May have already been brought up.
With everybody hyping about packaging at the supermarkets, all the large outlets and what goes in your bins etc. and what Carbon footprints etc etc etc.
But do you realise how much plastic/poly is in/on your new car when it arrives from overseas whether it be europe or far east. The roof, bonnet, tailgate, interior seats, dashboards, wheels, in the boot for wheel trims and accessories along with the other 1000 or so that come in on one ship for one manufacturer.
And how many manufacturers we have with the various models ie Corsa, Punto, Focus, Ka and Saab 900 etc. Then we the same going out as export.
I'd guess in one port there could be 5000/6000 vehicles arriving and leaving every week. But no one moans about that amount of protective material going in the bins and the amount of carbon is going to be produced to make the stuff and recycle it, if all is recycled??
Some manufacturers have a wax protection which is either washed off with
a hot water pressure wash using Gas Oil to heat producing carbon or a special acid has to be used first to dissolve the wax then pressure wash with Hot water.
So when are the car manufacturers going to get rid of the plastics/poly/wax covering to protect their cars just for you, so you can have gleeming shiny new car and contribute to the reductions in Carbon Emissions along with everybody else.
thanks
slt
Edited by Pugugly on 10/06/2008 at 07:24
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Good point - I'm sure we'd all benefit from less energy/resource intensvie processes with the 'packaging' & protection of vehicles. Why not suggest viable (and less resource intensive) alternatives to your MP/Dept. of Trade/relevant industry bodies. I don't think it's hype to suggest cheaper & more effective ways of doing things.
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The problem is that the carbon you would save by removing the plastic packaging will be very quickly accounted for after a few body panels have been resprayed due to damage (putting a whole car in an oven to set the paint uses a lot of power).
I think the key difference between car manufacturers and supermarkets is that the majority of packaging in the shops is designed to increase the attractiveness of the product and hence sell more, in the case of cars it is purely for protective purposes (the customer never sees it) If you remove the packaging there will be much a much higher rate of damage so I think the idea of reducing it by very much is a non-starter.
Incidentally, Ford don't bother with protective coverings for the panels and it shows, we would often have paint problems with newly delivered vehicles.
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If I hear the term 'carbon footprint' once more I'm going to...........well I'm going to wave my fist in an angry manner!!
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Careful MLC, you might traumatise a minority group with such an overt display of aggression ! ;-)
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well I'm going to wave my fist in an angry manner!!
If you did that, wouldn't you have to arrest yourself for a Public Order Offence? :-)
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No....the wife will just tell me (again) I'm turning into a grumpy old man and look at me with a thinly veiled look of disgust.
Edited by midlifecrisis on 10/06/2008 at 17:43
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when your paying $8000+ for anything, you expect gleaming and sparkling without consideration as to how that occurs and rightly so!!!
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If I hear the term 'carbon footprint' once more I'm going to...........well I'm going to wave my fist in an angry manner!!
I have already performed a number of similar actions, but you should hear my brother - unrepeatable!
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If I hear the term 'carbon footprint' .......
I'll explain. Carbon is a black-coloured element. A footprint is an impression left on a surface (usually the ground) by a foot or a shoe. Therefore logically a carbon footprint must be an impression on the ground made by the sole of a foot or shoe that has acquired a covering of carbon. However, these days some people seem to make up their own meanings for words and phrases. Sometimes I despair.
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"Therefore logically a carbon footprint must be an impression on the ground made by the sole of a foot or shoe that has acquired a covering of carbon"
Hence them covering cars in plastic.... would not want any of those prints on my car ;-)
Seriously though, there might be scope to reduce some of the coverings there to protect but they are there for a reason. And the energy/polution/etc that goes into a new car is probably far worse than a few bits of plastic.
Personally I think they need to consider re-usable car protection though.... like snug fitting "bags" that zip over cars for transportation. I'm sure they used them on the Audi TT Mk1 when they came from Hungary back to Ingolstadt.
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The problem is that the carbon you would save by removing the plastic packaging will >> be very quickly accounted for after a few body panels have been resprayed due to damage (putting a whole car in an oven to set the paint uses a lot of power).
You've got it the reason for the protection is to reduce rectification processes massively. One point is certain car producers have very good process in place to re-use rather than just recycle packaging.
We recently did a transfer of an expensive model between two dealerships and noticed a 12 inch dent which had occurred at the dealership when a bin had been blown over and hit the car result - £750 bodyshop bill £100 transport cost and a customer who will have to wait a few days extra for his car (what price on this ??) Incidently we have several closed transporters which as a cost per unit (Car) are double the cost of an open transporter. Hence the packaging arguement
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"Incidently we have several closed transporters which as a cost per unit (Car) are double the cost of an open transporter. Hence the packaging arguement"
The original Audi TT (and the current one?) used to be transported on open train carriages back from Hungary to Ingolstadt after assembly. All cars were unlocked. Car stereos etc were being knicked so one thing they did was wrap them up better.
You'd have thought Audi would have transported locked but on open carriages it was appropriate to transport unlocked. So goodness knows what is the case on a car transporter.
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With regard to the de-waxing process, I visited the BMW import centre in Doncaster many years ago and the de-waxing machine recovered the wax from the run-off and used it to heat the water used to remove it.
More recently in the car transporting business the drivers would lock the first car and put the keys in the second and so on. This meant he only ever had to keep one key with him, not have to sort through up to 13 keys for possily identical cars with no registration numbers.
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> This meant he only ever hadto keep one key with him
Ah, a trade secret goes west...:)
Can't leave keys in cars anymore, as apart from the security issue, so many of the blessed things lock themselves.
And 'back keying/locking' can be very dodgy on a multi drop when you arrive at a dealership only to find that the key for that car is 100 miles away at a previous drop point..doh.
I wouldn't of course know anybody who would do such a foolish thing :)
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