YOU WANT TO STAY GREEN? THEN DON’T SCRAP YOUR LAND ROVER!

I fully agree with Ed Evans’ comments in LRM’S March edition in which he recommends not scrapping older Land Rovers. It strikes a real chord with me.

Research many years ago showed that it takes five times more energy to make a car than it uses in its entire life. Imagine the cost, for instance, of building and running the trucks that haul the bauxite and iron ore… then smelting it, machining it and so forth.

I hate the planned obsolescence. The government policy that drives electric vehicles. That we burn coal and gas at 50 per cent efficiency to recharge – with no excise duty paid.

In London you can walk down a street where people run the power lead out of the downstairs window, through the small front garden, over the pavement and kerb, and into the Audi.

I hear that the politicians in Westminster are now going to charge extra road tax on diesel engines that were built to the very standards and specifications that they themselves defined and insisted on – for example Land Rover’s TDCI 2.4 to 2.2

If everyone had electric cars, the power generators couldn’t keep up with demand and the politicians would run out of a revenue source. Can you imagine the pollution caused by manufacturing high-power batteries? Sure they may be reclaimable but I don’t think there will be many 20-year-old Prius’ about even with a power pack change.

The British government’s current policy is generating more revenue for overseas car manufacturers. We are pouring our hard-earned British pounds into an economic pool that we have decided to pull out of. About 20 per cent of all of German car production ends up driving on UK roads.

I am back in the UK after spending some time living in Australia. I had to sell my 2002 Defender, that I loved dearly. It had been up Cape York twice, out to the Bungle Bungles, all round the Northern Territory. No rust, either, despite many beach runs up to Fraser Island.

I can’t afford to buy a Defender in the UK, but I am tempted to create a retrofit hybrid. Buy an old Land Rover, pull out the engine and drop in a hybrid unit. There would be heaps of battery storage area.

Alternatively, how about saving on pollution and encouraging the restoration of the older cars to keep them longer? I’m told that it is no longer the failure of the engine or transmission that becomes the issue. People scrap their cars because the electric window mechanisms stop working, or because the doors won’t open because the handle-operated electric lock has failed, or they need to spend £250 to upgrade their GPS. Andy Bye (via email) The built-in obsolescence of new vehicles, whether due to being too complex and expensive to repair, changing fashions in styling, superseded gadgetry or the next tightening of emissions regulations, results in 60 million new cars being built each year (check worldometers.info/cars to be shocked by the ‘live’ counter).

We’re quite capable of building efficient, reliable, safe and economically repairable vehicles (such as Discovery 1 and 2) that last 40 years and, if everybody drove and kept one, I’m sure overall pollution would be drastically reduced. The downside is that thousands of new car builders would be out of a job. It’s an illogical situation.

Your idea of a hybrid electric Defender would suit most of us just fine, especially with a place like Australia to romp around. – Ed Evans.