Government car fleet to go green (except for 36 luxury gas guzzlers)

The government will spend HK$12.6 million to buy 36 fuel-inefficient luxury saloons, even as environment chiefs said yesterday that most of the official fleet of 1,071 cars will be replaced by environmentally friendly vehicles by 2014.

The Volkswagen Phaeton 3.2L saloon car, at HK$349,000 each, will replace a set of BMW 735iL vehicles bought in 1997.

Legislators were shocked and outraged, with one saying it was a slap in the face for Chief Executive Donald Tsang Yam-kuen and environment chief Sarah Liao Sau-tung in their efforts to clean up the air.

The Phaeton's 2006 model was ranked one of the 10 lowest overall fuel economy cars by the US Environmental Protection Agency, which says it gets 5km per litre. Volkswagen's British website says it gets 7km per litre in urban driving.

By contrast, the petrol-electric Toyota Prius - of which the government bought five for a study of environmentally friendly hybrid cars last year - could go 25.5km per litre, the agency said.

The news came as the deputy director of the Environmental Protection Department said that, as a result of last year's trial, small and medium-sized cars would be replaced with environmentally friendly vehicles 'within the next seven to eight years'. 'We will finish replacing them in roughly seven to eight years, because if we change them before they break down it seems like a waste of resources,' Roy Tang Yun-kwong told the Legislative Council's environmental affairs panel.