Insight UK Emissions Rating / London Congestion Charge

[blackjackdavey]

I've just received the registration document for my recently acquired 2000 Insight manual and I noticed that the official emission rating is given as 127; I was under the impression that the Insight had an 80 rating. As it is, I'm now officially above the 120 figure that would exempt me from the London congestion charge which again is a surprise. Does this figure rise with the vehicle's age/mileage? Should I appeal? I know that the DVLA - the Driver Vehicle Licensing Agency - makes mistakes (For the last six years they have INSISTED that my Indigo Blue Seat Alhamra is red!).

This comes on top of the £60/$120 Congestion Charge fine that I picked up for driving into the London congestion zone on the day I collected my Insight, unaware that I should have registered for exemption. (Yes, I know I should have checked here first. . .)

Incredible, ain't it, that the smart video technology that photographs your car in the Zone and that instantly identifies the car, the owner and their home address can't also go the extra step and establish that the vehicle is exempt - which, of course, brings me back to the point of whether or not my Insight IS exempt. Apologies for such a UK-specific post. . .

[The Citrus Smoothie]

You are correct, the official CO2 rating for the Honda Insight is 80g/km. However there is bad news as far as the London Congestion Charge is concerned - previously vehicles such as hybrids were exempted by specific model type. The new rules mean that cars below 120g/km are exempt but the small print also states that they must be Euro IV emissions compliant. To my knowledge the Insight is not Euro IV compliant and therefore is not exempt from the Congestion Charge (for the record only Audi A2 TDI's built after 2004 are Euro IV compliant, as is the case with most cars in the UK).

I have sent an e-mail to VCA asking them to confirm the 80g/km and the Euro compliance of the Insight. Hopefully they will get back to me tomorrow.

For anybody across the pond still reading this, the London Congestion Charge used to cost motorists £8 / $15 to drive into central London, unless your vehicle was exempted. The rules have changed and it is now more of an environmental tax with vehicles under 120g/km CO2 entering free, it is still $15 for 'normal' cars but if your vehicle emits more than 225g/km CO2 it will now cost £25 / $50 ! Most vehicles with 2.5 litre engines or bigger tend to fall into this category... See:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/7240309.stm

&

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/7242445.stm (those less than 225g/km in this article are mostly diesel)

[blackjackdavey]

Thanks for taking the trouble, TCS - I will be very interested to know what they say. I notice that the Vehicle Certification Authority's website - <http://www.vcacarfueldata.org.uk/index.asp> - doesn't even include the Insight in its list of vehicle search options.

If your efforts draw a blank, then maybe it might be worth considering an approach to Members of Parliament - I mean, excluding a pioneering hybrid car with the tiniest carbon footprint of all seems to be complete nonsense at this time. . .

[The Citrus Smoothie]

As I feared, the VCA response is: "The CO2 emissions figure for the Insight is 80 g/km and it was only listed as being approved to Euro III standard."

This bizarrely means that the Insight will not qualify for the Congestion Charging exemption when the new rules begin (in October 2008 I think). For those concerned there are two options I can think of:

1) Try and get Insights certificated as Euro IV compliant - I would have thought that the emissions are clean enough to do this, but I do not know the procedures involved.

2) Try and persuade TfL / London Assembly (not MPs) to include the Honda Insight within the exemption list, recognising the fact that it is the world's most efficient production car.

[blackjackdavey]

Thanks again for the inside track, TCS - I feel a spot of energetic lobbying coming on. . . I'll keep you posted and update the site with any progress made.

[Dgate]

blackjackdavey wrote:

I notice that the Vehicle Certification Authority's website - <http://www.vcacarfueldata.org.uk/index.asp> - doesn't even include the Insight in its list of vehicle search options.

The reason for this is the Insight is no longer available as a new Car,only current models are listed.
Additional to this hit the 2000 Insight falls into the old method of engine size for assessing rd tax instead of emisssions which went into effect March 2001.
I hope you have better luck lobbying than I did, but if you need numbers just ask.

DGate

[jat1793]

Shockingly, the Honda Insight doesn't meet Euro IV ratings.

http://www.insightcentral.net/KB/compare/emissions.html

http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/manuals/eimanual/eim23430.htm

Compare the charts at the very bottom of both web pages. The manual ULEV Honda Insight rated at 1.3g CO/km doesn't meet the 0.5g CO/km Euro IV standard.

This is very strange, because, I always thought that the U.S.A. had higher emission standards (CO, NOx, ect.) than the Europe. (I know Europe isn't a country) So, this means that England which, I think, has looser emission ratings than the U.S. demands emission ratings even better than ULEV to exempt the congestion charge? That sounds kind of silly.

[Ed]

Hello guys, I'm sort of involved in this for work and thought I'd check back to see if you were discussing it!

As you say, the Insight is loosing it's exemption as it's only certified to Euro III, whilst vehicles have to be <120g/CO2 and at least Euro IV to get into the £0 band. As I understand it though if you get your Insight registered now you'll continue to get free entry into the congestion zone until 2009, there's a bit of overlap.

The manual Insight didn't make Euro IV mainly because of it's NOx emissions, which are higher than the standard due to the lean burn I think. The CVT would be complaint though, although it's not certified above Euro III. This, imagine, would be one of the main reasons why the Insight was discontinued in the UK - it would have been too expensive to re-enginer it to comply considering the number involved. Toyota discontinued the Celica and the MR2 for this reason.

The key consideration for these type of schemes is certification, so you have a robust method of knowing that (well maintained) vehicles will meet your criteria. Emissions standard compliance and CO2 ratings are part of the type approval process and you can't simply rock up at a testing station to have your car certified as a certain Euro standard. Whilst you could probably try and have Insights as a model approved to Euro IV it would a) be very expensive, and b) in all likelihood not pass.

The Euro standards are laxer in most regards that the US Tier II standards. Funny considering how much stick the USA's environmental performance comes in for around here. Also, remember that there's separate Euro standards for diesel and petrol vehicles, whilst the US have a single standard - one of the main reasons that diesels are rare as hen's teeth on the other side of the pond. There's a good page on emission standards here:

http://www.dieselnet.com/standards/

Completely changing the subject I can report that my Insight free life is going ok, but sometimes I look at my little model one and feel sad. I rented a Fiesta on the weekend which wasn't bad but achieved half the MPG my Insight used to and was slower to boot!

cheers

Ed

[blackjackdavey]

Thanks, Ed - well, YOU'RE a useful chap to know! I will, as a consequence, try to register for exemption during the run-out period. Perhaps you'll know this, too: how do I go about getting a Compliance Certificate? There was none with the vehicle, which is an import from Japan.

If this opens up a whole new bureaucratic can of worms however, I think I'll just shrug my shoulders, avoid Congestion Charge areas and head off to enjoy my 80-100mpg.

Life's too short etc etc.

[blackjackdavey]

Thanks too to jat1793 for the above reply. . . it's puzzling but all too likely to be correct. As a nation, we seem to specialise in Kafkaesque bureacratic tangles in which you enter thru one door, complete a series of complicated forms and then emerge from another door, none the wiser and worse off than when you started.

This is where I came in. . .