Day Four: Land Rover really aren't as bad as people say, you know

I have a land rover that is now 36 years old, and it happens to be very eco-friendly.

One thing people fail to realise is that it takes approx 5 years worth of emissions to manufacture a vehicle.

The average vehicle life is 7 years.

Therefore my land rover has lasted 5 times longer than modern disposable vehicles.

If people would just realise how disposable modern cars are they would see they are not as green as they appear.

I have saved the planet over 20 years worth if emissions. Very green of me. Oh yes, and it runs on LPG.

According to the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (see page 6 of this report) only 10% of the energy used in a car's lifecycle goes into production, and 85% is from use. Ideally, all cars would be highly durable and efficient, but these figures show that efficiency is much more important than durability, and so no, Land Rovers are not eco-friendly, but well done on switching to LPG.

graham, gpuk

I have had a look at the statistics you are quoting and they are flawed.

The data comes from the manufacturers who are miss-stating their co2 emissions from manufacture. In fact the data is so skewed it is misleading.

Here is an article from a respected automotive engineering website.

http://www.ae-plus.com/Key%20topics/kt-emissions-news4.htm

Key things to understand are:

“Vehicle manufacturers report an average of 0.6 tonnes per vehicle of CO2 generated from manufacturing,” says Simon Barnes, environmental affairs manager at UK auto industry body the SMMT. “But we need to at least treble this figure to take into account component and material manufacture.”

Some manufacturers produce even more misleading figures

"In its environmental report, Volkswagen only reports emissions from power generated on site. It omits bought-in electricity because of different standards for calculating greenhouse gas emissions."

"But in the VW’s 2005 sustainability report, it gives only its in-house CO2 figure. Divide this by the number of vehicles produced and it appears that each car coming off the line is responsible for just 0.26 tonnes."

The manufacturing figures do not take into account emissions from their suppliers. It is a fact manufacturers no longer manufacture the vast majority of the parts they use, as they are bought in. Manufacturers are now effectively run as design / assembly operations.

Also they do not take into account the transportation emissions to transport all of these components.

Another thing, what about the emissions of the labour used in assembly. Car assembly plants are based away from residential areas. All of their staff have to travel to the site, I presume the vast majority of this is done by car and not bicycle.

That also doesn't take into account the huge energy cost of gathering and processing the raw materials used in make the car components.

The true figures are a lot higher than the motor industry declare.

Thank you for reminding me about the emissions cost of disposal. Another reason why a Land rover is environmentally friendly.

It is a fact over 70% of Land Rovers ever made (since 1948) are still on the road. You will not be able to find another manufacturer with this exemplary record for the longevity of their vehicles as their simply isn't one.

The environmental lobby have demonised the 4x4 (although Land Rovers are different from mose 4x4's), when far more eco-unfriendly vehicles are ignored. I for instance know of sports bikes that only return 30mpg (less than a diesel Discovery) and only carry one person, but motorcycles are hailed as envirnmentally responsible. My land rover does 20mpg on petrol and has 11 seats that are often used. I will let you do the maths on that one.

Please find out the real facts before attacking the environmental impact of Land Rovers. You could investigate the realities of the situation or just follow the flock.

I hope I have not confused you with the facts if your mind is already made up.

Your alternative, differing source seems to be the same, agreeing source, the SMMT. The figures they use are collated from four different life-cycle studies which are listed in the end notes of the report:

(2) Sustainable resource use in the motor industry: a mass balance approach Elghali, McColl-Grubb, Schiavi and Griffiths TRL 2004

(3) Life cycle inventory for the Golf A4 Schweimer and Levin (2000)

(4) Life Cycle Assessment of Vehicle Fuels and Technologies Final Report. London Borough of Camden, March 2006, Dr Ben Lane, Ecolane Transport

Consultancy on behalf of London Borough of Camden www.lowcvp.org.uk/resources/reportsstudies...

(5) Life Cycle Assessment of Lightweight and End-of-Life Scenarios for Generic Compact Class Passenger Vehicles Wulf-Peter Schmidt, Elisabeth

Dahlqvist, Matthias Finkbeiner, Stephan Krinke, Silvia Lazzari, Dirk Oschmann, Sophie Pichon and Christian Thiel (2004)

If you have differing figures to the 10 / 85 / 5 percentages then please link to them.

The average number of people in a car in the UK is 1, hence even the gas guzzling sports bike you mention would be better, per passenger, than the average 4x4 (who has been hailing sports bikes as environmentally responsible? Suzuki? You need to be more than just a bit better than a 4x4 before you can claim that).

There is one fair point which you’ve made in the above comment, which is that there are other vehicles which are just as bad as 4x4s and yet haven’t received the same level of attention. The main reason for this is that urban 4x4s were, until recently, quite trendy. Had Rolls Royce or Lamborghini sales been increasing at the same rate as 4x4s, we would have campaigned against them too, but for some unfathomable reason the fashion seemed to be for 4x4s, and it was their growth which we were particularly concerned about.

This doesn’t mean that 4x4 drivers have been unfairly victimized, just that a few Ferrari drivers have been let off lightly – by us, at least. Ken’s still going to hammer them next year, however, as the congestion charge takes account of efficiency, not the number of driven wheels. The drawback is that some Ferrari drivers will be able to afford the extra £9,000 tax a year, but then, at least they’ll be giving green technologies a heavy subsidy.

If you look at the report carefully, you'll see that manufacturing efficiency has become more important over the years.

Modern cars are manufactured with a CO2 loading of 5 years use to manufacture.

Older cars however, will have been built according to less stringent manufacturing techniques. Not only will the CO2 load be greater, but waste generated will be greater too.
One can easily guesstimate that 7-10 years ago the CO2 required would be double that of today, simply through less efficient working practises. Giving a 10 year CO2 load to manufacture.

So in respect of vehicles that have been built you can see 0.5 MW/h of change over the space of two years 2003-2005. However the impact on CO2 is virtually nil... very unlikely given energy use is directly linked to CO2 required to build a vehicle.

In a sense, running your vehicle longer is truly more green through simple reduced environment factors on more than just CO2 (don't get blinded by CO2 figures, there is more to it than just CO2), but reduced mining of metals (for which I suspect there is no accurate data on CO2 loading for the entire process, which is an energy hog), deforestation/habitat destruction for access to new sources of minerals.