PCWG-M-10-04 PASSENGER CAR WORKING GROUP MEETING Wednesday, 21 April 2010, 14:00 17:05 BP, 1 St James Square, London SW1Y 4PD MINUTES Attendees Andrew Kelly DfT Andy Eastlake Millbrook Ben Lane Ecolane Blake Ludwig WAF Carmen Dengra Sauce Consultancy Caroline Watson - EST Catherine Dove LowCVP Chris Brown LowCVP Costandinos Viskis - TRL Eva de Marchi-Taylor SMMT Greg Archer LowCVP (Acting Chair) Jason Reakes - BMW John Lippe Ford Motor Company Jonathan Murray LowCVP Julie Fitzell - LHR Peter Bourke PSA Phil Downing Icaro Robert Walker SMMT Rupert Russell ComCar Sophie.Ogunbiyi Toyota Europe Tony Rogers Motability Apologies Dave MacDonald - Chiltern Transport Consortium Ian Bown Lubrizol Lisa Thompson - UKLPG Luke Herbert JLR Mike Waters Arval Rob Millar - R&D VC Sheila Watson FIA Stephen Latham RMI Tim Shallcross IAM Trust Tom Callow Automotive PR 1. Welcome and apologies Greg Archer acted as chair for the meeting, welcomed attendees and noted apologies. 2. Appointment of chair Mike Waters has stepped down as chair for personal reasons. Mike has been the chair of the PCWG for two years and the group asked their thanks to Mike be recorded for his leadership during this period. PCWG members were invited to contact the secretariat to nominate candidates for the replacement to be appointed at the next meeting. Action: Nominations for chair of PCWG to be sent to Jonathan Murray. 3. Minutes and Matters arising Chair and Jonathan Murray Actions still to be completed were noted as: Invite DfT representative to provide an update on the Act on CO2 UK Van CO2 report undertaken by AEA is to be released when sign-off given by DfT. All other actions were noted as completed.
4. LowCVP Update GA provided highlights of the Partnership s activities in the last quarter including: LowCVP ran a seminar at Sustainability Live! exhibition consisting of 7 x 35min sessions covering fleets, greener transport plans, fuels and alternative car use, electric vehicles and an interview with Prof Julia King. There were 340 in attendance across the sessions throughout the day Securing Investment for SMEs event in March proved very successful with 88 attendees. Feedback indicated 85% of attendees deemed the event good or very good Electric vehicle seminar held at base 2010 conference in March 3.5M to support the increased use of biomethane, produced from waste material, for transport 3.5M allocated to support low carbon commercial vehicle technologies 10m in funds from DfT have been made available in the Budget for a second round of the Green Bus Fund The MD chaired a well-attended session at World Biofuels Congress in Amsterdam 4.1 LowCVP Annual Conference Greg Archer GA outlined the latest draft of the annual conference agenda. First day of the two-day event is aimed at examining international activity and best practice whilst the second day focuses on UK work. The Secretariat s discussions with WhatCar? Magazine on a joint Awards and Dinner during the evening of the first day are now advanced. A formal reception and dinner will be jointly run with WhatCar? and it is hoped the dinner is to be attended by 100 to 150 which will centre on Green Car Awards together with smaller LowCVP awards. On the second day Sir David King has been invited to present his recent work on low carbon transport together with a speaker to address fuels issues and the Secretary of State. This will be followed by a series of breakout sessions. Packages of conference fees are to be established to allow flexibility and affordability. A formal announcement of agenda should take place in a couple of weeks. 5. Work Programme 2009-10 Jonathan Murray JM provided the meeting with an overview of the work programme status at the end of the last financial year. Three projects were carried forward to 2010-11. Action: Circulate draft spec of tail-pipe project to PCWG 5.1 Automotive Marketing Best Practice Guide update Chris Brown CB explained to the group that the Best Practice guidance project was being undertaken in two parts: SMMT and ISBA are leading on the draft best practice guidance on environmental claims, with LowCVP giving input to the drafts (current version is draft 8). The intention is that subject to final
agreement, LowCVP and Defra will give their endorsement to the published publication. In parallel with the guidance, LowCVP had commissioned consultants to review existing good and poor marketing communications practice that currently exists across the motor industry and produce a range of examples. Marketing Principles Draft Eva de Marchi Taylor EDMT advised that the latest draft of the principles is currently sitting with the SMMT legal committee. Once this has been cleared, it will go to SMMT s car section due to meet on 9 June and subsequently to LowCVP s Members Council on 22 nd June. The aim is to have all principles of environmental marketing in a single reference point. Several members felt that generally the principles lacked detail and in that some areas of the text were unclear. For example, the guidance refers to a common sense approach and commonly adopted industry standards there was a suggestion that such standards should be set-out in an annex. There was also discussion on whether case studies, both good and bad, should be included with the guide, to provide easily available comparators for industry marketing teams. Industry representatives expressed concern about the proposition of picking winners or losers and felt the guidance should be more generic. Action: Comments to be sent to CB and EDMT by Wednesday, 28 April. Marketing communications practice - research project to identify examples Phil Downing (Icaro) and Carmen Dengra (Sauce Consulting) PD and CD presented the results of the research undertaken to identify examples of automotive environmental claims in marketing communications, using the Billets database for the full 2009 calendar year. Action: Icaro and Sauce presentation to be presented to SMMT advertising group for discussion. Next steps 1. SMMT PCWG members to present the Icaro/Sauce findings to the SMMT advertising group for consideration 2. All PCWG members to provide comments on the draft guidance to LowCVP by 28 April, who in turn will forward comments to SMMT and Defra for consideration 3. SMMT to consider potential for inclusion of examples in the best practice guidance 4. SMMT and ISBA to coordinate meeting with LowCVP and Defra to review comments, consider how the automotive best practice guidance fits in with Defra s Green Claims guidance and to agree next steps 5. The intention is for the automotive industry guidance to be launched at the LowCVP conference on 14 and 15 July 5.2 Consumer Information Ben Lane
Ben Lane gave a presentation on the LowCVP- commissioned consumer presentation project: Car Buyer Survey: Improved environmental information for consumers Main aims of the project were to: - Assess the importance of environmental issues at the point of purchase - Identify what environmental information is most easily understood by car buyers - Ascertain consumer preferences for how such information should be presented Action: Presentation to be circulated to PCWG via Members Area of website 6. Strategy to 2010 Greg Archer GA provided a brief outline focussing on how the Strategy related to PCWG. Any comments on the draft should be addressed in writing to the Secretariat. 7. Work Programme 2010-11 Jonathan Murray JM reported that the works streams have been developed in parallel with the strategy to 2013 against 5 themes: - Incentivising and informing lower carbon car choices - Facilitation of successful lower carbon automotive supply chain - Tackling market barriers to use of lower carbon fuels - Pathways and progress to low carbon transport - Building lower carbon commercial and public service vehicles JM drew the PCWG s attention to the proportion of resources committed to different themes; the percentage of the core budget is the amount of money presently available in the current work programme. Therefore an additional 75k will need to be raised to complete the entire programme. 7.1 Monitoring and evaluation of the used car label Chris Brown & Andrew Kelly The evaluation work of the used car label was requested by the DfT and is to be undertaken during summer 2010. CB provided the WG with an brief overview of paper 17 on how the monitoring and evaluation of the label will be conducted. It was reported that Rupert Furness and Paul Everitt have met to discuss issuing a letter encouraging SMMT members to adopt the used label and which is being circulated to committees within SMMT. John Lippe advised that the SMMT s Environment Committee is due to discuss the issue. GA thanked SMMT for the progress made in rolling out the used label thus far and encouraged a continuation of these efforts. Toyota UK reported that it has taken steps following a letter from DfT highlighting that Toyota dealers were stalled on downloading labels despite a high level of registration.
An 18% level of errors in downloading the used car label has been recorded and which is caused by a variety of different issues some of which are between the VCA and DVLA. The data on downloads is provided to VCA by DVLA on a quarterly basis. Action: Andrew Kelly will discuss options to improve the situation with download errors with Paul Cooke at the VCA 7.2 Compilation and dissemination of evidence related to UK experience of labelling (Labelling Director) The PCWG agreed that this project be included in the remit of the sub-group currently overseeing Ecolane s survey work addressed under item 5.2. 8. AOB No other business was raised and the meeting was closed. Next meeting: Thursday, 1 July 2010, 10:00 to 13:00 TRL, Nine Mile Ride, Wokingham, Berks, RG40 3GA