The demise of the tow car?
The PCP on my car is shortly coming to an end, and I was wondering whether to swallow the pill and pay the balloon payment or change it for another one. Looking around and reading the news I saw that our humble hobby is in danger of becoming a thing of the past due to the changes that are occurring at the moment, for example:
1. Germany and Norway have set a date to ban the sale of Fossil fuelled cars, in the not too distant future. The Netherlands are on the verge of doing the same.
2. France is bringing in an act that everyone must show a clean vehicle sticker and that anyone without it will be prevented from entering the cities.
3. London and Manchester are talking about pollution levels, and looking at banning diesels. And how long will it be before the UK follows the EU and sets a date to ban the sale of fossil fuelled cars?
4. Traditional big cars like the LR Discovery are shedding 1/2 a ton to be more fuel efficient, making finding a tow car for the 2 tonne vans more of a challenge.
5. Electric cars have a minimum range (some up to 200miles), I bet that this decreases significantly if you stick a caravan on the back. Then imaging trying to charge your car at Motorway services with a caravan hooked up!
So where does that leave us and our hobby? Will we still be able to buy a tow car in 5 years? If we have a diesel car will we be able to use it to tour around once we have parked up our caravan?
So what does the future hold for us? Any thoughts?
Comments
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How long was your PCP for? How many miles is on the vehicle? Whats the vehicle? Has it been reliable? Are you confident in it's suitability to last a few more years? How long do you want to be towing for? Do you want to have a new vehicle?
Current production vehicles will have parts available for 10 years beyond end of model run.
If you want a vehicle to tow a 2 tonne caravan that will run and run, suggest a G Wagen either diesel or petrol. Would be good for 30 years.
Just been through the same process. New version of current car is lighter making it about 95%, can't get towbar for highest spec version.
Have pushed the button on a new vehicle, due April. It's diesel, Euro 6, and heavier than current car.
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The Travelling community have no problems towing their large Tabbarts and other large caravans. ---- There might just be a way of CC members still being able to tow large heavy vans in the future by not using a private car, but using a commercial vehicle like a Transit pickup or van. (Other makes available) --- Commercial vehicles are allowed to be used on CC campsites.
Cheers ..............K
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Get another EURO 6 Diesel, you won't see a ban that will have any real impact in our lifetime. What are they going to do to replace all the Trucks, Buses, Trains, Cars & Taxi's ? Not to mention Ocean going ships and of course aircraft which run on what is basically Parrafin. Hybrid and alternative technologies are no where near ready to take over yet. It's just about Countries / Governments being seen to make the right noises
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Transits are still diesels and would still be banned from city centres.
Milothedog, I am not so sure that we wont see it in our lifetime. There are always going to be existing cars that need to be "retired", but if 3 countries have already set a ban on selling fossil based cars then you can be sure others will follow. Germany being one of them and having a huge car industry, in 5 years our car landscape will be very different especially for new cars. There are already electric trucks on the way. It will take time for the new to overtake the old, but I have a feeling we are on the cusp of a revolution.
If I buy a car now then in 3-4yrs when it is due to be changed then it will be worth nothing IF electric cars are starting to be the in thing.
I agree it is not here now, and that the top 10 worse depreciating cars are mainly electric cars at the moment. But the time is coming and sooner than we may realise.
BTW: I am not an electric person at the moment, I also ride a motorbike and dont see that being feasible to be electric either!
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Electric racing motorbikes are already here.
What has not been thought through is where is the electricity to come from if we have difficulty Keeping the lights on now. How are people who do not have 'off street' parking going to recharge? cables across the pavement? At a lecture I attended by one of the Big 6, it was stated that if those arriving home from work all 'plugged in' their cars in the evening, every street in the UK would have to have larger cables installed. In other words the whole UK would have to be rewired !!.The total ignorance of politicians is breathtaking.
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With all the change in the air over the future of fuel usage I have i wonder about the possibility of a hybrid simply because of crazy bureaucratic restrictions. I looked at a Mitsubishi Outllander PHEV which is actually far larger a car than we would choose. It took me twenty seconds to dismiss it as I found the driver's seat about as comfortable as a park bench. I have seen someone towing with one of those and towing a similar weight of van to ours so it can be done. Toyota are now offering a RAV 4 2.5 hybrid with 4X4 which I might look at. Again, it is larger than we would choose and has a stupid nose weight restriction of 70 kg. I may be fussy about seats but nothing so far matches the comfort of our Qashqai.
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My enquiries at both Mitsubishi and Toyota, suggest that whilst the two Hybrid 4x4's are OK for local journeys. Neither are as fuel efficient as claimed and are certainly not developed enough yet to be regarded as serious tow tugs!
To answer the OP. I had the same decision to make just over 12 months ago, and I discovered even then that there is now a severe shortage of serious towing vehicles available.
I fully accept that the new small "toy engines' now fitted to most pseudo 4x4's do put out a much better power weight ratio than I would have expected. But this old Dinosaur loves big lazy V6's and they are a dying breed. So I decided to pay off my PCP and stick with my lovely Mercedes ML300. A faultless tow car, economical both on fuel and especially tyres. So why change? I'm sticking with what I like!
TF
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My enquiries at both Mitsubishi and Toyota, suggest that whilst the two Hybrid 4x4's are OK for local journeys. Neither are as fuel efficient as claimed and are certainly not developed enough yet to be regarded as serious tow tugs!
To answer the OP. I had the same decision to make just over 12 months ago, and I discovered even then that there is now a severe shortage of serious towing vehicles available.
I fully accept that the new small "toy engines' now fitted to most pseudo 4x4's do put out a much better power weight ratio than I would have expected. But this old Dinosaur loves big lazy V6's and they are a dying breed. So I decided to pay off my PCP and stick with my lovely Mercedes ML300. A faultless tow car, economical both on fuel and especially tyres. So why change? I'm sticking with what I like!
TF
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Frankly the idea of actually banning fossil fueled vehicles is not on with current technology and you do wonder if the points made about countries doing this is in fact possible. It may only take a change of government to stop this. Possibly the main impact of that would be that people kept their current cars indefinitely.
I agree that diesel looks to be a problem though and think we may have to change to petrol in the short term although what the long term future is no one actually knows.
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But petrol has a real down side when it comes to towing. My 2 litre diesel car can take me up a very steep hill at 60 mph with a den caravan behind. In order to do that with petrol I would need a very much more powerful car and that would, I assume, be more polluting.
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Like I said, it's never going to happen. It's going to take us 10 year to leave the EU apparently, so something as drastic as banning Diesels is never going to have any impact in our life time
I worked in the engineering side of the London Bus industry. and was there when the first all electrics (a total disaster) and later the hybrids, both Parallel and series technologies came in to service. They both still need a good old Oil Burner to make them work. As said before if we did go full electric where are you going to plug them in overnight, not mention the extra CO created generating the electricity to charge them all. Then you have the problem of getting rid of all the spent batteries when they reach the end of there working life and the excessive cost of replacing them. Then what about those that live in terraced houses, flat's etc, they don't have a nice driveway to run a cable out to the car. We had all this in my industry with LPG and Hydrogen powered vehicles. yes it works but the cost of investment in the infrastructure is so high that to make it happen requires Billions £'s and will take years. We can't sort out the rail system yet alone the road transport system.
My company tried to show their Green commitment by dumping some of our Diesel Transits that we used to attend breakdowns and replacing them with Smiths full Electric Ford Transit vans and one flat bed truck for the stores run, around 13 garages in South London and Kent. The supply runs had to be reduced to one run a day from two because the truck needing to be charged in Kent at the end of the run to enable it to get back to Camberwell to be reloaded for the next day. Progress ?
Ian.
Happy Christmas to everyone BTW, have a good one
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Don't know about the pollution side Lutz, but as to getting over the hill in an efficient manner, surely it's down to how the horse power is applied. When we first started caravanning we had a 2L petrol Mondeo rated at 150 hp. After a a few years we changed to a 2L diesel X trail rated at 150 hp. They might have had the same horses but the torques available in various gears at various revs was totally different. So the X Trail would sail up a hill that the Mondeo was down to second gear on by the top.
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Not sure where you got that I had an obsession with changing gears from my post. It is just, in my opinion, the high torque, at relatively low revs, makes a diesel much more efficient for tackling gradients than most petrol cars of the same engine size / horse power. This is particularly the case if you ever need to come to a halt on a gradient.
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the lexus rx300 used to be a fantastic tow car, admittingly i never towed a caravan but plenty of car trailers with cars on there back, it pulled fantastically proves you don't need a diesel, but i must admit if i'm driving a manual, i do prefer a big engined diesel
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Looking for our next tug and her indoors is very concerned about the effects of diesels on health etc. A quick search on Auto Trader for a petrol alternative that would match the power/torque of say a 2.0 diesel with anything like the same mpg is frightening. I think the whole industry would have to make sea changes to catch up with demand as I reckon diesels currently outnumber petrols by about 4/1. Besides, particulate filters have been compulsory since 2009 and I notice Peugeot now claim that their 5008 filters 99.9% of all the soot - that's quite a claim. Surely the future for the good old oil burner isn't numbered quite yet?
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I think your OH should be more concerned about the increase in pollution from so called environmentally Wood burning stoves which is leading to the rise in particulates. But why let the truth get in the way of clobbering the motorist again?
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Excellent point flatcoat and one that I find myself entirely agreeing with. We live in a 'Smokeless Zone' in a 'Conservation Area' but if you open a door or a window in the evening at this time of year, you would think you were living in Native American village back in the days of the Old West.
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Well I guess if the tow car vanishes, we'll all have to drive hybrid motorhomes! 😂😂😂😂
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It may well be but according to the stirring article in the Daily Hate today this is his personal view according to 10 downing Street, and not government policy; but then what do they know.
Given the amount of money this country has invested in diesel engines I can't see anything happening soon. They have to get rid of the wood burners first it seems.
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