It is true that there are a lot of Japanese cars here but there are enough old Saabs in the wreckers yards and you can still order many parts brand new from GM Holden dealerships. For hard to get parts it is possible to order from the US and have the parts delivered within a week.
They are basically just more unreliable compared with Japanese cars of the same vintage. This is not peculiar to Saabs, most European cars are more unreliable (at least in the conditions we have here).
In the USA, we tend not to spread it - we just give most of it to large corporations to that their executives can take home tens of millions in salary and bonuses while they ship the jobs and money off shore to third world countries where they get labor for .35 cents/hour.
Why more for LPG ? Do LPG cars damage the infrastructure more ? !
Graham
johannes (johannes ) gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying:
It could be. But it won't be. Because free VED is only for cars built prior to 1/1/73.
We don't have road tax anymore, we used to call it road tax but since our government did use this ?road tax? for all but the roads it was called an illegal tax and now it is named it different. For a 1200 kg car on petrol we pay 432 Euro/year tax
880 euro/year on diesel 932 euro/year on LPG Our gas prizes are most tax too one litre petrol costs 1.48 euro!, not a gallon, a litre. For a new car we pay an additional 4 % import tax then about 23 % illegal tax which we call BPM and over the new sum we pay 19 % BTW, next year that will be 20 %. I heard only Denmark is more expansive but they urn about twice as much as we do in Netherland. Parking a car is next to impossible and cost up to 4.75 euro/hour.Our smart government invented a new way to squeeze even more money out of us, in a few years time we have pay for each km we actually drive in our car in addition to all this. We have to buy a GPS device which records every inch that our cars moves and we have to pay for that too.
Besides that we have a zillion different taxes and sneaky local taxes that are called different.
Edmund
Its not ?road tax? we don't have that. ( they do not even use a fraction from all those automotive tax billions for the roads ) It is possession tax if you have a car registered, which is obligated, you have to pay this tax. Because LPG is less expensive then petrol, our government is taxing away the advantage from people. In Netherland the government interested in money only, nothing else matters. Same is true for diesel cars.
Edmund
When was it fixed at 1973 ?
Wot a swizz is wot i say !
Graham
Just curious. The very high tax burden in continental Europe is widely attributed to the cost of providing fairly generous 'social provision' like state pensions, health service and unemployment and illness benefits.
In view of those high taxes are people generally (in your opinion) still willing to pay this much for those services ?
Graham
I would say the road tax in the UK is also largely notional but they still call it that. It seems to be becoming more of a politically correct tax, with small (engined) cars paying less than big ones. Even so, I pay 'only' about 300 Euros annually.
How silly !
Very short sighted behaviour.
Graham
Edmund, Its not true that LPG is cheaper. Its just that it .... ... is less taxed! :) And for newer LPG cars (G3) the road-tax is about the same as for a gasoline car. But still... not many people switch to LPG. I dont know why. Because they dont like changes probably? Diesel is still the most polluting car-fuel. The VAT is still 19% next year. The state expenses for everything related to cars and traffic is enormous. Check your sources please. The Netherlands is one of the most densely "asphalted" countries on earth. Also one of the most polluted by car traffic. Also one with the most traffic jams.
If the tax on cars and driving would be lower, most people would buy a second car or a even a third . Where I live there are is not enough parking space. The neighbourhood is new (6 years old), and they designed the number of parking spots as
1 for every household. Sounds reasonable to me. Problem is... many households have more than one car! Why? But they can afford it, thats for sure.. There is excellent public transport, and the train station is at 10 minutes. Or at 2 if you live at the other side of the neighbourhood.The Netherlands is one of those countries where people only complain about taxes and never want to look at the benefits they get from them. The Netherlands has what I call a "complain culture". Everyone is complaining about how bad the government / system is, but nobody wants or is able to change anything.
Its like a passtime, a party talk subject. A bit like football or the tabloids.
There are way too many cars in this country, everyone agrees, but nobody wants to give up their own. Now people start saying that it is a "right" to be able to park your car in your own street.
Its so silly.
Richard.
Just that... its not true! Driving an LPG car is actually much cheaper. The tax is 1 EURO less perliter, and the "road-tax" on modern cars is about the same as gasoline.
Its not. Money seems the only thing people are concerned about, so if we want to solve the problems then it has to go by the wallet :)
Richard.
That is right, I did only compare the prices we have to pay at the gas station.
Not exactly true, for a 1200 kg car it's 432 euro/year on petrol and 600 on LPG with a G3 installation. For heavier cars the figures are a lot worse, only for the one or two Ultra light cars it is the same as petrol.
G3 installations have top build in by one of the approved stations and not to my surprise they are rather expensive. Even so I read LPG markt is growing so be prepared for a spectaculair rise in costs soon. The government has already announced a few tax raises for next year and the year after.
That is not sure at all, it has the lowest CO2 emission per km for all cars. Note that the government for many years used the CO2 emission as an excuse to raise the taxes every time.
You are right again :-) it is 20 % in 2009!
My sources are fine, automotive taxes are a great income for our government and they do not spend much of it on the infra structure.
That is misleading at least, we have about 17 or 18 million people crowded on this small place and the government is still giving child support and they are importing people!
that doesn't matter either, you can only drive one at the time.
Because the taxes are so excessive both man and wife have to work to be able to pay the bills?
How do you calculate that, by driving to it by car :-)? I live 3 km from the station and it takes at least 20 minutes to come there by bus.
You are absolute right about that, we complain and thats about it. We still accept every tax rise and nobody ever strikes or does anything to stop our government, so that is exactly why our government never stops taken a lager piece of the cake every year.
Yeah how do you want to go to your work without one? Remember not even the students did fit in the trains, let alone all the working people.
That is not an unfair demand at all, the car drivers has paid for the roads parking places and all about 30 times now. Parking should be free in the whole country!
Edmund
... and still the money is spent on car-related issues. :)
ONLY for cars that have the old LPG system, the newer cars (1996 -> ) have G3, and then the tax is around 500 EURO...
Yes, and LPG is 0,60 per liter.
Some say it is illegal, but every country in Europe can decide on their own tax system. No, BTW will remain 19% in 2008.
Not true. The average income in DK is only a bit higher than in NL.
What are you doing with a car in an old city center never designed for cars? :-D If you live in a city centre you get / buy a parking licence. If you go to a city centre you park outside the center for cheap and get a free bus ticket.
Not true. If you drive less than average you pay less.
Not true. There has been discussion about such a system, but it has been postponed until it is technically feasable... and acceptable in terms of privacy. It doesnt look like it is going to happen.
... to pay for all the problems car-owners and drivers are causing! :)
Buy a 1996 Renault Megane G3 LPG. You have one for 2000 EURO, pay 35 EURO tax per month, and drive on
0,60 EURO LPG and 14 km/liter...Thats even cheaper than public transport! ;-)
Richard.
I seriously doubt that.
Try living in Soth East England. We can log-jam 12 lane motorways !
Graham
LOL! Cool! They should raise taxes.... ;-)
Here the highway to Amsterdam is being widened, it will soon have 10 lanes. If it helps to solve traffic jams, it will make more people decide that its ok to take a job in Amsterdam centre and go there by... CAR :) And cause traffic jams again? The irony... I smile a lot . :)
Richard.
Initial investment. Scarcity of filling stations. A slight performance hit. Higher engine temperatures. Reduction of boot space. Fear of gas leaks which might lead poisoning or explosions.
However, you can get government grant (UK) for converting a new car.
Agreed. The soot gets in everywhere.
Begs the question WHY !
I thought the latest EU diesel legislation fixed that ? Soot results from over-fuelling only AIUI and that's associated with primitive mechanical fuel injection systems. Electronic injection as per gasoline vehicles should eliminate that.
WHY it took so long to get electronic fuel control into diesels is a question you might well ask.
Graham
Just curious. The very high tax burden in continental Europe is widely
Hard to tell, I really do not want to go into detail with all this, but a lot of people realize it is getting worse and worse. I heard there never where more people leaving the country then at this time, in my personal surroundings several have emigrated to spain. Most people here don't have a clue from what is happening and the Dutch only complain but never take any action and never protest to anything. I that way you can say they are "willing" to pay for it.
Edmund
No it is not!
Around 500? it is 600 and rising, on top of that one need a very expensive G3 installation.
I corrected that it will be 20% a year later.
That is not what I heard from people I met during the holidays. Besides that it is impossible to compare with all the sneaky hidden taxes and costs we have here.
Driving to my work.
That is so cheap right? NOT.
If you go
Parking in alkmaar isn't cheap, parking in Amsterdam is impossible and expensive and your car is robbed when you come back. Nowhere you get a free bus ticket either.
Wanne make a bet on it?
There is no such thing as privacy in Netherland, and the government is not telling anything yet ( ministry of information ) but they are already taking "irreversible steps", these are there exact words!
No they don't, they spent only a fraction of it on roads and stuff. But they give themself a 30 % raise in pay.
Edmund
Probably most of it comes from lorries and busses.. I live not far from a motorway. The soot spreads out by stealth; you don't really notice it until you wipe the walls by a damp cloth.
Maybe because one of the original attractions of the diesel engine was that it didn't need an electric system to run. The old distributor was always a weak point in petrol engines.
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