_guide for full ratings for all types of car.

The ten worst cars in ETA’s ratings were, unsurprisingly, sports cars, limousines and SUVs from manufacturers such as Dodge, Lamborghini, Ferrari, Bentley and Aston Martin. If you’re buying new cars, they should all have the EU’s rainbow A-G rating label on the front windscreen, showing clearly how energy efficient they are.

The Department for Transport (DfT) also produces figures comparing car models by category, looking solely at CO2 emissions. The only two models of car currently licensed in the UK which currently fall in tax band A (up to 100g of CO2 emissions per kilometre driven), according to the government’s Vehicle Certification Agency, are the Seat and Volkswagen diesels listed below.

The DfT’s best CO2 models

Supermini
Model	Tax band	In the ETA's top 10?	CO2 emissions (g/km)	On the road price
Volkswagen Polo 3 / 5 Door 1.4 TDI (80 PS) (with A/C) with DPF Bluemotion (diesel with filter)	A	no	99	From £12,150
Seat Ibiza 1.4 TDI 80PS Ecomotion (diesel with filter)	A	no	99	From £10,995
Mini Hatchback R56 MINI Cooper D Hatchback (diesel with filter)	B	no	104	From £14,420
Citroen C1 1.0i 3 & 5 door (petrol)	B	yes	108	From £5,995
Toyota Aygo 1.0 VVT-i 3 & 5 door (petrol)	B	tes	108	From £7,000

Small family
Model	Tax band	In the ETA's top 10?	CO2 emissions (g/km)	On the road price
Toyota Prius 1.5 VVT-i (hybrid)	B	yes	104	From £17,932
Honda Civic 1.4 IMA ES (hybrid)	B	yes	109	From £17,105
Ford Focus MY 2008 1.6 Duratorq TDCi (90PS) 5 Door Saloon (ECO) (diesel with filter)	B	no	114	From £16,345
Renault Megane 1.5 dCi 86 (diesel without particle filter)	B	no	117	From £15,075
Fiat Bravo 1.6 16v MultiJet 105 ECO (diesel available with filter)	B	no	119	From £14,150

Family
Model	Tax band	In the ETA's top 10?	CO2 emissions (g/km)	On the road price
Renault New Laguna Hatch dCi 110 (diesel without filter)	C	no	130	From £17,400
Volkswagen Passat Saloon 1.9 TDI (105 PS) Bluemotion (diesel, filter available)	C	no	136	From £17,295
Citroen C5 1.6HDi 16v (diesel, filter available)	C	no	139	From £16,595
Ford Mondeo MY2008 1.8 Duratorq TDCi (125PS) 4 Door Sedan (ECO) (diesel, filter available)	C	no	139	From £18,745
Peugeot 407 Saloon 1.6 HDi FAP 110 (diesel with filter)	C	no	140	From £16,550

Price data from company websites

For more information and full listings for all types and models of cars, see www.dft.gov.uk/ActOnCO2. The Vehicle Certification Agency website, www.vcacarfueldata.org.uk, lists emissions levels for all new cars, so different models can be checked here as they come out.

Diesel Versus Petrol?

The Department of Health estimates that between 12,000 and 24,000 early deaths each year in the UK result from poor air quality.(23) There are areas in our cities and along motorways which still exceed safe levels of NOx and particulates, and vehicle emissions are the primary cause. Diesel engines generally have lower CO2 emissions, but are much worse for dangerous particulates.

One solution is to choose a diesel engine with with a ‘diesel particulate filter’ (DPF) or ‘trap’. These are likely to become much more common after 2009 with new ‘Euro 5’ regulations which will effectively require them. However before then it will be necessary to ask. We have indicated on the tables above where this information is available on the models we have reviewed. DPFs have been reported to have performance issues where a car is only used for short journeys or at low speeds.(24) If your car will be primarily be used for town driving or short trips, a low CO2 petrol engine may be the best bet.

Links and further reading

www.thegreencarwebsite.co.uk
www.dft.gov.uk/ActOnCO2/

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References

1 Energy Savings Trust, June 2008 2 www.euro.who.int June 2008 3 Energy Savings Trust press release 6th June 2008 4 www.asa.org.uk viewed June 2008 5 www.asa.org.uk adjudications on Toyota, Lexus, Citroen, Saab and Suzuki. 6 www.burmacampaign.org.uk, July 2008 7 www.globalsuzuki.com July 2008 8 www.burmacampaign.org.uk, July 2008 9 www.mazda.com, July 2008 10 www.tata.com July 2008 11 Jane’s International Defence Directory 2007 12 Daimler Trucks 2008 brochure 13 www.globalsuzuki.com July 2008 14 www.subaru.com July 2008 15 www.militarytrucks.man-mn.com July 2008 16 What Car? Magazine, May 2007 17 www.goingreen.co.uk 18 USA Today, 26/7/2006 19 Greenpeace Business issue 83, November 2005 20 CSR Asia Weekly 31/1/2007, Bloomberg News 2/11/2006 21 www.hoovers.com, viewed July 2008 22 CSR Asia Weekly 1/3/2006 23 www.environment-agency.gov.uk viewed 18th July 2008 24 www.theaa.com/motoring_advice/fuels-and-environment/diesel-particulate-filters.html viewed 18th July 2008 25 Landor Associates 2007: ImagePower Green Brands Survey 26 New Scientist 17/11/2007

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