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Statistics do not justify prioritising diesel cars to reduce pollution

I thank Mr Simon Tay and Mr Nicholas Fang for their letter “Diesel incentives for passenger cars must go” (Oct 21).

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Danny Lim Fung Yee

I thank Mr Simon Tay and Mr Nicholas Fang for their letter “Diesel incentives for passenger cars must go” (Oct 21).

In any policy discussion, it is important to discern the primary policy objective and analyse available statistics to determine the most effective way to address the issue. So before we delve further into the topic, let us consider some statistics.

First, the number of private diesel cars was negligible: 5,976 last year, comprising 3.2 per cent of the diesel vehicle population and 0.75 per cent of the total vehicle population of 792,282 (excluding motorcycles), while there were 24,244 diesel taxis.

Second, the average annual mileage of private cars in 2014 was 17,500km, considerably lower than the 30,500km to 54,400km for commercial vehicles generally. The average engaged mileage last year for taxis ranged from around 73,000km (one-shift taxis) to 105,000km (two-shift), and this does not take into account the mileage accrued when the cabbie is looking for passengers.

Third, private diesel cars started picking up after 2012, when the tax for Euro V diesel cars was revised downwards, hence most of these cars are based on Euro V emission standards. At the end of last year, 44 per cent of goods and other vehicles and 26 per cent of buses were 10 years or older. As Euro IV was introduced in 2005, this means most of these older vehicles may be based on Euro III or II standards.

I appreciate the importance of sustainability, especially on the back of the Paris agreement on climate change. If the primary objective, however, is to reduce pollution from diesel, then let us not recommend addressing 3 per cent of the problem and deferring discussion on the other 97 per cent.

It is difficult to justify prioritising 6,000 private diesel cars over the 24,000 diesel taxis, with much higher mileage, as effective policy in the near to middle term.

A concerted push to replace older goods and heavy vehicles with newer, cleaner diesel vehicles would also be more effective from a numbers perspective (136,686 diesel goods-and-other vehicles).

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