I assume that you would agree though Daviey that A bailout would be OK if the company promised only to manufacture highly fuel efficient small cars though?
 
I can picture it now. John Prescott in one of those little smart cars.

Anybody organizing a rally to get the government to give the money to support the green economy? I'd like to help.

Congratulations. You've read a few headlines, jumped on the band wagon and now sounding like a fully paid up member of the eco-mentalists. You believe that CO2 emissions from cars are the flatulance of satan and should be avoided at all costs.
 
CO2 emissions are a problem, but before you start looking at what comes out of the exhaust pipe of a car, you should perhaps look at what goes into a car.
 
Approximately 40% of the CO2 produced during the lifetime of a single car comes from the exhaust pipe. The remaining 60% is accounted for during manufacturing and dismantling. Land rover is a an interesting case here in that they estimate that over 70% (some say 80%) of the cars they have ever produced (60 years of production) are still on the road.
 
If you compare that to, i don't know, perhaps any other car manufacturer, the longevity offered by land rovers is simply unsurpassed. The scrap yards of this country are filled with rotten shells of cars whose mechanicals are often in working order, but how many of them bear a green oval badge.
 
Consumer demand has driven down the purchasing costs of absolutely everything in the world, without giving a damn as to how suppliers produce goods at prices demanded. The same thing has happened with cars. Cars are now fashion accessories, and are disposed of without concern for the resources used in their construction or disposal.
 
When the environmental costs of manufacturing and disposal of a car is taken into account, Land Rover build perhaps one of the greenest cars on the planet. They are built in the UK and sold all over the world, and in doing so support hundreds of thousands of tabloid newspaper readers like yourself, and their families throughout the UK.
 
By focussing on what comes out of cars instead of what goes into cars, we are missing the bigger picture. Don't take my word for it, read the Automotive Energy report produced by independent researcher CNW Research.
 
You can find the reports at http://www.cnwmr.com/nss-folder/automotiveenergy/.
 
I can understand your concerns, but exhaust emissions are only a small part of the problem as far as climate change is concerned.
 
As our climate continues to change however, I'll be safe in the knowledge that the Land Rover I drive is not only greener than a Toyota Prius, but able to transport me where needed regardless of what mother nature throws at me. I'll also be supporting Britains last car manufacturer, and by doing that, I'll be supporting the hundreds of thousands of families throughout the UK who depend on Land Rover for their daily bread.
 
If this government doesn't bail out landrover, they will be doing a great disservice to the whole country.

Thanks Tafftoo someone who sees a bigger picture. I work in the industry supplying foam for car seats to amongst others Jag/landrover fifty of us are for the chop next week myself possibly being one of them. my commitment to green living is to be put on hold due to lack of job security, i cant now afford to install planned solar thermal water system due to its initial set up cost and am forced to continue burning fossil fuel. is this a case of 'Robbing peter to pay paul'

Hi madprof. Sorry to hear of your predicament. If your job does get axed then why not take a look at opportunities in the renewables sector as there seems to still be some expansion going on there. With a bit of training you could be installing your own solar heating system and that of others.
 
Type this into GoogleUK " job opportunities in renewables"
 
I would also like to add my thanks to tafftoo for his comprehensive posting. I'm sure that DaviyG was really trying to see the larger picture with his opening statement. Too much borrowing is the underlying problem.

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Touched a nerve there. I thought that Landrover was an American firm no more British now than Corus? and this may be why we are in recession because multinational corporations have, time and time again been proven to have no compassion when it comes to the labour force we are just ants.
 
Here is an interesting link of who owns who in the car industry
http://carscarscars.blogs.com/index/2004/03/who_owns_who.html
 
if you want a british car you may have to build it yourself in your garden.
 

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Ha. the gov are going to print money now (£75,000,000,000) to give out to everyone to encourage them to scrap their cars and buy new ones. Happy now!

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If we're all supposed to scrap our cars, and go buy shiny new "green" ones then it seems like a really good time to be in the scrap business. Unfortunately, it also seems like a complete waste of natural resources, ad so ultimately, seems like a complete waste of financial resources.
 
Can this government, or the people they claim to serve, see the end of their noses from where they're sat?

Here's a thought...
 
Instead of paying us to scrap perfectly good cars, why not take some of that money and use it to help some of the small businesses of this country.
 
I'm not suggesting a free handout, but I think that it might be an idea to help more businesses to embrace the idea of telecommuting. We have the technology, but unfortuately we also have a social stigma attached to "working from home". A lot of employers seem to think that an employee "working from home" is simply watching Fern and Phil or playing golf.
 
Not all industries can support homeworking, but there are plenty that could if sufficient investment was made in educating companies about the benefits, and also investing in the supporting technologies.
 
I think this would provide a number of benefits all round. Increased telecommuting would mean less cars on the road, easing congestion and reducing tailpipe emissions.
 
It would also mean that companies would be able to run smaller offices and so reduce their energy consumption for lighting, heating, etc.
 
Home working would allow a great many people a bit more flexibility in how they arrange their lives which is always a good thing. How many of us feel that we are working harder and harder and having less time to enjoy spent on the things that matter? Work to live, not live to work.
 
Technology has much to offer us, and yet the people that hold the purse strings and make the decisions are still scared of it. It's supposed to empower us, not enslave us. This to me seems like the perfect opportunity to start investing in our future in a positive way, rather than simply sticking another plump finger in the damn. Who knows? We might end up as world leaders at something again.
 
Or perhaps I'm just going mad.

It doesn't really matter what nationality owns Jaguar/Landrover, then fact remains that they are built here in the UK as well as elsewhere.
 
The building of Jaguars and Landrovers here in the uk supports thousands of small businesses and hundreds of thousands of households throughout the UK. To say that JLR produces some of the most inefficient cars available and so should be punished along with the entire supply chain is absurd.
 
Exhaust emissions are only a small part of the story. The real story is that one of our iconic brands (still a triumph of British Engineering) is in desparate trouble along with all the smaller firms that support it.
 
Bailing out landrover wouldn't send any more of a message than bailing out northern rock, but at least Landrover has a future. JLR understand conservation and provide vehicles that are able to perform in wide variety of environments, perhaps where other vehicles couldn't perform. The vehicles they produce also last a lot longer than most other vehicles.
 
We need to support them, not to line the pockets of Ratan Tata (Who's Indian, not American), but to support the british public who build these amazing vehicles.
 
And for what it's worth, my 20 year old land rover V8 is more fuel efficient than Audi's RS4 or Mercedes AMG CLS 63, and it'll still be going strong long after they've been scrapped.

taftoo said: "By focussing on what comes out of cars instead of what goes into cars, we are missing the bigger picture. Don't take my word for it, read the Automotive Energy report produced by independent researcher CNW Research.
 
You can find the reports at http://www.cnwmr.com/nss-folder/automotiveenergy/.
 
I can understand your concerns, but exhaust emissions are only a small part of the problem as far as climate change is concerned.
 
As our climate continues to change however, I'll be safe in the knowledge that the Land Rover I drive is not only greener than a Toyota Prius, but able to transport me where needed regardless of what mother nature throws at me. "
 
Be careful what you read on the internet. Would you believe me if I made an official looking website and said "I can prove that Land Rovers cost less to buy than a Toyota Prius". I'm sure I could come up with some statistical facts to back this statement up, but the reality is a new Disco costs well above £25k and a Prius £18k.
 
The reality is that the CNW report has been totally rubbished. But most Land Rover owners came across it in the Land Rover magazine (including my dad) or the national press. Unfortunately none of these publications took the time to go an look for the other side of the argument like this....
http://www.hybridcars.com/environment-stories/dust-to-dust-energy-costs.html
http://www.denialism.com/labels/George%20Will.html
 
You have to do a bit of common sense thinking. like will a vehicle that gets 27 mpg running on diesel really use less energy than a car getting 50 mpg on petrol? IF you make it fair and say over 100,000 miles you get some numbers like this...
First some figures we can get – average fuel consumption. These are owners figures not emissions test results.
Combined with DEFRAs conversion figures http://www.defra.gov.uk/ENVIRONMENT/business/envrp/pdf/conversion-factors.pdf
_______ Disco TDV6 . . . Prius
Mpg________ 27. . . . . . .50
Miles________ . 100000
Gallons_____ 3703. . . . .2000
G>L________ . . . .4.55
Litres_______ 16833. . . 9090
L>t CO2____ 2.63. . . . . 2.32
Tons CO2___ 44 . . . . . . 21
£/l _________ £0.99. . . . £0.89
Fuel Costs__ £16,665 . . £8,090
 
Form the CO2 figures you can reverse out some energy figures for that 100k...
 
kWh/kg CO2 0.263 . . . . 0.253
kWh _________168,333 . . 83,175
 
 
Based on these VS CNW report you'd have to query whether a Prius will really cost more! And you have to ask regardless of costs, does the development of the Prius really cause an extra 23 tonnes of CO2? Or use twice the energy to make as a Disco? Obviously bogus.
 
The key thing that let it down was costing the Prius over 100,000 miles and a Hummer 240,000. When in fact a Prius can do much more as evidence by taxi firms who use them. In fact I expect them to be a Hobbyist EV car of the future. As they go out of warranty at 100k (on the battery/drivetrain), which they're now starting to do and still fetch £8,000. People will buy them up and fit aftermarket range extending batteries / higher power electric motors to boost electric only top speed. The life expectancy isn't 100k, it's the life of the car, but 8 years was meant to reassure owners that it's not going to let you down.
 
PS I'm not a Prius owner - but looked into the facts when I was considering buying one. The CNR report is a right wind up once you find out the truth! Wish I had bought one - the 3 litre BMW I bought instead lost £6k in 2 years where as a prius would have lost only 2k! Something else the CNR report didn't consider - depreciation on high consumption cars! At the time I bought 3 years ago, depreciation on BMWs was very low, and the Prius was an unknown. Now anything petrol bigger than 2 litres won't sell, and a Prius is holding on to 50% of their value after 4 years.

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It's nice to see that you've done you're homework on this. I wish more people would do their homework before legislating. The point I originally made was that what comes out of the exhaust tailpipe is only part of the story.
 
There is a huge amount of energy used in actually manufacturing cars, and then disposing of them, regardless of much co2 they emit throughout their working life. Where, for example, a landrover scores quite highly is in the fact that the majority of the cars manufactured are still in service rather than having been scrapped.
 
By supporting landrover, we are also supporting thousands of UK households, so it's important to look at the bigger picture before condemning a complete supply chain for not being "green".

additionally with the defender model of the landrover , originally the only landrover , energy used in production is less than many cars as the model has a long production run and many body parts were designed many years ago thus reducing the production costs even further