NOW then, what's the C02 carbon footprint of a brand new Ls ??

[VFR]

Boris has spoken.

Its a minute to midnight !, and if we don't tax ........... erm I mean act now it will be to late.

 

Security arrest that nasty little French fellow when he shows up.       🤫

[Cotswold Pete]

Well done Neil Oliver for pointing out the hypocrisy, but we all hypocrites, and thinking that going EV is the answer is a falsehood.

IMHO the answer is to work local, buy local and maybe use the car for highdays and holidays (but not too many).  However that is not gonig to happen, not because politicians are ineffective, but surely the masses are not to keen on going back to walking to work in clogs and eating bread and (veggie) dripping every day.  I know I am not to keen on going back to the middle ages (or the pre-industrial age), but industry will always make and create energy, which will surely (no matter what) have a less than postive impact.

If the Persians could easily turn their grasslands (Eden) into desert so easily 5000 years ago with with their low tech water screws, and the Phoenicians could destroy Pheonix (Arizona) many centries ago with their low tech farming techniques, then anything more 'intense' is surely - in the long run - on a hiding to nothing.

BUT being a hypocrite I am not getting rid of my 4litre beast just yet, and I will keep it gonig as long as possible to extract maximum energy input from that original build back in 2000.

[Malc]

now now one and all ......  we all seem to have drifted a little from the purpose of the original POST

Does anyone think any of us can beneficially add to the required actual , what should be a relatively simple answer .......  but clearly an impossible answer to discover

I'm of the uninformed opinion that there is no body of any Authority ( or otherwise ) that can, or is simply prepared to, put the energies required to investigate any of this to a ( simple ? ) conclusion

NO worldwide Govt Body nor Energy Authority nor Car Manufacturers Body would ever be able to nor prepared to do so ..........  methinks there's far too many vested interests  NOT to do so

Unlikely I know, BUT if Sir David A was to read this post, or indeed to even ask the Q, maybe in general terms about total car newbuild and car scrappage carbon values .......  then, and only then, might some Govt body take up the mantle and search for the truth, or even some sort of sensible answer 

Malc

[The-Acre]

The obvious solution to all of this is to get the answer from an 18 year old Scandinavian, after all, teenagers always know everything.  By that age they know the complete workings of industry, manufacturing, politics in every country, the difficulties of bringing up large families, earning enough money to eat and heat your home etc. I wonder if she would say to the Taliban "how dare you" some might say I wish she would! 

[Las Palmas]

Everybody’s right. In something – maybe.

Keeping your old car going is in the short run making sure you are not helping the industry to make a new.

Driving something that pollute less is definitely better in densely populated areas.

Riding a bicycle and walking pollute less than driving a supercharged polluting machine.

Yes, we all have a point. We also all have a moral obligation to do our best to hand the world we got from our ancestors to our children in as good a condition as we can.

[peniole]

43 minutes ago, Las Palmas said:

to our children

therein lies the rub. If less people procreated we wouldn't be in the current predicament

[Malc]

Aha, so if everyone in the world, who could, replaced their energy saving lightbulbs a million times the worlds carbon issues would vanish .......  in a puff of " lights out "

Malc

[royoftherovers]

14 minutes ago, Malc said:

Aha, so if everyone in the world, who could, replaced their energy saving lightbulbs a million times the worlds carbon issues would vanish .......  in a puff of " lights out "

Malc

Is everyone forgetting the Theory of Thomas Malthus ?

[Malc]

7 minutes ago, royoftherovers said:

Is everyone forgetting

yes sorry, when I was born in about 1758   I remembered it then ....  forgotten it all since and not really sure dear old Thomas had thought it all through quite so well in the full knowledge that the motor car would come along, with the Lexus Ls to confound the pundits 

Malc

[royoftherovers]

2 minutes ago, Malc said:

yes sorry, when I was born in about 1758   I remembered it then ....  forgotten it all since and not really sure dear old Thomas had thought it all through quite so well in the full knowledge that the motor car would come along, with the Lexus Ls to confound the pundits 

Malc

I too, was born at two minutes to 6pm Malc !🤣🤣

[Cotswold Pete]

Well going back to the original question, I found this web site that implies that to build an average car takes the equivalent of 31 full tanks of petrol.  So maybe we extrapolate that to a Lexus as being 2 time more energy intensive.  So 61 tanks of fuel.

https://www.motorbiscuit.com/how-much-energy-to-build-a-car/

However this does not take into account the energy required to make the sheet metal, the number of cow farts that helped create the leather for the seats (or the energy input to the cow - I know you could then eat the cow, but not if you are a veggie like me). 

But it does seem like within a few years your new car has paid it's eco-dues. But none of this takes into account the energy required to build the original car factory, and the energy used to re-config the production line when the model comes to end of life and new tools needed make the next model.

So this to me suggests the view ( I heard somewhere in the mists of time) that a new car will take (for the average driver) about 7 to 10 years to use the same amount of fuel that was used to dig it out the ground and then turn it into a car.  Given cars do last more than 10 years, then might make sense to recycle them at that point.

I think if cars were newly invented today they would be banned as 'not good', just like cigarettes and alcohol would be banned, but the genie is out of the bottle, and he ain't going back in any time soon.

[Malc]

4 minutes ago, Cotswold Pete said:

Given cars do last more than 10 years

yes they can do in OUR careful, considering and thoughtful hands BUT in the hands of the manufacturers and very many Users, the general public and business users, the car might have an expected total life span of say 7 ( Kia ) or 10 years max .......  Lexus warranty periods say ..........  and Lexus parts LIFE expectancy of 10 years / 100k miles ( or maybe even kms )

So 10 years yes, for me it's now 26 years and I fully expect an awful lot more 

I'm not at all certain anyone will put forward an authoritative or even usefully sensible answer to my initial Q ........ so maybe we should just leave it there 

Ah, I know. let's ask ALEXA 

Malc