Environment Control

Why Old Cars are More Eco-Friendly Than New Ones

Volkswagen Beetle

 

With all due respect to the engineering behind this Opel: How ignorant or ignorant do you have to be to buy this car, or sell it to customers as environmentally friendly? Aside from the fact that old cars are more prone to breakdown and need of getting a nearby semi towing truck for roadside assistance, there is nothing more environmentally friendly about this vehicle than the previous solutions.

The least harmful one at present is a hybrid version between natural gas, alternatively biogas, and electricity. When touting such concepts, you have to look at the environmental balance as a whole, not just the primary pollutant emissions of the vehicle.

The car is assumed to have a service life of eight years, which allegedly corresponds to the national average. If all vehicles that are older disappear today, our roads would be almost empty. So where will the end-of-life batteries be stored in eight years’ time? What happens to the rest of the vehicle, built using irretrievable resources? If the battery is not replaceable because it is part of the body, then we throw those resources away. Where?

 

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You may think what you want about the existing drives, but at present, the environmental balance of even a 20-year-old cucumber with 13 L/100 km diesel consumption is still many times better than that of the new, “better” vehicles. These old vehicles are passed on and run in other countries, with lower safety requirements, etc. again as long as in Germany. This saves the pollutant emissions of production and disposal as well as vast amounts of resources such as steel, oil, and electricity.

And quite apart from that: Where does the electricity come from? Currently, lignite-fired power plants and nuclear power plants are being built throughout Europe. It couldn’t be worse. At present, only a hybrid between electricity and gas is suitable as a bridging technology. Until a correct solution was found for the alleged saviors.

I wonder whether none of the environmental experts has the guts to draw up a real-life cycle assessment for a representative vehicle.