Eco rant, there is to much hype on Eco cars

Land rovers are Eco cars!

A lot has been said about 4x4’s and how unfriendly they are to the environment and it got me thinking about Land Rovers and other 4x4’s I have owned and what Eco is all about.

Firstly a rant, there is no doubt the new 4x4’s are recyclable and do perhaps 45mpg on a run with the wind behind them and that Toyota Electric cars are the way forward? but I can’t help but thinking this is not what an Eco car is about.

There is no justification for any electric car at the moment, they are too expensive, you have to get the electricity from somewhere and most people who drive them have them as vanity toys and typically own lots of non-Eco toy’s like Apple computers which in themselves cause a lot of issues due to air mileage and effectively slave labour in foreign lands. In fact if we all want electric cars we will need to create a lot of pollution and adopt nuclear power, neither of which is really acceptable.

My 4x4's

I own and have owned a 4x4 now for a number of years, not continually but probably 14 out of my 29 years of driving. In that time I have driven nurses and doctors to work during bad weather, pulled endless BMW’s and Mercedes out of 1cm of snow (Audi are a lot better).

I have enjoyed driving my Nissan Patrol, Land Rover Discovery and Daihatsu Fourtrak off road and done all the bad things Eco people moan about 4x4’s owners like doing, for example 5 people and 3 dogs in one car. I think however in recent years since the snow in the UK of 2010 people have started changing their minds from the blind “they are all evil” to “ok they have a place” as do I.  We all surely remember this;

The UK snow in 2010

Oddly Range Rover drivers seem to have issues with snow and ice?

Range Rover in a ditch but a Discovery sails by.

I live in a rural area where most, probably 80% of the 4x4 are used for work with the other 20% being used as daily drives, with possible bad weather in mind. They are not all large 4x4’s some are just saloon 4x4’s. they are practical everyday transport.  We don't have buses and trains to get on out here, well buses maybe once an hour from Horsham to Brighton for 12 hours a day.

An Eco bit

Older diesel cars will run quite happily on vegetable oil or waste oils, grown from the soil powered by sunlight. I have put both sunflower and rapeseed oil in my car with no issues in the summer (it needs heating in the winter) and I know people who run Land Rovers on WVO (waste vegetable oil) from chip shops and restaurants.  I have even talked to one guy who even filters his used engine oil and puts it into his tank!  Older diesels can recycle and use fuels moder cars cannot.

Land Rover believes over 75% of all defenders ever made are still in service. From an Eco point of view this is a massive point to take on board.  Most of the world’s natural resources are used making a car not running them. A good condition 300TDI will get you 30mpg+ in a Discovery 1, even on chip fat and will last you 20-30 years, I be amazed if a Prius will last this long without several battery changes (the batteries are not eco friendly at all).

The economy of the older cars is not as good as a modern car I give you that :-( but what about an electric car. Let’s look at the Nissan Leaf, this was part of an interesting article I read recently;

“In order to deliver 30 kWh to your house to fully charge the Leaf’s 24 kWh battery bank, for example—incorporating the charge efficiency this time, the source of electricity becomes a highly relevant factor. Two-thirds of our electricity comes from fossil fuel plants, typically converting 35% of the fossil fuel thermal energy into electricity. Only 90% of this makes it through the transmission system, on average. If your electricity comes from a fossil fuel plant, the 30 kWh delivered to your house took about 95 kWh of fossil fuel energy. The 73 miles the Leaf travels on a full charge now puts it at an energy efficiency of 130 kWh/100-mi. The MPG equivalent number is 28 MPG. From a carbon-dioxide standpoint, you’d be better off burning the fossil fuel directly in your car”

Interesting eh!

Also electric cars use a lot of rare metals in the batteries and these really are in short supply. Newer vehicles, yes they are nicer, I have one, and yes they can be recycled netter than older cats, but a car kept on the road for 20-30 years running on VO or WVO has not been recycles and is good for the environment.

Then there is cost, if I had to choose a new car costing me £300 a month or Larry who does 20-33mpg depending on what I’m doing with him I’d take Larry anytime. Mainly because if I had to have one car I’d have a practical large 4x4, however at the moment I’m lucky to have a choice but it is a choice I don't need more than one car.


As for an electric car nope not until they are sub £12k and from an Eco point of view they are definitely not better than a Land Rover.  The electric car answer is the Hydrogen fuel cell car, but we are a long way away from that.