Ford Focus 1.6 TDCi 115 Zetec

Brighton & Hove City council want to introduce 20mph speed limits on residential roads, to protect cyclists & other vulnerable road users, & to reduce emissions.   Clearly they don't understand that lower speed means driving in a lower gear, which increases fuel consumption & exhaust emissions.  

I'm all for protecting other road users, but the other road users must play their part too. Kamikaze cyclists & pedestrians that don't look where they are going have some responsibility for their own safety too!

What do we really expect - honesty? Look at almost any advert for say, shampoo and soap powder, do they do everything they say they will? Look at adverts for acne, and other skin care products and ask yourself why they show models with flawless skin and wonderfully shiny hair. We are duped all the time with advertising, and this includes loaded figures by manufacturers, and of course politicians fiddle the figures too did you know?

This world, and by that I really do mean this world, is largely an illusion we have all bought into, and what is the greatest medium for our brainwashing - TV and advertising.

My message is: stop believing and question everything however small, you will be suprised how much c**p you will rid yourself , or relieve yourself of.

I drive a diesel citron Picasso 2.0 HDI, 02 reg and have found you can get near the "offical figures" but you have to drive with a feather foot and anticipate things such as braking, overtaking etc well in advance and coast down inclines. put the right foot down and all figures fly out of the window. I set the computor to give constant mpg readout to assist and it does focus the driving style some what.

Real world? you find yourself being swamped by other drivers!

Forgot to add that anything over about 65 mph the figures tumble. Still better than the brother in laws 23 mpg diesel range rover! (for his sake I hope my sis don't read this )

It is a fact that if you buy more the price can come down.

If everyone buys cars that can do 70mpg then fuel will end up twice the price it was when cars did 35mpg. The manufacturers have to make so much money to keep production running and to provide a return on their borrowing to their investors.

It has happened with gas, electricity etc.

By the same token people on a fixed budget end up getting less for the same outlay.

ie. an old lady who paid £400 per year to heat her house finds that she can only have the heating on for half the length of time now because she still has only £400 per year to spend on heating.

In future she may only be able to have the heating on for a quarter of the time.

I thought it had been well known for many years that the published figures are as a comarison between cars, not an indication of what you'll achieve on the road.

Any test figures obtained will be useless to anyone unless they are all obtained under the exact same comditions, i.e on a rolling road under controlled conditions.

As soon as you get other factors involved such as traffic, hills, wind, rain etc they become usless for comparison between vehicles.

Official Government statistics. No doubt miliband will blame the tories and call for an inquiry.

Every car is different and testing on a smooth traffic free, bump free track in ideal weather conditions will always give better results compared to a real road usage scenario.