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Paris To Test Banning SUVs In the City
thecarchik writes "Paris may be the first city to experiment with such a policy. Next year, it will begin to test restrictions on vehicles that emit more than a certain amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) per kilometer — the measure of a car's contribution to greenhouse gases. An official within the Parisian mayor's office, Denis Baupin, identified older diesel-engined cars and sport-utility vehicles as specific targets of the emissions limit. Residents and travelers have responded by buying thousands of electric cars, including the low-speed fiberglass G-Wiz — despite major safety concerns with the vehicle."
Heavy smug clouds are developing over Paris. Seriously though, isn't the pollution just move upstream when it comes to electric cars? Or have there been recent improvements in that regard?
... will producing all those additional 'city cars' people will need to buy consume?
Have gnu, will travel.
Many cities in Italy ban general auto traffic in the core downtown, for example Firenze. They have camera, if you drive in downtown and don't have the proper permits, a VERY expensive ticket arrives in the mail.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
So how does this work?
If a SUV makes it through a blockcade, do they reconsider the ban?
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
That's a completely useless article. There's basically no meaningful information until a footnote at the end that it's a rebadged, Indian made Reva.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
the gwiz should be much safer after suv`s are gone
warning pointless sig
Ok.. ban the SUV's. But can somebody please do something about all the damn cigaarette smoke?
Must be a conspiracy from the human extinction movement.
I live in Paris. I never heard of G-Wiz before reading this news entry. I am not sure it is that successful here.
I don't think this is a good idea. For example, I live in the Financial District of San Francisco, and find it obnoxious that some of my coworkers insist on commuting to work in their SUVs every day when BART runs trains to a stop two blocks from my office every 5 minutes during rush hour. On the other hand, I concede that there may be some circumstances where driving a large vehicle into the city might be justified. Why bar someone from bringing an SUV with six people in it, but permit someone to drive a slightly smaller vehicle carrying only one person? A congestion tax or toll seems a more reasonable approach.
Low-speed vehicles have been around a long time. They're called bicycles. Paris has been embracing those, too, and I presume they do so despite the "safety concerns" touted by the international helmet brigade.
The real danger is high-speed vehicles that have "safety features" like airbags to protect the ignorant occupants, to the detriment of anyone else who might be using the road.
That and so-called licensing schemes that treat driving as a right instead of a privilege and let unsafe drivers on the road. Not sure how bad that might be in Paris, but it's pretty easy to get and hard to lose your license for bad driving in North America.
- RG>
Hey pal, this isn't a pleasantforest, so don't waste my time with pleasantries!
Of course, in Europe, few people will have full size Ford Excursions going down cobblestone [1] streets. However, what size SUV are they not wanting in Paris? There are pretty tiny SUVs, like the Honda CR-V which have better MPG than most cars. Would delivery vehicles be affected such as vans? Would they ban hybrid SUVs? There are full size SUVs like the Tahoe that come to mind. Would they ban everything but a "car-shaped" vehicle? If so, this would earn them a marksmanship award in footshooting.
IMHO, this is more of a PR stunt against American culture such as "yank tanks" than anything else. Who would drive a full size SUV like a Suburban around Paris? A smaller SUV such as a ford Kuga or a pickup like a Ranger would be actually drivable there. Are those the target of what gets tossed out of Paris?
[1]: Technically setts, but people call it cobblestone anyway.
Drivers in Paris park bumper to bumper and the way to get out of a parking spot is to ram the cars in front and behind of you until you have space to pull out. They drive these little light cars and the bumper bars (US people would say fenders) are all scuffed. My car has a tow bar so you couldn't do that but nobody where I went in Paris seems to use them.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
CO2 per kilometer is a horrible metric. No biodiesel for them, then. It sounds like the point of this is to limit greenhouse gas emissions, but all it will really do is reduce fuel consumption and move the CO2 emission to other areas. That's what would happen in the US at least. We don't have as much nuclear power, and tend to consume more oil-based plastic goods than Europeans. Regardless, it's easy for well-intentioned regulations to have counterproductive effects.
Take this as an example. I have a 2.5 ton diesel truck that is over 40 years old. It gets pretty terrible gas mileage. But it's entirely possible that it will last another 40 years. I use it once every six months or so on average. I could buy a new truck. Buying a new truck would mean thirty thousand dollars worth of CO2-intensive manufacturing, steel parts and such. The new truck wouldn't last as long, and would need to be replaced probably within the next 20 years.
I could rent a truck instead. On average, that would cost about the same as the truck I already have, possibly more. Instead of driving directly to where I want to go, I would have to drive to the truck rental store, drive to where I want to go, drive home, drive back to the truck rental store, and then drive back home. And if I rent a truck, the proceeds would likely go to some employees and shareholders who use the money to increase their consumption of goods, food, gasoline and electricity all produced by emitting CO2 as well. So the net result is similar if not more CO2 usage.
Central economic planning is harder than it might seem.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
despite major safety concerns with the vehicle.
if everyone's driving around in GWizes, Yarises, and Smart ForTwos, what safety problem?
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
---- "Logoff! That cookie shit makes me nervous!" - A. Soprano
they're big polluters, what with all that idling. Then again, I'm in the States. Does France even have those abominations?
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
As a French man, reading the news every day, and living quite close to Paris, I've never heard about such a ban. neither have I heard about "thousands of electric vehicles" being suddenly bought by Paris' residents. Right now, French people are more interested in the end of the "prime à la casse", which is a financial bonus given for buying low emission vehicles, but we're talking gas powered cars, electric cars are nowhere to be seen on french roads and cities.
Paris planned innovation is a system of shared self-service cars (probably electric), which can be used for a few hours for a moderate cost, similar to what has existed for years for bicycles ('vélib', this has been a major success for Paris' mayor).
I notice you're not offering to be the first to "die off like the evolutionary dead end we are."
I'm sorry that things like SUVs don't meet your high standards of aesthetics, but too bad.
You say that they're a sign of the "rich spoiled class" but YOU consider them to be "big and obnoxious and very annoying." You sound a bit like the class you claim to not be a part of.
If you want to make a point, how about you back them up with something more than "I don't like it and I never ever will!"
If other beings "on this plane" wind up not liking the mess we make of the cosmos when we "colonize and pollute it", they can come talk to us then. Since we haven't even managed to colonize our own solar system, I don't think they have anything to worry about for quite some time. Once we do manage to fill up our solar system, it's still more than 4 lightyears to the nearest star, so even if we can achieve instantaneous light speed AND instantaneous braking, we'll STILL be 4 years away from the nearest star! IIRC, our sun is also the closest star to Alpha Centauri, so we'll still be AT LEAST 4 light years away from getting anywhere else (most likely more, but playing on the low end of the scale, it's still at least 4 years)!
But this is about Paris/France with 75>% of electricity being nuclear (and aprt of the rest being renewable, not fully fossile fuel). Which make your whole post moot.
Really, show me ONE SUV that actually uses its space for the work commute. Oh okay, so you found one in ALL of France, big whoop. But I think that Americans just can't grasp the problem. Europe is SMALLER en the cities are just not designed with big cars in mind. For that matter most Europeans just don't get the American road system. The two areas work at a totally different scale. For instance, my own commute takes about 45 minutes... by bicycle, car OR train. Really. The travel time is NOT in the distance but in the waiting. The car gets stuck in all kinds of traffic jams, the train suffers delays on one of the most crowded rail networks in the world and of course you got to get to and from the train station by a bus service that doesn't connect and the bicycle... actually that one is pretty good a very straight line with just one big pothole with no lights around it.
And SUV's are not just another car. Forget for a moment the type of driver inside of them who tend to be major assholes, two SUV's passing each other in a narrow street, and old european cities are nothing but narrow streets, and the cars typically slow down to pass each other. They take just that bit more space say a meter in a bumper to bumper traffic jams. 4 SUV's and you could have fitted a whole extra car in the extra space taken by a SUV. Parking is the same. The drivers feel safer so take more risks, not only does this make the risk similar again but the death toll on pedestrians and cyclist increases thanks to the SUV driver.
London had the congestion charging and despite that fact that it was universally hated (or so the popular press tell us) it worked. The difference is staggering. But it wasn't popular. ANY law will have opponents. If you try to find a way to get anything done that won't upset anyone, you will never get anything done and THAT will REALLY upset people.
You just want an excuse, because ONE SUV was once found to actually have a full load for a work commute, ALL SUV's should be allowed to drive with one person in congested city centers totally unfit for such large cars. NIMBY must be your middle name.
Oh and a congestion tax would also hit low pollution vehicles. So if I drive a small electric car filled with passengers I get to pay the same as a SUV with just the driver. SMART!
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
They have cunnincly replicated the drive-thru setup but when the little window opens a French man shoots you through the head, scoops out your liver and turns it into pate. It was widely protested in the EU as inhumane until it was pointed out only the Touristus Americanus falls into this trap. The American ambassador was asked for comments but he replied he couldn't answer the phone now because he was in the line at a drive-thru and hasn't been heard from since.
Slashdot wishes it to be known that is does not condone the wholesale slaughter of Americans for their livers or other organs and that anyone who puts this idea into practice must do so without express approval from the world wide community of food lovers.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Not the first time I've heard of this sort of thing. If memory serves me correctly Bondi Council in Sydney, where residents need residential parking permits, would get theirs free if the car emitted less CO2 than a certain level, above that and you had to pay. In other words, pretty much all Toorak Tractors would have to pay. My question, which I never followed up because I'm not silly enough to live in that cesspit called Sydney, is what if you drive a 4WD and it's powered by biodiesel? The CO2 that is emitted is "recycled" back into crops for next years biodiesel, forgetting for the moment the whole energy efficiency argument of inputs Vs outputs.
An interesting thought that would keep a whole room of Arts degree holding bureaucrats busy for a year trying to work out how to respond!!!
Now, this might sound like a good idea, but there are a couples problems with it, in short: it doesn't seem to help at all
Reasons for it not working are for example:
Now, while it doesn't actually work, the whole ordeal is causing several problems... for example:
So in essence, there is no proof (rather the opposite) that the introduction of the zones has helped any, there's lots of problems caused by the laws, and as usual politics will not drop this crap ... probably industry lobbyists would complain what they paid all the money for if it were dropped ... :(
The safety issue really concerns me. I don't want people being forced by legislation to buy smaller, weaker cars, for city driving, because most people can only afford one car so they'll also be taking those same small, weak cars out on fast roads.
I'm a news photographer and I often attend accident scenes. As a rule, whenever there is an SUV involved, the occupants of the SUV survive and the occupants of the car _all_ die.
Renault Megane vs Range Rover. Both people in the Megane killed. Minor injuries in the Range Rover.
http://www.meejahor.com/wp-content/uploads/FatalcollisiononB9006CantraywoodtoCroyro_A156/FatalcollisionB9006CantraywoodtoCroyroad2.jpg
Vauxhall Corsa vs Mitsubishi Shogun. Both people in the Corsa killed. Injuries in the Shogun.
http://www.meejahor.com/wp-content/uploads/Newspaperphotosfromthelastfewmonths_CD67/A9Dalwhinniefatalcollision5of8.jpg
Vauxhall Astra vs Mitsubishi Shogun. All three people in the Astra killed. Minor injuries in the Shogun.
http://www.meejahor.com/wp-content/uploads/818q3025.jpg
One thing leaps out from your trollpost: Why would unlimited energy cause pollution? Set aside the self-loathing for a moment and think hard. I mean, seriously, you picked the one thing that could solve any problem you could possibly have with the existence of other humans.
- no need to burn anything for any reason anymore, ever. Not for heat, not for light, not for disposal, not for mechanical force.
- no 'economic' excuse against mandatory recycling ever again, ever. "but that would cost money and make us uncompetitive!" is bullshit if energy is free. Especially when point 1 removes the most polluting things.
- no need for mass strip mining, especially when point 2 means we've already got most of the material stuff we need mined and point 1 means additional stuff can be done space-efficiently at no cost.
- no need for rerouting rivers, draining bodies of water, or emptying aquifers for water. free energy, remember? condensers, desalination, water treatment plants.
- no need for traditional (or modern day industrial farming) using (and damaging) the terrain; unlimited energy means you might as well build skyscrapers with internal farms. Why not? Make the sunlight, synthesize the fertilizers.
- no need for domestic livestock as a food source due to the above. No need for fishing, either. Synthesize the missing vitamins with that free energy, or grow meat in vats and fish in tanks if you must.
- no need for 99% of the grind and strife of modern civilization, because, due to the above, unlimited energy took care of the need. When energy has no cost, physical objects have practically no cost either, and the only things of value are knowledge and time. No need for such a high population, either, since the physical labor has no value either.
- pre-existing environmental damage can be repaired at no cost (other than time, which there is an abundance of after all of the above). Might as well put most of that extra carbon back in the ground, too, or store it for use.
In the longer run, no need for additional 'habitable' planets. Unlimited energy means it's easier to build entire self contained ecosystems from scratch out of inert raw material in space.
What they really need to start buying is the first car with a moustache; the Hammerhead Eagle i-Thrust AKA Geoff.
Autocar Review
If you have seven people to transport an SUV is more eco friendly than two cars. Any car, even electric one, does some damage to the environment. Fuel or electricity should be taxed accordingly to mitigate that. An outright ban makes no sense. How about tour operators, people with extended families, handicapped with wheelchairs and/or medical gear? Let people who truly need extra capacity pay some more, but still less if they had to use two cars.
And most European cities are filled with those. Even tho the SUVs (yes, people here buy those over sized gas guzzlers now) are a pain, eco-unfriendly and impossible to park, the average moped causes more smog and foul smell than those SUVs do. There's been talk of banning "old cars" from the Amsterdam center as well, but neither Amsterdam nor Paris seem to want to deal with the mopeds. There have been no decent scientific studies to the effects of actually banning "stinking cars" from the city center. How much less pollution would this result in? How much more pollution would the replacement vehicle cause? Imagine all SUV owners having to park outside city limits and renting mopeds to get into town, do a pollution calculation based on that and then tell me it's not purely symbolic.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
From Popular Mechanics magazine, January 1905, p. 119:
Many of the mail wagons in Paris are now electric-propelled vehicles, weighing 4,200 pounds, and carry a load of 1,100 pounds of mail. Storage batteries weighing 1,320 pounds furnish current sufficient to last for a 37-mile trip. The Motor Age says the new wagons carry twice as much mail as the former horse-drawn vehicles and travel much faster.
What one fool can do, another can. (Ancient Simian Proverb)
They'd have to have checkpoints to sort the cars-- or something like London's system of charging people to enter the center of the city. Sounds like yet another reason to park the car and take the RER and the Metro instead.
I especially like this sentence from the G-Wiz article:
A recent Frost and Sullivan survey into electric vehicles noted that when people find out about electric cars, their interest in buying one doubles.
I tend to find my interest in buying something goes up a lot more than 100% when I'm not even aware of its existence beforehand. ;)
The socialist mayor of Paris is elected by Parisians only and has to please a quite radical ecologist faction to stay in power. This anti-big-car measure has little to do with pollution (doing like London would be much better), but it will satisfy the ecolos, mostly please the Parisians, many of whom have no cars, and only ennoy people who live in the suburbs and have to come to Paris to work. The latter don't vote for Paris elections, so this is not a problem for the mayor.
Not with all the SUV loving people out there like my friend whose absolute jackshit over them.
http://archeleus.com/blog
..as a 5+ year resident of paris, I recall seeing a Hummer twice - and it was the same one.
Paris has never been a city of big cars, simply because you can't drive them - the streets are too narrow, parking becomes completely impossible, and they're generally not at all favoured as cars.
While it's true there's a creep of luxury 'smaller' 4WD (Porche Cayenne etc) - being new, they're generally more efficent than the 2-stroke mopeds buzzing around, for example.
Such a ban is as much to facilitate traffic flow than save the environment, I believe.
(And PS: there hasn't been an 'rush of electric car purchases' - smaller cars have always been popular.)
Were it anywhere else I'd argue with you, but yeah.... Paris....
404: sig not found.
Residents and travelers have responded by buying thousands of electric cars, including the low-speed fiberglass G-Wiz — despite major safety concerns with the vehicle."
No, residents have not responded by buying thousands of electric cars, because this decision is NEW.
Instead, french people have bought thousands of electric cars, because there is a tax gift of 1500 euros when you replace your old vehicle with a new electric or hybrid one.
This tax reduction will disappear on the 1st of January 2011, that's why people rush to buy a new car, especially in Paris.
BTW, using a SUV in Paris is a crazy idea, since it's perceived as a lack of respect for other drivers. Streets in Paris are very small, parking places are very difficult to find for normal vehicles, and impossible for larger ones.
Possessing a SUV is like saying: hey, I've got a ton of money, since my car will suck a lot of gas, and I have my own private parking for both my work and my home.
Driving in Paris requires a lot of attention and energy, since it's very tiring, and drivers are very nervous, and are not friendly when driving.
"Residents and travelers have responded by buying thousands of electric cars" where??? I live in Paris, no electric cars yet here...
It's absolutely spot on. (living in Paris, I totally confirm this).
In 2005 a clandestine group known as Les Dégonflés, The Deflated, began a campaign of sabotage against SUVs in the City.
"Under cover of night, Marrant's troops target Jeep Cherokees, Porsche Cayennes and other four-wheel-drive vehicles parked on the tree-lined avenues and cobblestoned lanes of wealthy neighborhoods. The eco-guerrillas deflate tires without damaging them, smear doors with mud and paste handbills on windshields proclaiming that the vehicles are dangerous, polluting behemoths that do not belong in the city."
And now, far from criminalizing their behavior, the government of the City is going to ratify it. Lessons to be learned, here: Direct Action gets the goods.
I have 2 Harleys, 4 2T motorcycles that I ride on public roads, and of course, a V8 HEMI, they will pry them from my cold dead hands. Fuck the EPA, the RIAA, the FRENCH and the north too, bunch of pussies. I really hope that 2011 brings us a MAD MAX world with carnage on the roads. hmmm do you smell that son? is the smell of lead gasoline, and I love it on the morning...
"Residents and travelers have responded by buying thousands of electric cars" :)))
???
I definitely don't live in the Paris you're talking about
More, Denis Baupin doesn't rule the city. He's just an advisor.
Hopefully, because I think he's just always into excess.
As you and many others perhaps have falsely presumed, this may be some kind of attack on SUV's or American culture. That is just bad journalism and media manipulation to make a bland article more interesting. The ban specifically targets any vehicle which crosses a certain Co2 threshold per km travelled. Of course the author chose to headline SUV's and feature a massive SUV picture in order to falsely manipulate you into believing its an attack on US culture and judging by many posts here its clearly worked. The article also makes it very unclear if London's congestion charges or these new French ban on high emission vehicles is the cause of the buying of thousands of new electric cars.
Maybe things have changed in the last few years, but I spent a while in France a few years ago and for 2 weeks didn't see a SINGLE suv or pickup truck. Neither in the city, nor elsewhere in the entire country. In fact, the only thing larger than the luxury BMW's (cars) were all commercial trucks, and I never saw those in the city.
So by your logic, if we all drove 70 tonne tanks to go and buy a pint of milk, we'd be safer, right?
Fossil fuel is converted into electricity at a big loss, sent through the electric grid at a small loss, depending on how good it is, then through the battery charger at a loss. Then there is a loss as the battery sends the electricity to the power electronics for a loss, and the motor is not 100% efficient. A good internal combustion engine and gearbox (Prius) can be better than an electric car in efficiency.
SUVs are trucks. They get truck tax breaks, truck emissions loopholes, and they're the big, powerful cars we call trucks. But somehow they do not require the truck license to drive them, which requires taking a different test for handling bigger, more powerful cars in some trickier maneuvers.
If all those soccer moms, yuppies and other people driving a car too big for them had to get a truck license instead of the drivers license they already got in high school, most of them would not. And there would be a whole lot less SUVs driving around. And most of their drivers, when they cut us off, would at least have the skills to do so more safely.
Such a simple change: require the truck license to drive the truck. Saving lives and sanity, not to mention fuel supplies.
--
make install -not war
Wouldn't it be better for the environment to forbid dogs in the city? After all, a large dog has the same carbon footprint as two SUVs. But, oh, I guess we are just trying to make a point, not to actually reduce carbon dioxide emissions...
CO2 is not a poison, and second it's a necessary ingredient in life (makes the food grow).
Carbon dioxide is also the greenhouse gas making the second biggest contribution to global warming after water vapor, and probably the biggest contributor to the anthropogenic part of warming.
Posting from the UK. What the heck is a drive thru restaurant?
I've seen drive-through fast food places like MacDonalds etc in the UK where you order a burger and fries and a drink and pick it up at a hole in the wall, those seem gruesome enough. But you have *restaurants* that do this as well? Or are you including MacDonalds and such fast food places as restaurants?
At least it helps people tell puh-REE, France, from PEAR-is, Texas.
I'm waiting for a US city to declare the same nonsense because "Europe is doing it so it must be good".
Wouldn't this be a violation of the test ban treaty?
Does the German army get an exemption for its trucks, tanks and armoured cars?
No more trucks or trains! I guess they're going to put farms around the Eiffel tower and everyone will distribute food using their own little cars. Looks like everyone's going to do a lot more driving, so if they don't starve to death, they'll choke to death on the smug.
In fact generating electric power is so easy, the tendency seems that more people will be doing it, there's just too many sources. Even if not generating 100% of your power yet, energy independence is continually growing.
http://www.google.com/search?q=neighborhood+power
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
And I thought Schwarzenegger was an idiot when he tried to ban Black Cars in California.
"Computers are a lot like Air Conditioners" "They both work great until you start opening Windows"
manned by the invading army.
The mind conceives, the body achieves, the spirit manifests.
While the poster is incorrect to say saudi, he wuld be corrcet to say 'OPEC"; which is the group america gets most it's oil from. You will note that when OPEC announce a price change it makes the news, not Canada.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
It is about time some government made a policy to begin encouraging people to get rid of these things. Given the issues going on in the world driving an SUV in 2011 is like deciding to go on the Atkins Diet. It is a backward move.
New York City has an incredible subway system. Their air could be sparkingly clean if not for commuter auto traffic. Maybe a "carbon tax" could help clean up NYC's air.
TFA says they are planning to debate the proposals. That is Euro-speak for nothing very much. How many big cars have you seen in Paris anyway? Now if they could think of a way of harvesting the dog-dirt there for motive power, they might have a distinctive advantage. Even now, you can more-or-less 'slide' to your meeting.
As long as there is an OBJECTIVE metric, then I have no problem with this idea at all...I might even support it. The problem though is when you say "ban SUV's because they produce more CO2", instead of saying "ban VEHICLES that produce x amount of C02". This kind of feel good nonsense gives us laws like allowing Hybrids to use the HOV lanes, without regard to anything beyond the word "hybrid" on the bumper. So Hybrid SUV's that get 15 MPG get to cruise in the HOV lane, while traditional gas vehicles that get 40+ mpg get to idle in the slow lanes.
I suggest getting a rifle and beginning to assist Mother Nature.
If you are of moderate skill you should be able to take out a large number of people in cities with strong gun laws. Stay away from Arizona and other places with CCW as you will find your shooting cut short quickly.
It appears that everything other than wild enthusiasm is taken as direct opposition and gets modded down to oblivion. Please note that a difference in opinion is not a reason to moderate something down.
Vancouver Canada has had a program in place for over a decade called "Air Care". Car insurance is mandatory in British Columbia and if your insured address is in the city limits then your vehicle must be tested every time you renew your insurance. If it doesn't pass the test, no insurance, so no driving.
I didn't RTFM but based on the summary its the same idea. btw: Despite initial bitching the program has runs pretty much without incident.
This is a stupid idea. People drive SUVs for a reason; they're powerful, many have great off-road capabilities, and their larger size makes them safer in crashes. But noooo. They're evil because bigger engines create more exhaust!
Any effect this will have on the precious environment will be negligible at best. Global warming is a farce anyway; it's just a political tool designed for control and wealth redistribution. If you need any evidence, just look at Climategate, Al Gore's conflict of interest of being heavily invested in "green" technologies that he's trying to force on everyone, and look at how we keep having these cold and snowy winters. They've countered by changing "global warming" to "climate change" (did you know that a couple decades back, the big scare was global cooling? Why do they keep changing their story?) and then attributing every type of weather--hot or cold--to warming. Pure idiocy and lies.
wow I sit corrected - not that I have ever seen one in the flesh maybe this is Renauts Dacia Sandero :-)
Looks like its been pulled from the UK due to poor sales. If it takes off in france I can see the regs being written to exclude it.
I also suspect that if this tax targets vehicles used by french farmers that this idea will be dropped quickly.