Autocar - First for car news and reviews

Porsche GB has announced that it will take Transport for London to court in an attempt to have the new congestion-charging scheme stopped.
Andy Goss, Managing Director of Porsche GB, maintains that the new C-Charge is "simply unjust. Thousands of car owners driving a huge range of cars will be hit by a disproportionate tax which is clear will have a very limited effect on CO2 emissions.”
Porsche has stat...Read the full article

Go Porsche, Go Porsche. Very pleased at the news. Although it's not the complete attack to sweep away the entire cruddy, ineffective, expensive scheme many would like it's a step in the right direction. Congestion Charging is just an ignorant socialist joke. It's about time more automotive companies took pointless Govt policies on on behalf of motorists.

JJ - we are ALL aware of your views - please don't highjack the thread and turn it into a platform for your lobbying.

Corporations taking on and attempting to set the tone on legislation is just silly - the only people who benefit is the corporation. They knew it was coming but chose to do nothing before it was introduced - don't be a mug and think this is anything else other than a bit of positioning.

Regardless of the rights and wrongs of the charge - Porsche doing this just smacks of short sighted self interest.

Why doesn't your lobbying group take Big Ken on - you can have a blog then.

 

Scummy I think you're more worried about 'posturing' than performance. Porsche acting out of self-interest is pretty good motivation in my opinion. Ken and TFL need to ask who they think they're acting for and to what end? All I can see is loads of motorists money (don't they pay enough?) going into the pockets of Capita Plc's fat-cat pockets with no political/social results whatsoever. Looks like a political fraud to me.

scummyplum:

JJ - we are ALL aware of your views - please don't highjack the thread and turn it into a platform for your lobbying.

Please can you stop arguing with the other guy every time he posts something, its really annoying! Fair enough in instances when there's something to argue about but in this instance its just annoying! My view - anyone can say whatever they like, don't care who they represent, its all just opinion!

Thanks Julian - I agree.

But he tasks me........

Porsche AG/Porsche GB is right. This tax is unacceptable.

Why has so little been made of the changing from 'C' for Congestion charge to 'C' for CO2 emissions charge? The whole thing is laughable, ridiculous. Only the English would stand for it, rather than take to the streets and protest with force.

Is it because the English, especially residents of London are lacking in social conscience; in solidarity with others. Many London residents are not English. They are high-income multinationalists/internationalists who have little loyalty to any one nation or its people.

Porsche are not stupid.  They know and realise that London is a pathfinder for the EU region in this charge/tax. Once established in London, most EU large cities will fall in step. Porsche and the Germans, as it is a German company after all, have the most to lose. Porsche and the whole German Auto industry, represented by the VDA, also realise that the EU's emission laws are a grave threat to them and therefore hundreds of thousands of German citizens' livelihoods. If by 2012, less than four years away, the German auto makers cannot reduce their fleet average CO2 emission to 120g/kilometre, they will be fined to the tune of €20 per gramme of CO2 exceeding 120g, per vehicle unit produced. For Daimler this could represent €800+ per vehicle, given the actual 163g figure, which means fines in the order of billions of euros. Furthermore, the €20 fine is set to rise to €60 per gramme per unit by 2015.

The London CO2 charge on larger-engined/high-powered autos plus the draconian EU-wide CO2 emissions laws by the EU Commission amount to an attack and lethal threat to Europe's greatest Auto base, Germany. The socialist dictators are also intent on outlawing Germany's unrestricted autobahn tradition. Another blow to freedom, independence and to the acknowledgement and acceptance of differences in the abilities of people. 

What the RAF/USAF/Red Army and Bernard Baruch's post WWII annihilation plan for German Industry and by consequenence the German race and culture failed to do during and immediatelty after the war, the Brussels Commisars and their fellow travellers in London and thence in other major European capitals are intent on achieving

Golly, there was something in there to offend just about everyone.

correction: it was not Bernard Baruch, it was Henry Morgenthau. See the Wikipedia entry for further information http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morgenthau_plan

The latest London TX4 taxi with the automatic gearbox produces 233g/km of CO2, which is more than the Porsche Cayman...

RoryB - Hehe that's a green issue Ken/TFL will struggle with and Porsche can use. Making rods for their own backs these muppets ;-)

Do you have the CO2 stats' on the bendy buses?

TFL have updated all their buses at great public expense (motorist subsidies) and they've shown to make zero difference to CC zone pollution levels. Another 'fail' to add to their total 100% failure record. Someone switch the lights out!

Reference the London CO2 emissions charge; just came across this piece ctitiquing these snowballing so-called 'climate change charges' - in truth, just another form of tax, and ultimately an effective method of control of general populations.

Anyway, the author takes to task, Anatole Kaletsky, the in-house, so-called 'Economics Guru' at the London Times - one of Murdoch's rags. He makes the point that these 'save-the-planet' carbon taxes are just an almighty con to get the average joe to lower his living standard by slashing his use of energy - backed up by the way, by all the propagandizing over the peak-oil myth.

 http://www.brookesnews.com/081802carbontax.html

"All manner of con tricks are being employed to sell us on the virtues of a carbon tax. What we are not told is that this tax is meant to lower our living standards by slashing our use of energy. Moreover, callous European bureaucrats and politicians have taken the carbon tax to its logical conclusion and are now planning to 'reduce the carbon footprints' of human beings by imposing what they call 'global warming tariffs'"