Van makers under pressure to publish CO2 figures
Tue 10 June 2008
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Van makers are working with the Department for Transport to produce CO2 emissions figures for commercial vehicles in an effort to help fleet managers improve the environmental performance of their operations. While it has been an obligation of van makers to produce CO2 figures for the vehicles they sell since January 2008, they are not legally obliged to publish them.
According to Fleet News, this situation has led to a campaign from some sectors of the industry calling for the CO2 figures to be made public
Fleet News quotes Tony Grove, a product development manager at Arval, who said: “Not all manufacturers release figures for fuel consumption and CO2 emissions for their light commercial vehicles, making it difficult for fleet managers to select vehicles based on their initial environmental performance.
"The principal argument is that they would not give a true picture. This is because commercial vehicles operate with a variety of payloads, bodies and duty cycles, and any ‘base level’ figures can only be a guide. But even guide figures are better than no figures and I am hopeful that there is room for compromise.”
A spokesman for the SMMT defended the actions of van manufacturers in producing CO2 figures. He said: “We could produce a list of these figures now but they would be pretty meaningless to van buyers.
“The test is done with the vehicle empty and on a rolling road, which means that a high-roof vehicle would have the same CO2 figure as a low-roof one, when obviously on the road it would be higher. Fleet buyers already have this information when they buy vehicles and small operators just have to ask. We will produce these figures but we want to make sure that when we do, they will be of use to buyers and we are working with the DfT on a solution to the problem.”
The SMMT spokesman said, however, that there is no date fixed for when a comprehensive list of CO2 figures will be published.
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