Emissions - car tax

[Colin J.S]

For a 2007 petrol Aygo the road tax is £20 and the emissions are 109g/km

For a 2013 petrol Aygo the road tax is £0 and emissions are 99g/km

We all know its exactly same engine so what did they change to lower the emissions please?

[Stopeter44]

Any number of things, the most obvious being gear ratios. If they run the engine at lower revs for the testing protocol, then that would change the result. 

Who can forget the scandal surrounding VW, they weren't the only ones, and the emissions during tests compared with emissions in the real world.

[flash22]

There are some major changes - early cars are euro 4, 2010/11 onwards are euro 5, The Mk2 is euro 6 - one of the major changes was relocating the egr valve pick up from pre cat (use to cause EGR issues) to post cat

[FROSTYBALLS]

There were two changes to the engine:

2008 - Optimal Drive changes including a new fuel cut off system and adoption of 0W-20 oil reduced the emissions to 106g/km.

2012 - a revised combustion chamber design and raised compression ratio increased efficiency, and reduced emissions to 99g/km

[Colin J.S]

25 minutes ago, flash22 said:

There are some major changes - early cars are euro 4, 2010/11 onwards are euro 5, The Mk2 is euro 6 - one of the major changes was relocating the egr valve pick up from pre cat (use to cause EGR issues) to post cat

Thank you, I was curious as to whether one could make the changes and get free tax 🙂

 

[Colin J.S]

20 minutes ago, FROSTYBALLS said:

There were two changes to the engine:

2008 - Optimal Drive changes including a new fuel cut off system and adoption of 0W-20 oil reduced the emissions to 106g/km.

2012 - a revised combustion chamber design and raised compression ratio increased efficiency, and reduced emissions to 99g/km

Thank you, I was very curious about this and whether I could make any changes but obviously not ....cheers for the reply

[Guest]

30 minutes ago, flash22 said:

There are some major changes - early cars are euro 4, 2010/11 onwards are euro 5, The Mk2 is euro 6 - one of the major changes was relocating the egr valve pick up from pre cat (use to cause EGR issues) to post cat

And the last years of the Mk2 were EU6.2 - with dual VVT (inlet & exhaust), 2 injectors per cylinder and heated EGR.

[FROSTYBALLS]

32 minutes ago, Colin J.S said:

I was very curious about this and whether I could make any changes but obviously not ....cheers for the reply

Think the emissions are taken from the Type Approval or the WLTP tests, so if a person makes changes to lower emissions on their car, it wouldn't alter the level of vehicle tax payable for that car.

[Cyker]

There is a process you can go through - It's how they get all these old EV-converted cars registered as zero-emission, but I'm under the impression it's expensive for a one-off and a bit of a PITA.

I think there is one for vehicles classed as 'prototypes' which I think is what things like the Worlds Fastest Sofa and Shed are registered under...?

 

[TonyHSD]

The biggest improvement was in the ecu, new cheating software like Vw 🤣👌

 

just joking 🙃😂

[Dave the aygo]

Mines not free or £20 I think its £180 for a 21 plate 

[Cyker]

Yeah they changed it after 2017 to be a flat-rate tax for all cars, so you get weird things like my mate's subaru is the same to tax as my Yaris, and my Yaris is now the most expensive car to tax I have owned and is five times more expensive than my previous 3 Yarisusesisas  

[Parts-King]

Mrs Kingo had a lovely 04 plate 1.6 Corolla, it drove like a Swiss watch, but the tax was £255 if I remember correctly

She now has a zero tax Aygo, I'm a much happier man these days 😀 The insurance is also £134 for a year fully comp for both of us to drive, one of the benefits of being an old git 🙄

[Puglet]

Good question, knew they tweaked the emissions on the first gen cars in stages to get to the magic 99g/km, we have a 2008 107 which is 109g/km, but my sister's toyota engined 2014 108 is 95g/km so they tweaked it again for new 2nd gen cars.

Our 107's £20 a year tax cheapest car we had to tax by along way, until the 108 came along which is zero, which my sister delights in telling me each year!   

 

 

[Hornet3D]

We had to tax the Aygo in February when we purchased it and it cost us £155 but then it was better than the £285 we paid months earlier for the Honda CRV we traded in.

[Guest]

Before I retired in 2016 I had an Audi RS4 which cost over £500 in Road Tax as well as my Mk1 which cost £20 so it was a pleasant surprise when the Skoda Octavia 1.4 replacement for the Audi only cost £30 Road Tax.

Then it came as quite a shock when replacing the Mk1 with a Mk2 changed the Road Tax from £20 to £155.

I guess too many people were buying low emissions vehicles and the Treasury was losing too much income, hence the new flat rate (except for actual zero emission vehicles)?

[Cyker]

Just another example they don't know what they're doing - They nag at us to switch to 'cleaner' cars (Even tho' arguably getting a new car is far worse for the environment), but then remove the incentives to do so.

The funniest thing was that, initially, they didn't think to have an exemption for EVs for the £40k 'premium tax', so almost all EVs attracted £340 tax  

Personally I think they should have stuck with the old system - Engines below a certain size are one tax rate and engines over a certain size are another tax rate.

We now have 3 different taxing systems for cars (Engine size, CO2 and flat-rate except EVs), and you can bet your donkey that when EVs become the majority they will create a *4th* tax system to get back that previous tax revenue.

(One of the potential ones was for cars built after 2030 it will be a flat £1000-2000 a year to make up for lost fuel duty when new cars can only be EVs! That's if the per-mile charging doesn't become a thing, but that can be spoofed very easily... and they're already losing loads of tax revenue since they abolished the tax disc but still they don't learn!)

 

[Stopeter44]

3 minutes ago, Cyker said:

We now have 3 different taxing systems for cars (Engine size, CO2 and flat-rate except EVs), and you can bet your donkey that when EVs become the majority they will create a *4th* tax system to get back that previous tax revenue.

Maybe that should just put tolls on Motorways, and eliminate the excise tax ?

[TonyHSD]

27 minutes ago, Stopeter44 said:

Maybe that should just put tolls on Motorways, and eliminate the excise tax ?

They better don’t, imagine me doing 50k miles per year what I will have to pay!? I will just leave the job immediately. I have my scooter ready and plenty of local opportunities for me , not paying anything to the scumbags. 😂🚫💸

[Cyker]

41 minutes ago, Stopeter44 said:

Maybe that should just put tolls on Motorways, and eliminate the excise tax ?

Nononono, I don't want the UK to become like Japan where you need a *dedicated slot* in the car for the toll payments because *every* *smegging* *road* is a toll road!!!  

 

[Stopeter44]

7 minutes ago, TonyHSD said:

They better don’t, imagine me doing 50k miles per year what I will have to pay!? I will just leave the job immediately. I have my scooter ready and plenty of local opportunities for me , not paying anything to the scumbags. 😂🚫💸

Well, I thought I'd get a reaction ! You know many countries have toll roads, but no vehicle excise tax.

[flash22]

18 hours ago, Cyker said:

I think there is one for vehicles classed as 'prototypes' which I think is what things like the Worlds Fastest Sofa and Shed are registered under...?

 

The sofa, shed, outspan orange and shopping trolley are Q plated - unknown origin or original year of construction, you have to use a certain percentage of the original car plus its frame/chassis for it to carry its original VRM

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTnK3UFznEB5bd4vDEFMM4A

 

 

[Hornet3D]

1 hour ago, Stopeter44 said:

Maybe that should just put tolls on Motorways, and eliminate the excise tax ?

Never liked that idea because you can bet they will still have some certification to prove that the vehicle is taxed and MOTed at least once in the year for which there will be a small charge.  A few years down the road that charge will have increased to something close the excise tax so you will still be paying the tax and also the tolls.

[Devon Aygo]

On 4/5/2022 at 2:18 PM, Colin J.S said:

For a 2007 petrol Aygo the road tax is £20 and the emissions are 109g/km

For a 2013 petrol Aygo the road tax is £0 and emissions are 99g/km

We all know its exactly same engine so what did they change to lower the emissions please?

Whilst all the Aygo ( Excl D4D ) use a 1KRFE engine it is fair to say they are not exactly the same:

MK1 2005>

12/2008 build >

• New damped crank shaft pulley to reduce engine vibration
• Adopted 0w20 engine oil 
• Added a clutch pedal switch to allow a fuel cut function when depressing clutch

10/2009 >

• New engine software to comply with Euro 5
• New three way catalytic converter
• New fuel tank design
• Lower friction engine internals such as pistons, timing chain

02/2012 >

• New compression ratio for euro 5b
• New engine software for euro 5b
• new piston shape
• Iridium tipped spark plug

MK2

05/2014 >

• Standardisation of electronic throttle allowing emission improvement

05/2015>

• New Engine control software for Euro 6
• New offset crankshaft
• Low friction resin coating to pistons
• Low tension piston rings
• Altered VVTi operation
• New 6 hole injectors

05/2018>

• Sequential multi port injection system
• Dual VVTi adopted
• Electronic spark advance
• Improved engine phase control
• New integrated engine cover / air intake design
• New piston design
• New cylinder head design/materials, The spark plug has been located in the centre of the combustion chamber in order to achieve high engine's anti-knocking performance. The angle of the intake and exhaust valves is narrowed and set at 33.5° to realize a compact cylinder head. A taper squish combustion chamber is used to achieve high anti-knocking performance and intake efficiency. The exhaust port for each cylinder is merged inside the cylinder head sub-assembly to accelerate warm-up of the TWC, thus improving the fuel economy. In addition, at high engine speeds, with the effective cooling of the exhaust gases, the operation range for maintaining stoichiometric air-fuel mixture ratio is widened, thus reducing rich air-fuel mixtures and also improving fuel economy. By enlarging the merged port diameter of the exhaust port, exhaust gas back-pressure has been reduced, providing greater torque. The cylinder head bolt employs plastic region tightening bolts. The routing of the water jacket in the cylinder head sub-assembly is optimized to achieve high cooling performance.
• Altered low tension piston rings including altered #1 ring thickness & diamond like carbon coating adopted, chromed #2 for improved wear, 
• New head gasket design/material
• New Cylinder block design/materials

05/2019>

• Adoption of 0w16 oil
• New engine ecu software for euro 6d 

 

[Cyker]

Wow, that's quite the comprehensive changelog! Cheers!