Charging your battery with 'on street parking'?

[Iron Giant]

This is true. In winter they are worse because they run rich trying to heat a catalytic convertor up to become effective. But it just doesn't happen sitting idling in the cold in traffic.

And yes, economically the Government is loving the public buying more petrol vehicles as they are earning more tax on the fuel these guys are now forking out for.

In my Citroen days we had the 2.0hdi diesel Xsara Picasso. In winter it took ages to get the engine up the normal running temperature. Then Citroen changed the software to over fuel the engine to heat it up quickly. It worked but I noticed an immediate increase in fuel consumption. I complained and they re-programmed my Picasso back to the previous software version. Anybody who complained about poor fuel consumption had their vehicle's software program reverted. Funny how no one complained that the engine now took ages to get hot.

One of my mates has a 2004 mini and in five minutes even on a cold morning the heat his kicks out is like furnace, so assume his is similar also my wife's car does give off quite a smell from the exhaust some mornings, but her car is just starting to kick out a reasonable heat from the blowers after running for almost 10 minutes sitting idle. 

They also said the rise of suv's is also another big contributor to pollution, just around were I work and live there is a lot more land rover's and trucks than just a few years ago.

 

[spruce]

One of my mates has a 2004 mini and in five minutes even on a cold morning the heat his kicks out is like furnace, so assume his is similar also my wife's car does give off quite a smell from the exhaust some mornings, but her car is just starting to kick out a reasonable heat from the blowers after running for almost 10 minutes sitting idle. 

They also said the rise of suv's is also another big contributor to pollution, just around were I work and live there is a lot more land rover's and trucks than just a few years ago.

Yep. The councils used to grit some of the main routes in our estates at one time. Now they don't. We have a number of customers who now have 4 wheel drives to get in and out of the estates. We have a lot of roads on hills in this neck of the woods.

You would have thought that paying between £260 and £590 a year road fund licence for a Freelander/Range Rover would have reduced the numbers on the road but apparently not.

 

[Iron Giant]

Yep. The councils used to grit some of the main routes in our estates at one time. Now they don't. We have a number of customers who now have 4 wheel drives to get in and out of the estates. We have a lot of roads on hills in this neck of the woods.

You would have thought that paying between £260 and £590 a year road fund licence for a Freelander/Range Rover would have reduced the numbers on the road but apparently not.

As you may remember the place I live has Hill in it's name so no matter which direction you travel in you have to go up or down a hill, the negative to a point aside from the pollution is that people buy these motors but have no clue how to drive them or full understand what they are or aren't capable off, also I do think they are more of a status vehicle 

As some think they are almost invincible yet end up off the road, when my wife and I took an off road driving course, the owner of the business and our instructor apologised for been a little late out of the house, he had taken a phone call from his employee who was helping some one out, who had, had his Toyota Hilux in 4wd on a icy back road, now the centre diff locks up on these so when travelling at up to 30mph unless you take out of 4wd you can't turn the wheel enough to go round a bend so he ended up driving up a high stone wall with his front end pointing skywards