Green 11,000 VED rebate set to be limited to traps
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• by Charles Young The honeymoon period of discounted road tax rates for trucks with standard engines could soon be over.
The Government is expected to restrict its £1,000 VED reduction for low-pollution trucks to vehicles fitted with particulate traps.
Some operators running new tractors at 38 tonnes on six axles are paying just £280 a year in VED because their engines qualify for the £1,000 rebate without modification.
Originally it was thought that only engines with particulate traps would qualify, because the Euro-4 emissions standards were too tough to be met any other way.
But when the Government set the permitted particulates levels a number of UK manufacturers were able to produce trucks that qualified without recourse to traps.
The discrepancy crept in because at the time the European Commission had yet to decide on the Euro-4 particulate limit, which engines will have to meet by 2005.
This upset a number of operators including Tesco which had bought expensive particulate traps, only to see operators with standard engines receiving the same £1,000-per-truck rebate.
Now the Department of Transport's Zina Etheridge says the scheme is under review and particulate traps are on the agenda.
Geoff Day of the Freight Transport Association believes the Government will want to align itself with the rest of Europe: "I would have thought they will amend the legislation to meet Euro-4 in the Budget,' he says. ''Make the most of it now because it won't last. The Government never intended that an existing standard production engine would qualify— its purely because of the initiative of the manufacturers that they've achieved it.''
However, Clive Burnet technical manager at Scaniawhich was the first manufacturer to produce a Euro-2 reduced-pollution engine—
says far fewer operators will qualify if the standard is made stricter because of the low incentive to fit a particulate trap.
'The payback is three to five years and that's if the trap lasts that long,'' he warns. "Even then you will only break even. Another danger is that if anyone puts ordinary diesel in, the trap Will be ruined.''