Hi there Doctor. 

Please could you enlighten me as to how the new cars under the new Euro ratings listed are considered clean, based on their carbon dioxide ratings? Here are a few examples: BMW X7 ñ 171, Volvo V60 ñ 135, Audi A6 ñ 146, VW Touareg ñ 173, Skoda Kodiaq ñ 149, Mazda CX 5 ñ 142, all in grams per kilometre. Yet my poor old 2015 1.7 diesel Kia Carens MPV, being only a Euro-5 vehicle, is now considered to be a bit dirty, although she’s only pushing out 124g/km.

Also, I have another gripe ñ we were told that the road tax on pre-2017 cars would remain the same (mine was then £110 per annum), yet it has progressively been increased by £10 a year. Having just returned to the UK after living in France for twenty years, I also cannot get used to the state of the roads here. In France, no matter what size of car you drive, there is no road tax, and fuel is also cheaper! Well, that’s all my moaning done now Doc. I hope this missive is worthy of an answer. 

Regards Tony

Hello Tony. 

Point taken. Of course, ìcleanî is really all about NO_x these days, and your old 2015 Carens has now come down to 118g/km CO₂, and is necessarily Euro-6 compliant, but I’m afraid that yours is still very dirty, as you know, purely on account of being only Euro-5 emissions compliant. It’s a great pity that you cannot get it cleaned up with an after-fit kit at a reasonable cost. 

I’m not surprised that you find British roads pretty appalling, simply because they are! I’m really quite surprised that there is not more uniformity within the EU regarding ways of taxing polluting cars, but you might have just come home at the right time, as I discovered when researching my reply to you. No, there is no annual Road Tax in France, as we know it, of course, but there are serious environmental taxes applied when you register a new car! I quote:

ìIn July, France’s government presented a new set of higher penalties for highly polluting cars. The new fees are part of France’s environmental tax system that sees French drivers/owners taxed more heavily according to how much CO₂ pollution their vehicle emits. This is a tax on a new car when it is first registered to an owner and, as of 1st January 2019, SUVs, big saloons and other large cars will be slapped with higher charges of between €50 and €10,500, depending on their polluting level. The emission threshold for cars will be lowered by 3g/km, from 120 to 117 of CO₂ released per kilometre, which means that the number of cars penalised is likely to rise from the current 16.5 per cent to 27.6 per cent in 2019, without a considerable switch over to less polluting cars by the French public.î 

As a result of this, the average registration fee, as they like to call it, will almost triple from €50 to €145, and vehicles that release 140gkm of CO₂ will see a cost of €1,050 in their next vehicle first registration fee. A new Touareg owner will pay €5,113, or around £4,500 tax on purchase, which I would think will have some sort of slowing effect in French new car sales ñ compared with the UK’s first registration charge on the same model of only £1,240! It makes one sympathise with the French, for once, He! He!

All the best Tony, and thanks for writing. Good job you came home when you did, or they might not have let you in next year, after we’ve finally left the EU! 

Best regards

Doc