Lowest ever CO2 emissions

The Australian new car market has posted lower aggregate CO2 emissions than ever before

Australia's aggregate light vehicle emissions dropped 2.7 per cent year-on-year -- and automotive industry's peak body says our outdated luxury car tax and hoon laws are holding us back from further improvement.

In its annual National Average Carbon Emission (NACE) figure, the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries (FCAI) revealed a continuing downward trend in the aggregate CO2 output of the nation's new light vehicle fleet. The average emission figure dropped in 2010 to 212.6g/km -- down 2.7 per cent from 218.6g/km in 2009, and nearly 16 per cent since the inception of the index in 2002.

FCAI chief Andrew McKellar is pleased the local industry has been able to effect such an improvement under its own stewardship, without regulation. In a statement, he attributed one of the larger annual drops in the NACE to a combination of improvements in technology and increasing consumer acceptance of the new.

Sector by sector, the biggest reductions lie in sports cars (down 5.79pc), medium cars (down 4.75pc) and SUVs (down 3.35pc). FCAI chief Andrew McKellar puts these sectors' performance down to an increase in the number of diesel and low-powered turbo petrol vehicles arriving in each.

"No longer should people automatically assume that an SUV is a gas-guzzler," he said.

Ford's new Territory, once the butt of many such accusations and assumptions, exemplifies the trend. The SZ update goes to market in April with a diesel option (pictured) delivering combined-cycle fuel consumption of 8.2L/100km in RWD form. Ford claimed 13.1L/100km combined for early RWD petrol versions. But individual and comparative reviews following its release in 2004 put the real world figure between 15 and 20L/100km for RWD and AWD versions.

The NACE figure takes in all light vehicles sold new over the calendar year: passenger cars, SUVs and light commercials including utes, vans and buses under 3.5 tonnes. The final figure for each year hails from a simple calculation derived from official manufacturer CO2 emissions figures for each model and type in its lineup, combined with VFACTS sales figures.

The emissions figures are published in the federal government's Green Vehicle Guide (www.greenvehicleguide.gov.au) alongside fuel consumption figures. All hail from a standard dynamometer test cycle with components simulating urban and highway driving.

Asked about factors holding us back from doing better, McKellar says some of these are within government control and some aren't.

"Australia is part of a truly global vehicle market but there will always be differences between nations based on geography and the types of vehicles appropriate for their populations," he said.

While Australia is the most coastalised nation in the world, that doesn't make it the most urbanised. Which is to say, we're still given to big cars built to travel long distances. And relative to Europe, we remain rusted on to the petrol pump.

The sixfold growth in diesel passenger car sales we've seen in recent years comes from a low base. Oilers still only accounted last year for 4.4 per cent of last year's passenger car sales.

The federal luxury car tax doesn't help, he said, given the extra cost it imposes on many of the cleanest models using the most advanced green technologies. "It's like a punitive tax on environmental performance, on the latest safety and environmental technology," he said. "It's becoming increasingly clear that governments should be doing more to encourage people to embrace those technologies, not punish them."

Anti-hoon laws need updating, too, he added. Current bans on P-platers driving turbo- and supercharged cars haven't been reframed to take into account the shift in manufacturers' priorities. Premium German brands, for example, now commonly use forced aspiration not to boost power but to maintain power output while reducing engine size. "So New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and Queensland are banning young drivers from some of the safest and most fuel efficient vehicles on the road through their P-Plate vehicle restrictions," he said.

"At the moment, it takes a lot of time-consuming and costly paperwork involved for brands and individual owners to gain exemptions for low-powered turbo vehicles." The FCAI is lobbying for the focus to shift away from engine size and aspiration towards using power-to-weight ratio as the chief determining factor.

Future NACE readings would benefit from anything that stands to modernise one of the oldest car fleets in the Western world, he said. After a few years just below it, the Aussie fleet's average has once again tipped over the ten-year mark.

"You can put that down to the economic downturn of the past few years -- of course that's going to have an impact on the average fleet age. But it is cause for concern that one in five vehicles on Australian roads is more than 15 years old," he said. "There are very good safety and environmental reasons for people to upgrade to a new vehicle.

"But having said that, while it's difficult to measure CO2 emissions as vehicles age, we do know that greenhouse gas emissions from passenger transport has remained around seven to eight per cent of Australia's total emissions for the past few years."

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