Car ads may be forced to carry tobacco-style health warnings

The European Commission is moving to impose tobacco-style health warnings on all car advertisements.

At a top-level meeting in Brussels today, green activists, car makers and advertisers will be consulted on whether 20pc of the space in every ad, from magazines to posters and television clips, should be devoted to information about CO2 emissions and fuel consumption. The campaign for car health warnings is being led by British MEP Chris Davies.

Mr Davies, whose proposals were approved by the European Parliament last October but need the Commission's support to become law, also suggested devoting a fifth of the space in every ad to describing the environmental impact of the vehicle featured.


While this is all very well and seemingly environmentally friendly, it needs to be remembered that the CONSTRUCTION and RECYCLING costs of a car (at the beginning and end of its lifetime) are hugely significant. Therefore, buying a new Prius hybrid every year (and feeling very environmentally smug, no doubt!) is very BAD for the environment compared to buying and running a second-hand ordinary car for several years. These proposed new warnings do not take this into account, isolating the segment of the car's lifetime that involves driving along the road. Hybrids create more CO2 in their manufacture than simpler cars, and have the issue of battery disposal at the end of their lives. CNW completed a study in the US recently, although some issues in it have been debated (such as the average mileage covered by some models), but the principle is interesting nonetheless:


After all the numbers had been crunched, among vehicles sold in the U.S. in the 2005 calendar year, CNW found the least expensive vehicle to be the Scion xB at 48 cents per mile in overall energy costs. The most energy-expensive vehicle was the Maybach at $11.58 per mile in energy costs over its estimated lifetime. The VW Phaeton, Rolls-Royce line, and Bentley line followed closely behind. In all of these instances, these are overall energy costs incurred from inception through disposal, not energy costs associated only with vehicle ownership.

To compare, the Toyota Prius involves $3.25 per mile in energy costs over its lifetime, according to CNW, while several full-size SUVs scored lower. A Dodge Viper involves only $2.18 in energy per mile over its lifetime. The Range Rover Sport costs $2.42, and the Cadillac Escalade costs $2.75.

“If a consumer is concerned about fuel economy because of family budgets or depleting oil supplies, it is perfectly logical to consider buying high-fuel-economy vehicles, said Art Spinella, president of CNW, in a release. “But if the concern is the broader issues such as environmental impact of energy usage, some high-mileage vehicles actually cost society more than conventional or even larger models over their lifetime.