While screwing down CO2 emissions from vans ever more tightly may on the face of it be laudable, it could have some worrying unforeseen consequences warns Mercedes-Benz van technology head of development, Dr Sascha Paasche.It could prompt operators penalised for running big commercial vehicles said to emit excessive CO2 to switch to lots of smaller vans instead. While individually their CO2 emissions may be acceptable, collectively they’re likely to pump out more than the handful of large vehicles they replace. “In a situation like that you could end up more than doubling CO2 output,” Paasche warns.
Nor is making such a switch likely to do much for distribution efficiency, he adds. In fact it’s likely to drive up costs.
