Car emissions vs import emissions

[Swedish Avenger]

I live in the UK, and Range Rovers are manufactured here. They use loads of fuel, but say a small Volvo would use alot less. Given that the Volvo has to be shipped from Sweden on a boat with extremely crude engines which still emit CO and the ship also polutes the sea, which option do you recon is more environmentally friendly?

Not trying to make it look like the RR is the choice to go for, and I think they're too big anyways, but I want to know the answer next time someone thinks they are being environmentally friendly with their frugal imported car.

 

[Genx87]

Those ships are huge and probably carry thousands of cars. The amount of emissions from a ship avg'd over all the cars on there is tiny.

If you do this you have to factor in the fuel spent getting all of the parts to the factory to build the RR.

 

[CycloWizard]

I think the Volvo will still yield less emissions overall.

 

[Peter]

In the total sum of environmental pollution and energy use, the most effective thing to do is keep your old car - no matter how awful its exhaust quality and fuel efficiency is. Why? Because the energy usage and pollution inherent to MAKING a new car exceeds the amount you save during USE over your old one, by several orders of magnitude.

Besides, check your facts - do you really think that Rover is plugged together from locally made components? Lots and lots of components are shipped and flown in from elsewhere in the world.

 

[Swedish Avenger]

Actually yeah I didn't think of that our metal industry is non existant now. The point about the ship was that ship engines don't have to adhere to strict guidelines with emissions as far as I know (certainly seem to let off enough black smoke) and give off loads of stuff a car engine isn't permitted to, they certainly don't put catalytic converters on those beasts.

Its probably fair to say though that anyone really caring about the environment could do far more by investigating their cars manufacturing process than looking at emissions. It just irritates me that people are happy with a placebo, I mean the Prius is incredibly un-environmentaly friendly to build but campaigners still sing praises for the hybrid.

http://alt-e.blogspot.com/2005/02/hybrids-hybrid-boats-hybrid-ships-and.html re-inventing the sail...