[AlexanderB]

They're quite aggressively pushing for local air quality over global emissions, the results are sometimes quite strange.

Previously, they'd always been pushing for "CO2 reduction" to reduce dependence on oil since the oil crisis, promoting diesels, and more recently plug-in hybrids as they gamed the system and got "infinite" MPG for the NEDC cycle. Also blending 5% bio fuel (mandatory).

LPG is a big of a strange story, its a clean fuel, and yet the gov't is doing everything they can to stop people from using it to its full potential. (You can't DIY the conversion, it has to be a pre-approved car/install combination, the fuel is cheap by our standards but still taxed quite steeply if you look abroad, and you pay extra tax on the car too. Without all the extra tax, it would be a no-brainer to put an LPG tank on everything.)

Now they're trying to push everyone to (full)electric, however, after the initial tax break runs out, the electric and hybrid cars are immediately exported to countries where second hand cars still get tax breaks, leaving nothing for the second hand market.

The worst part really is how hard they're trying to be the good kid, reduce our (already small) emissions more.. The amount of taxation going on to 'punish' people for owning and driving cars is insane, meanwhile, the developing world drives around in our old cars or ****ty new ones made with 80's tech, gets fuel (nearly) untaxed, and generally emits nearly infinitely more pollutants of every kind, but we have to bend over backwards "for the environment".