You are reading a single comment by @Seak and its replies.
Click here to read the full conversation.
London Fixed Gear and Single-Speed is a community of predominantly fixed gear and single-speed cyclists in and around London, UK.
This site is supported almost exclusively by donations. Please consider donating a small amount regularly.
@Seak
At the risk of opening a can of worms, I'm one of the people working on this for GP (both the film challenge and the VW campaign). We're going after VW precisely because of the disconnect between what they say and what they do.
Sure, they've developed BlueMotion, but it's only on 6% of the cars they sell. "But that's just consumer demand, right?" Thankfully not: we've been analysing the mark ups, and VW charge about 1,000 euros above the production costs for the full BlueMotion setup. In other words, they're deliberately keeping cleaner vehicles out of the reach of people.
Secondly, they dominate the car industry's EU lobbying group. This lobbying group - called ACEA - is desperately trying to unpick some pretty crappy 2020 CO2 limits for new cars. They're also trying to stop proposals that the EU should cut its CO2 emissions by 30% (from 1990 levels) by 2020.
I think people expect us to go after the worst companies - the Essos of this world. But one thing we've learned over the years is that the absolutely worst companies rarely change. The ones that move are those with the most to lose. VW, which markets itself as green but spends its profits lobbying against laws to cut CO2 emissions, has an awful lot to lose.