CAP's manufacturer relationships manager Martin Ward scours the globe for the week's insider fleet intelligence

Monday

CO2 – two letters and one number that we now all use in daily life.

The amount of CO2 a vehicle produces dictates how much we pay in benefit-in-kind tax, VED, writing down allowances, and so on.

Recently I’ve been asking people in the industry how the CO2 figures for vehicles are arrived at and, even now, I’m not sure as I have been given many slightly different answers.

In essence, it seems the manufacturers carry out their own testing and are self-certifying, with no independent tests.

The CO2 and fuel consumption figures are done at the same time.

It is all done on a rolling-road, somewhere in the world and not necessarily in the same country as the manufacturer.

The driver has a sheet of paper with a set of rules – they have to go up and down the gears a couple of times, at certain speeds for so many seconds, then idle for a few seconds and back up through the gears for so many seconds and maintain some pre-determined speeds.

That’s it in a nutshell.

I’m sure it is much more scientific and complicated than that but I have been told by a senior engineer that the choice of rolling-road and where it is can affect the outcome, they test numerous vehicles until they find one they like and use that car’s data to produce a universal figure.

I am not saying anyone is cheating, or bending the rules, but it would be in all our interests to know the rules – so if anyone out there can explain, drop me an e-mail at martin.ward@cap.co.uk or contact Julian at Fleet News at julian.kirk@bauermedia.co.uk

It’s an important issue, and we need to see fair play.

The CO2 figure is only known when new.

For a test I took a new Volkswagen Golf to my local village garage for a mock MoT to see what its CO2 figures were.

Unfortunately, the test doesn’t record any, it only gives the CO % volume.

The Golf passed this section of the test easily, but this hasn’t really told me anything about CO2 emissions in grammes per kilometre terms.

Tuesday

I’ve been using a Skoda Superb and what a great car it is – you could go as far as to say it’s superb.

The interior is huge, with more rear legroom than a long-wheelbase BMW 7 Series.

The quality is also superb and it is a fantastic all-round package.

When I first saw the new car a few months ago, I did not understand why the designers and engineers had created the rear door system which doubles as a saloon, with a boot lid, and a hatch, which turns into a five-door.

But after using it I can fully understand their thinking.

In the recent chilly weather it was nice to put shopping in the boot, without the cold air going into the cabin, and when I had to collect a large fridge, I could use the hatch to get it in and out easily.

I was driving the Greenline model, which is Skoda’s eco-friendly version and its answer to BlueMotion, ECOnetic, BlueLion, EfficientDynamics, and so on.

It offers lower CO2 emissions and improved fuel consumption, but the problem I have with Greenline is that the name reminds me of the bus company which used Routemasters many years ago – I still have a model of one at home.