[sustran] Re: Hybrid cars- and Diesel Greenwash

[Olly Powell]

In New Zealand I filed a formal complaint with the  advertising standards authority, 
against Toyota for making exagerated claims about their petrol-electric greenwash 
mobile.

I won the case and toyota had to withdraw the cliam, which was something like "90% 
reduced emissions and 50% better fuel economy".   They were running much more 
insulting claims in Australian media (Australian issue of National Geographic) trying to 
compare the same car to a bicycle.   In the Australian case I could do nothing as their 
equivalent body does not deal with issues of "truthufullness"  and is toothless anyway.

I had similar success with a Honda advert, which had to be modified to remove the 
words "environmentally friendly".

Lately there is a lot of nonsense being said about "clean" diesel, including on this list.  
Nobody bothers to point out that Euro IV Diesel standards are considerably lower than 
Euro IV petrol standards,  and that the nitrous oxide emissions of most European 
Diesels are so high they could not be sold in California.  In NZ our new "clean" diesel is 
50ppm sulphur, making the European figures somewhat worse than they would be in 
Europe.

Personally I have no intention of ever purchasing any such trash.  My six bicycles take 
up most of the space inmy shed.

Olly

On 21 Apr 2006 at 0:20, Todd Edelman wrote:

> Hi everyone,
> 
> Is this the "fuel economy" list? The "better car" list? Technical
> information about engines is always interesting of course, as are "the
> facts" about "hype-brid cars", but  talking about "cost" as only, for
> example, purchase price vs. long-term fuel price, etc is like sooooo last
> century! (That means "cost" involves many, many factors--and I know Daryl
> has been challenged on that point before).
> 
> This discussion started with a posting from Carlos, and I wrote him
> off-list that hype-brids were, in my opinion, not a step in any direction
> except the wrong one, because they are overwhelmingly still supposed to be
> used by individuals and like all other cars have all many negatives
> besides "tailpipe emissions" for this reason and many others. So they just
> confuse people, and lots of California politicians buy huge hybrids, and
> it is all such a bunch of nonsense... the Audi Awhatever may be a "great"
> car but there is great about it.
> 
> - T
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------
> 
> Todd Edelman
> International Coordinator
> On the Train Towards the Future!
> 
> Green Idea Factory
> Laubova 5
> CZ-13000 Praha 3
> 
> ++420 605 915 970
> 
> edelman at greenidea.info
> http://www.worldcarfree.net/onthetrain
> 
> Green Idea Factory,
> a member of World Carfree Network
> 
> 
> 
> ================================================================
> SUSTRAN-DISCUSS is a forum devoted to discussion of people-centred, equitable and sustainable transport with a focus on developing countries (the 'Global South'). Because of the history of the list, the main focus is on urban transport policy in Asia.


--
Dr Olly Powell  -  Carfree Asia
P.O. Box 104, Prospect S.A. 5008, Australia
www.carfreeasia.org