State of the economy
As a long-term campervan and motorhome enthusiast, I enjoy reading your publications, travel guides and tests. However, I want to highlight two aspects of your vehicle tests I think are missing and deserving of more mention, particularly as we are currently in a climate crisis.
The first is a lack of information about emissions and fuel economy. Whilst your tests give a comprehensive list of other features, these two key areas don’t seem to get a mention and should be a key consideration when choosing.
The second area is for more coverage of the environmental efforts being made by manufacturers in the design and production of vehicles.
Conrad Jones
ED We always try to ensure the motorhome tests are as relevant and informative as possible. I agree that the environmental impact and exhaust emissions should be considered when choosing a new motorhome. We have asked previously if such data on emissions were wanted in road test reports and they were not but, if readers feel differently now, we can look to introduce emissions data in road tests. These will be sourced from manufacturers.
In terms of fuel economy, we do mention in the text when we have a valuable mpg figure but, as we often have test vehicles for a relatively short period of time and they are usually brand-new with almost zero miles on the clock, the figures we could print may be misleading, especially as a lot of test driving is at lowspeed, which is not the best for fuel economy.
Our test routes vary, depending on where and when we get the motorhomes, which means we do not have a set route for every vehicle and thus are unable to reliably do economy comparisons.
With so many motorhomes based on just a handful of chassis – Ford Transit, Fiat Ducato, Mercedes Sprinter, Peugeot Boxer – the economy results would not differ greatly and buyers are unlikely to be swayed by such results.
As for the environmental impact of motorhomes in use, it is important to compare a motorhome holiday with alternative holidays.
Fiat – the largest manufacturer of base vehicles – also published excellent research that showed just how much more environmentally friendly motorhome and campervan holidays are compared to foreign package holidays using airlines.
You can do your own calculations using an online carbon footprint calculator, which suggests that a year’s use of a motorhome (doing 5,000 miles) has a considerably lower CO2 figure than a person flying return from London to Miami once.
When we are advised of manufacturers making any environmental advances, we will always report these in the news section.
Things are changing more rapidly now – Knaus is one of several European manufacturers looking at the viability of introducing a full-sized electric motorhome.
Of course, another green aspect of motorhomes is that they usually have a long life – many still being on the road 30 years after they were built, which is an environmental benefit despite the emissions.