Alliance Wins Legal Challenge: Car Billboard Ads to Show Climate Impact

Car adverts on billboards and in magazines will now be emblazoned with the car’s climate impacts, after the Government yesterday agreed to change its advertising guidelines in response to the threat of legal proceedings by the Alliance Against Urban 4x4s.

The fuel consumption and CO2 emissions of vehicle will now have to be prominently displayed, arming consumers with the information they need to choose a greener vehicle – and one that needs to be filled up with fuel less often.

The Department for Transport admitted that it had been wrongly interpreting an EU Directive on car advertising, which says that fuel economy and carbon dioxide emissions information must be prominently provided in all promotional literature. The Government has until now exempted ‘primarily graphical’ adverts from the law with the effect that most billboard adverts did not include information about the car’s carbon dioxide emissions.

The announcement came in response to a legal letter to the Department for Transport from Friends of the Earth’s Rights & Justice Centre acting for the Alliance Against Urban 4x4s. We wrote to the DfT in March to point out that the UK wasn’t abiding with EU law and warned the Government that they would issue Judicial Review proceedings if the guidance was not changed.

From now on, it won’t be enough to woo consumers with a sleek and sexy image of a car in billboard ads – car advertisers will need to give real and readable facts about the car’s fuel economy and environmental impact. With rising fuel costs and a growing awareness about climate change, this information is crucially important for people to make greener and cheaper choices of vehicle.

In order to cut emissions from cars, we need both strong regulation on advertising and also strong regulation that forces car manufacturers to make more efficient cars. Today’s change in the advertising rules will help encourage car-makers to build more efficient vehicles, something they have so far been very slow to do.

Phil Michaels, Head of Legal at Friends of the Earth said:
“Until now allowed the UK was getting away with flouting EU legislation on car advertising – but our legal action has closed the loophole.

“Consumers have a right to meaningful information about how much carbon dioxide a car emits and how much fuel it guzzles, so they can choose to buy a car that will be greener and cheaper to run. We will be watching carefully to make sure that the law is now properly enforced.”

See the cars and CO2 campaign website here: http://www.advertiseCO2.co.uk

Manufacturers' Claims on CO2 Emissions Inaccurate

We came across two interesting articles in the national press. Lewis Smith argues in The Times that the emissions data that consumers rely on to make more environmentally sound choices is usually completely inaccurate. Car companies are accused of jumping on the “eco” bandwagon to make their brand seem greener, even though the figures don’t back them up.

The article refers to independent testing by Auto Express magazine. When they tested the CO2 emissions for some 'relatively green' cars, such as the Polo Blue Motion, they found a discrepancy between figures supplied by the car makers and theirs done in real world conditions.

We feel that the article doesn’t mention the comparative point – if a Honda Civic is “advertised” to put out 109g/km of CO2 and “actually” puts out 171, then where does that leave our friend the Porsche Cayenne? Using the same maths, its claimed output of 358g/km becomes a sky-high 562. Just because so-called “green” cars are getting a bad press doesn’t suddenly make hugely inefficient gas guzzling cars less of a problem. In fact, we should all be worried.

The article reinforces the fact that most emissions and efficiency data is calculated by the manufacturers themselves, usually in completely abnormal conditions, so is both biased and effectively useless. What’s needed is a truly independent method of testing new cars, as trustworthy from the consumer’s point of view as the Euro NCAP safety ratings.

Labeling of CO2 emissions also comes into Peter Popham’s article in The Independent. He notes that the Europe-wide breaches of the 1999 EU Directive on car advertising have resulted in the EU preparing to introduce tougher new rules regarding the display of emissions data. He even suggests that cars will soon go the way of cigarettes and alcohol, and making them look “desirable” may be frowned upon.

This is an area the Alliance has been pushing on recently, through the AdvertiseCO2 website, and it looks like we can expect more details about what happens next at the start of June.

new Video: Do You Really Need a 4x4?

Jeep is Misleading Buyers with Green 4x4 Adverts

Greenwash Alert: Jeep (Chrysler UK) is actively misleading consumers with their new advertisements for their 'green 4x4 range of the year'.

The new ads claims that the jeeps pictured are from the 'green' 4x4 range of the year. However, if you scrutinize the small text at the bottom, nowhere is the claim substantiated. Hmm... There is a tiny golden logo with a 'shimmer' on it, which is not easily legible by people with normal eyesite - on very close inspection it says 'Green 4x4 Award Gold Award'. Further research by the Alliance revealed that the 'award' was given by 4x4 and MPV driver magazine - a magazine in the business of promoting 4x4s!

While the ad claims that the four jeeps pictured are from the 'Green 4x4 range of the year', the award was only given to the Patriot model.

Let's get an unbiased look at the Jeep claims from the government's perspective. Looking in the Act on CO2 website by the DfT, which is updated by the car industry, the Jeep Patriot does not appear as the most efficient model. Go on, you can try it yourself. Look under small 4x4, manual gearbox and diesel engine.

Anyways, according to our friend John over at Honda, 'The emissions of the CR-V diesel are 173 g/km compared to the 177g/km of the 'cleanest' Jeep 4x4.'

Finally, the ad states that the jeeps emit from 170g of CO2 per km to 381g of CO2 per kilometer - the latter figure is well into band G (and the top of the worst band at that) of emissions. And, if you figure that any diesel vehicle pumps out tons of NOx and other air pollutants at a level 3-15x that of a normal petrol engine, then you can bet these aren't GREEN vehicles at all.

This is clearly misleading advertising, and using green, unsubstantiated claims. If you see the ad yourself, why not lodge a complaint to the ASA your self? It's easy and it's fun.