The Volkwagen Volkswagen Golf estate is now available to order. Prices start from £17,915 – a premium of £765 over the hatchback. The estate has a load space volume of 605 litres - up from the 380 litres of the hatchback version, but also 100 litres more than the previous generation Golf estate.
Subaru has again cut the price of its XV crossover, this time to £18,995. The drop of £2300 comes after a fall in the exchange rate between pound sterling and the Japanese yen. The 2.0-litre diesel is now on sale for £21,995, rising to £27,925 for the range-topping automatic version.
Electric vehicles will remain exempt from new congestion charge changes. A new threshold of 75g/km CO2 has been introduced, replacing the old 100g/km target. All pure electric vehicles remain exempt from the £10 per day fee. Owners of vehicles which don't meet the new target will be forced to pay the charge - though a 'sunset period' going through to June 2016 allows extra time for those drivers.
James Lewis-Barned
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£20,000 per car from the taxpayer....
...and they're still not selling. Initial £5,000 grant + £2,500 x 4 years congestion tax saving + capital tax allowances + road tax concessions + grants for building them in North-East, etc.
Mobile wind turbines
Purely to raise money
I remember when I bought a Prius some eight years ago and friends and relatives found that it was free of the Congestion Charge, we often had the discussion that went along the lines of "can't be long before they lower the limit of CO2 so that you'll have to pay the charge - they won't be able to resist the temptation to charge everyone regardless of how polluting your car is in reality." I'm just surprised it didn't happen sooner, I always thought that Red Ken would do it if anyone did. As it happened I never really went up to London by car except on the odd sunday so never had to pay the charge anyway.
Hmmm ...
Why just the Nissan Leaf? ... There are other pure electric vehicles available (although the Leaf is rather more well known than the others), so the article should correctly say that ONLY pure electric vehicles are now exempt from the erroneously named "London Congestion Charge" (It has nothing to do with congestion as you can also have traffic congestion with lots of pure electric vehicles) ...
Not only pure electric vehicles are exempt
Any vehicle with a Co2 output lower than 75 g/km is also exempt under the new charging rules such as the Volvo V60 hybrid fitted with the 5 cylinder diesel with over 200 hp and 49 g/km Co2 and similar other cars like the plug in petrol hybrids from Toyota.