Jaffa's Juicy Bits

The year was 2010 and, with a PR budget some can only dream of, Volvo Car UK launched its Emissions Equality campaign. Aimed at "providing all motorists with a broader range of emissions information when they buy their next car" the new think tank would "help combat the UK’s rising problem of poor air quality."

As an active campaigner to reduce pollution and improve air quality I naturally took an interest and was impressed by its alleged proposals, although at the same time perhaps rather sceptical that it was just a thinly veiled marketing campaign with the aim of convincing the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, to exempt its vehicles from the London Congestion Charge.

Sadly, as an ecologist, Volvo Car UK truly let me down. As soon as they managed to turn Boris around, and its particulate emitting diesel cars were exempted from the charge, the campaign seemed to completely lose focus. Worst of all, the Emissions Equality app that they had launched lay abandoned in the middle of the iTunes store without an update.

In March 2011, I called them out on this situation in my post entitled Emissions Inequality. I explained about the campaign, its apparent lack of focus and the fact that the app was completely useless to new buyers as it contained only very old data - despite daily updates being available from the VCA that take into account all new car models that are launched.

I received a fairly prompt response from both Jay Negley at Redspy (who developed the app whilst running the Clean Green Cars website promoted within it) and Duncan Forrester from Volvo Car UK who informed me that an update would hopefully be available soon. In March 2011, the month I wrote my inequality post, the app was indeed updated.

Fast forward to January 2012 and there have been dozens, probably hundreds of unique car models released since then. Car buyers may be keen to compare the emissions of these new vehicles with others that are on sale, in order to help reduce some 50,000 premature deaths a year that are caused by air pollution. (Source: Volvo Car UK).

So what will the Emissions Equality Think Tank offer them in 2012?

1) The application has not been updated since I last queried it in March 2011 - almost one year ago.

2) The Emissions Equality Facebook page hasn't received an update since July 2010.

3) Volvo Car UK hasn't released any information on the topic since October 2010, when they were celebrating their victory in changing the London Congestion Charge rules.

So, is Emissions Equality a campaign to help improve air quality and reduce all types of pollution from vehicles in the UK? Or is it just a long forgotten Volvo marketing campaign? You decide.

For years, ecologists have been encouraging us to turn off electrical appliances that aren't in use. Turn off lights in unused rooms, wash laundry at lower temperatures and ensure you don't overfill the kettle. All because using electricity is bad for the environment.

There’s a massive CO2 footprint for electricity production. Generating just 1kWh of electricity in the UK releases around 525g of CO2 and other emissions into the atmosphere from our coal and natural gas fired power stations.

Naturally, this made me cast a critical eye over the recent boom in electric vehicles (EVs) and I previously examined the hidden emissions that come from driving an EV like the Nissan LEAF after the seemingly constant claims that these vehicles are “Zero Emission”. In fact, just last week, Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn was making big claims around the CO2 that hasn’t been emitted as a result of people driving the LEAF.

Everybody is jumping on the EV bandwagon now, with many manufacturers having a pure EV or plug-in hybrid on sale or coming to market. Last week I was invited to the Volvo HQ in Gothenburg to see the new V60 plug-in hybrid vehicle. Naturally, I sat there doing sums about how much CO2 would be generated in charging its 11.2kWh battery pack and then put the question to Volvo about how exactly this was going to help the environment. I wasn’t ready for the answer.

It seems that Volvo has done a nice little deal with Swedish electricity provider Vattenfall which will give buyers the option of taking the car along with three years of renewable energy supply. Generated from hydro-electric or wind, this supply has a carbon footprint of approximately zero meaning that, on a full charge, the V60 plug-in hybrid will go up to 32 miles with no CO2 emissions from the tailpipe or the power station. Rather different from simply pretending there aren’t any emissions from the use of electricity.

Perhaps things have changed at Nissan in almost two years since I first looked into EVs? I asked Nissan UK if it was prepared to discuss why it continually fails to acknowledge the carbon footprint of electricity production whilst promoting EVs. I submitted the following questions to its press office:

1) How does plugging something in and leaving it turned on overnight help save the environment?

2) Doesn't this go against the messages we've been receiving from ecologists for years?"

3) Why aren't other products, like tumble dryers and fridge/freezers being marketed as "zero emission" if a car, that uses considerably more power, can be.

4) What is Nissan doing to help reduce the environmental impact of electricity production?

Nissan responded by saying that “Unfortunately, we are not in a position to comment on your questions.”

Meanwhile, Volvo is looking into providing a renewable energy option in all locations they plan to sell plug-in vehicles.

Regular readers of this site will likely have read some of the previous articles featured on this site around the Nissan LEAF and electric cars in general. So imagine my surprise when British Gas contacted me to let me know they run Nissan LEAF models as pool cars from there offices in Windsor and Staines.

Not only that, but they claim that these cars are truly zero emissions as they are each powered by some dedicated solar panels - recharging the vehicles using just the power of the sun.

Needless to say I was keen to take a look so I packed my camera, a Surrey Police Inspector and the MilesPerLitre.com team and we headed over there for a special report.

Are these Nissan LEAF pool cars truly zero emissions from usage? Or is British Gas trying to sell us a load of hot air? Take a look at the full article over on the MilesPerLitre.com site.

The UK is buzzing with news from the AA that drivers are using 15% less petrol than three years ago in 2008 which has led to a number of media outlets putting in their usual political spin on the numbers. The BBC even claim that  “the fall in sales has deprived the Treasury of nearly £1bn in fuel duty between January and June this year”.

Sure there is no denying that, in the first six months of 2011, retailers have sold 1.7bn less litres of petrol compared with 3 years ago. But what else has happened over that same period?

In 2008, the  AA reported that “Fuel price falls to 21- month low”. If we look at the middle of that six month period in 2008, the AA fuel price report March 2008, we’ll see that the UK average prices were 106.8 and 114.3 pence per litre respectively for petrol and diesel. Of this they claim tax of 62% (66.2p) for petrol and 58.94% (67.4p) for diesel.

Fast forward to March 2011 and we now have a UK average of 132.9p for Petrol and 139.0p for Diesel. With tax of 61% and 59.08% that equates to 81.1p per litre tax on petrol and 81.9p per litre tax on diesel. So, in the 3 year period being reported on, the tax on a litre of petrol has actually gone up 14.9 pence or 22.5%.

So they’re selling 15% less fuel, but the Government is actually taking home 7.5% more tax - helped in part by the increase in VAT. Not exactly that £1bn reduction in fuel duty you may have perceived, is it?

In reality, the last 5 years has seen the introduction of Euro 5 and other emissions legislation which has resulted in significantly more economical diesel cars. We now have family sized cars from the likes of Volvo that will do around 1000 miles on a single tank of diesel. With more than half of cars now being sold on PCP schemes, that result in a new car every 3-5 years, in this 3 year period a large proportion new cars buyers will have switched from an older Euro 4 car to a Euro 5 compliant diesel with economy improvements of up to 50%.

This would have resulted in significantly reduced diesel sales but the migration of petrol drivers to DERV has pretty much matched the economy improvements in this area, with a 0.5% drop in diesel sales since 2008. The overall loser is petrol. No surprise as supply and demand is clearly displayed in the pump price which has risen much less than diesel in recent times.

But don’t be fooled into thinking that the Government didn’t see this one coming and, with diesel taxes up 21% in the same period, they’re clearly raking it in.

Dear HSBC,

I have been a customer of HSBC since 1991, when I was 16 years of age.

Since then I have been able to manage my account a number of ways. I could use my Debit card at an ATM to check my balance, transfer funds or even print off recent transactions.

I could use telephone banking to check my balance at my convenience from any telephone, 24 hours a day. I could even speak to a friendly human being, until you moved the call centre to India and things started to go downhill.

That's OK, I still had the friendly people in my local Addlestone branch. I could drop in there and talk to them with any queries and pay-in cheques as required. But then you turned it into a lobby style branch, pretty much removing all the people unless I pressed a buzzer to get one out of the back office. They were quite helpful for showing me how to use the machine, which couldn't handle my enquiry, or directing me to the internal courtesy phone that would connect me free of charge to your call centre...in India.

Thankfully Internet Banking was available which has allowed me, for many years, to access my accounts on-line. I can check balances, transfer money, make payments etc. as required. I just need to sign-in with my user ID, date of birth and random characters from my password. It works well and has done for years.

Presumably people started going into my local branch less and less, as you closed it - along with my nearest cash machine. Quite ironic that a company with the strapline "the world's local bank" would go ahead and no longer be local thousands of customers. To pay-in cheques, which lets face it will be in Birthday cards from Grandparents for years to come, I now have to drive many miles to find a branch that's open on a Saturday morning as I can't get to the nearest branch during its limited opening hours. Thankfully most people transfer money electronically these days so I've put up with this minor inconvenience for quite a while. The irony that a relative's gift to my son is actually a trip to the bank with his mum to pay in the cheque. She can no longer walk to the branch with her buggy. Instead, she has to load the children and buggy in the car, drive to an open branch, pay to park and then line up to pay in the cheque.

This wasn't really very practical, so we opened an account for our son at the local Nationwide. We became familiar with that branch as it is now our closest cash machine, since you closed ours. They provide us with a service so they get our custom. That's how it works. HSBC may be the world's local bank, but ours is a small branch of Nationwide. They also got our Mortgage business when we moved house because not only were their flexible mortgage deals great value, they were also...you know...open.
Continue Reading "Dear HSBC" »

Examining the total cost of ownership of a vehicle can be hard. When you add in the fact that this car has two different energy sources, it gets very difficult. So instead of trying to estimate the true running costs, based on unknown servicing prices and unpredictable residual values, I'll simply look at running costs and related emissions.

The easiest car to compare the Plug-in Prius to is its own hybrid predecessor. They are, after all, the same car - the plug-in variant just has a bigger battery pack that uses Lithium instead of NiMH in the older Prius. It also requires an on-board charger and a few software tweaks.

We know from our measurements that the Prius Plug-in Hybrid uses around 3.3kWh of electricity for a full charge. For technical reasons, related to battery management, it's rumoured that this model actually carries around 5kWh of Li-ion battery cells on board. This, using our ballpark figure of £500 per kWh of battery modules, equates to a wholesale battery pack cost of around £2500. This pack also replaces the smaller NiMh battery pack in the normal hybrid Prius - so we're saving on that cost too. It's probably fair to say that the cost saving of removing the NiMh battery pack probably covers the cost of the new charging unit in the plug-in model, so the only real additional cost in this car is the £2500 Li-ion pack. No surprise then, that Toyota claim the Plug-in Prius will go on sale in the UK for under £26k (after subsidy) - about £2000 more than the current Prius T-Spirit model.

So what extra do you get for your money? Well, you should get lower running costs. If you frequently do short journeys, the 13 miles of plug-in range will put a significant dent in your fuel bill. Compared to the 60mpg you will likely get in the standard Prius, Toyota are claiming a combined fuel consumption of 108.6mpg in this prototype model. As with the Ampera, this is based on a highly unrealistic testing cycle and your results will vary considerably. Counting miles that don't actually come from the gallons is a bit misleading and pointless. I could pull the car with husky dogs and that would also increase my mpg, it's all nonsense.

In real terms, the hybrid Prius will use around a litre of fuel when travelling 13 miles. Instead of burning that litre of fuel, at a current cost of around £1.35, the plug-in hybrid Prius allows you to use electricity instead; at a rather cheaper cost of 35 pence. You then need to charge for a couple of hours, after which you can save another litre of petrol and another pound in cash. Every time you charge, you save a quid. If you can only charge at home, you may only save a quid a day. If you're fortunate enough to be able to charge at work, you may save another quid - or more if you don't pay the electricity at that end either. If the saving really is only a quid, in the pouring rain you really aren't going to go rooting around in the boot looking for your charging cable and plugging in. If you're in your suit for work, you'd likely rather spend the extra quid under a canopy at the petrol pump next time you fill up.

So, over the course of the year, you may manage say 400 charges - a saving of £400. Over the 3-5 years you might own this car, this equates to £1200-2000. How much are you paying for this privilege? About £2000. Like a lot of current plug-in car maths,you may not see a clear benefit.

Why would I want to pay an extra £2k for the privilege of messing around with a charging cable in bad weather if the overall saving was only £2000? That's no benefit and we've not even considered the ever increasing cost of domestic fuel, which is rising faster than petrol prices.

Of course, you may be interested in this car as you are an environmentalist - so let's look at the CO2 footprint.
Continue Reading "Prius Plug-in Hybrid Part Six - Running Costs & Emissions" »

I often get asked, after my frequent ranting, whether any 3rd party company ever satisfies me? I clearly have higher standards than many, or perhaps just too much time to complain about the issues we all suffer from. Either way, I do seem to spend a lot of my time on twitter, Facebook and my blog moaning that somebody has let me down. Some companies think I am impossible to satisfy. But are there any exceptions? Absolutely.

This blog is dedicated to those companies who go that extra mile. They don't just simply do what you expect, which is increasingly rare these days, they do that little bit more and make you want to keep going back again and again.

Ocado

We'll start with Ocado - the home grocery delivery company. Having had bad experiences with the big supermarkets in the past, we tried these guys and never went back. Easy ordering process, "unlimited"  consistently on-time delivery for a fixed price and a no-quibble returns policy.

In the unlikely event something comes that you aren't happy with, you just drop them an email and it's refunded. No driving back to Tesco with a mouldy lettuce to queue up at Customer Services for 20 minutes behind a load of people buying lottery tickets. One quick email, it's refunded back to your card.

If something is unexpectedly out of stock, and their stock control is that good this doesn't happen anything like as often as it does with "normal" supermarkets, they send you a message in advance of the delivery to let you know. This way you can choose to reject the substitute whilst the driver is on-site for an easy refund and pop to the shops for the missing item if required.

This is the kind of service a busy family needs. I've recommended Ocado to many friends/family and all those that tried them now use them full-time.

Sonos

Back in 2004, my friend Gareth imported a load of Sonos multi-room music kit. It wasn't on-sale in the UK at that point, but he couldn't wait. After ten minutes playing with the system, I could easily see why. I bought the spare kit he had there and then and pre-ordered some extra units from the first and now largest, UK supplier, Simply Sonos.

For those that are unfamiliar with Sonos, my fellow blogger Volker Weber does an excellent write-up of the latest kit here. He also made his own testament to Sonos customer service back in 2010.

To think of Sonos as a big iPod for your whole home doesn't really capture it. This is a stand-alone music system that integrates with almost every on-line music service you may have heard of. You want to play Spotify in your kitchen? You got it. Napster in your bedroom? It's yours. BBC 6 music whilst you work in the home office? Just press play.

Some other systems attempt to offer this kind of functionality but with Sonos, it just works. As it's not running on a PC and doesn't depend on any server software, you can reboot your PC and the music doesn't stop playing. You can listen to different music in different rooms or the same in each room for a party. Every room can have a different volume level, but all controlled from a single remote. The original Sonos CR100 controller is even "splash-proof" which I took to the extreme in a YouTube video back in 2008. I've used one in my shower for 6 years and it still works today without an issue.

Not only that, they're still updating it, most recently with a patch to support Apple OSX Lion. That's the thing about Sonos, they don't just discontinue the old kit and forget about the owners - they continue to maintain and support it. I bought the kit in 2004 but, when they added Spotify support in 2010, they added that functionality to every player and controller - even the old, long since discontinued, models - for free!

It's no wonder that, quite aptly, Sonos has now "gone platinum" and is now streaming in one million rooms.

Brabantia

I'd struggle to find a friend or family member that doesn't have a Brabantia product in their home somewhere. Whether it's a table warmer, rotary drier for laundry or a rubbish bin - that name just keeps on appearing.

There's only one warning for Brabantia and that is "beware of cheap imitations". You may see unbranded copies of their pedal bins etc. but they are a complete false economy. They may be a bit cheaper but they break easily. Not only that, they use cheap stainless steel that rusts the moment it gets wet.

With a real Brabantia product, you get exactly what you paid for - day in, day out. If you don't, just tell customer services and they replace it. I had a 50 litre touch-bin as a gift back in 2000. Five or six years later, the hinge on the lid broke so it didn't spring open any more. I could still use the bin, but it didn't really have that one-handed convenience I was used to. I dropped their customer services an email and I got a reply, within the hour, asking for my home address. A replacement lid was in the post on the same day and it arrived the next. No hassle, no messing about returning to the shop - which I couldn't, it was a gift - just a straight replacement, no questions asked.

It was the best gift I ever had. The gift of another vendor that meets my demands. My house is now full of Brabantia kit and it's my first choice when buying any kind of houseware. None of this waiting 5 days for a reply to an email nonsense, just proper customer service right there and then.