We are running a Citroën c3 diesel rental car at the moment in Montpellier.
15-30km trips from centre of city to seaside towns, we are getting 3.3 l/100km. Equates to 80+ mpg.
Driving at main route speeds, 70, 90 and 110km/h

Surely there can't be so much pollution emitted that electric cars are essential?

Just had a thought.

Car might be efficient, but Ryanair jet that got us here was running on nutty slack.

Carbon offset?

Diesels are good for fuel efficiency (though not in town stop/start driving) so less CO2 but because of higher combustion temperatures higher NOx (hence adblu to control) and higher particulate emission; again, mostly in town driving where you really don't want it.

The problem with diesels is that they were sold as a catchall; for people who don't drive high mileages they're a poor choice both economically and ecologically.

To be honest, is any personal vehicle that ideal ecologically? Even electric vehicles rely on a supply of generated electricity to , err ... charge them and from what source, we mostly know not! If it was all renewable energy, then fair enough, but a lot of so-called renewable energy in the grid is already 'off-set' energy.

And off course there's all that energy to manufacture all vehicles in the first place, plus for electric, the headache of replacement and recycling of batteries every 5 years or so.

Then of course we can't go back to using ox-carts to haul stuff, because of the dreaded methane. Think we've all had it ........

There you have it. But countries worldwide have for years pushed the idea of personal vehicles because (a) the production, sale, and repair of them employs a lot of people and (b) fuel taxes.

The only sane personal transport (unless it's raining!) really is bicycles, but only then when you get them separated properly from motor vehicles - not too bad in the Netherlands or in Germany, but I rode a bike for far too long through central London (commuting) and was always impressed by how courteous motor drivers weren't and how well they didn't observe simple things like not parking in bike lanes. Which is not to say that all cyclists were/are fit to be on the road, and road planners *never* got it right.

Well, after more than 20 years of not cycling I thought that at the ripe age of soixante-onze now might be a good time start up again, if only to keep fit!

Thankfully the roads are very quiet (many pretty much empty) here in rural France and you only have to watch things in town here, first thing in the morning, lunch time (both ways) and about 5pm. Our rush hour actually lasts about 30 mins!

Currently borrowing a couple of cycles to see which sort is going to be best .... and if I can still do it.