From John Kaye
Your correspondents seem to only look at the fuel consumption figures to determine the environmental cost of a vehicle (8 April, p 24 and 29 April, p 23). They do not seem to take into account the life of the vehicle, the energy used to both make and dispose of it, or the reusability of the parts in a vehicle.
Market researchers in the US have done a “dust-to-dust” analysis of the environmental costs of vehicles on the US market. The report at suggests that the cost of hybrid electric cars is much higher than their fuel consumption implies.
In Europe we use many more diesel-powered cars than the US, further reducing the significance of the headline-grabbing fuel consumption figures.
Wokingham, Berkshire, UK
