Legislators and the car industry are terribly bad for us.
We have the French to blame for their industry bosses button-holing their legislators in the '70s and '80s to get the whole diesel industry off to a start. They did it by lowering duty on derv because the French manufacturers had a lead in oil-burning engines and wanted one over on the Japanese who had no diesel cars to offer at the time.
It worked and diesel took off big time on the Continent.
Then in the '80s the Japanese on the brink of meeting the pollution targets with lean-burn engines. The European manufacturers couldn't match them so they got their governments to move the goal-posts and legislate for catalytic converters being mandatory instead. This consumes rare earth metals, reduces economy and consequently shoves up CO2 emissions, makes cars heavier; it also emasculated cars until manufacturers responded with higher power outputs.
Now it turns out CO2 is bad for us and the Japanese lean-burn approach was right all along.
The focus on CO2 has led the legislators to push for diesel in recent years. You've only got to see a (new) Addison Lee taxi parked with a laptop plugged into it and the engine banging off the rev limiter while it tries to regenerate the DPF to see what madness diesel cars are (we happen to have an Addison Lee depot near us and they do this regularly).
What next will our legislators get up next I wonder?
