Originally Posted by philco
Nice one.. except you don't know Mrs Philco:-
Whilst, like most of us (myself included) she thinks nothing of her personal annual responsability for +- 30,000 lbs of CO2 emmissions as she moves in luxury to an fro at 39,000ft (source:
www.terrapass.com/flight/flightcalc.html), it behoves her to change to a hybrid car in order to do her bit. As she drives a mere 2000 miles a year that will, according to the same source, save the world to the tune of just 400lbs of co2 annually. Tragically the figures don't persuade her.
If she's just concerned about co2 rather than the congestion charge, the Prius isn't the least polluting. We have a Smart for zooming around London in; they're amazing little cars, huge inside (as long as there are only two of you), take a surprisingly large amount of luggage, and use hardly any fuel indeed (we seem to get over 60mpg in town). My wife drives about 6000 miles a year in it. The diesel version (ours is petrol) does something like 75-80mpg and produces 90g/km of CO2 compared to 104g/km for Prius (
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4834480.stm).
But if you are concerned about the c-charge and live in a house rather than a flat, you might as well go the whole hog and buy an electric car. Then you won't have to pay for parking in central London either.
The Smart starts at something like £7k; even with pretty much all the options available, it's still cheap. How many other cars with all mod cons such as a 6-speed sequential auto gearbox, traction control, antilock brakes, panoramic glass roof, air conditioning, heated leather seats, electric everything, hi fi, sat nav etc etc can you get new for £10k?
I tried to buy our Smart on the credit card but they wouldn't let me (complained about the commission, 2.5% or whatever). In the end IIRC they agreed to let me put £2k on the credit card and the rest by bank transfer.