In November 2003
at the House of Commons we were presented (by the Minister for Trade and
Industry Patricia Hewett) with a prestigious National Green Apple award
for our environmental contribution to the car industry. Our philosophy and
practice of Durable Car ownership over the last 28 years shows that a
Morris Minor, following our programme is not only cheaper to own but uses
a fraction of the National resources consumed during the life cycle of a
modern car.
'A DURABLE MORRIS MINOR IS LOGICALLY THE GREENEST CAR ON THE PLANET'
Please find below the synopsis of our radical submission for the
award
Durable Car Ownership - Project aim and achievements
Over the last twenty-seven years of practising Durable Car Ownership,
we can logically show that labour intensive manufacturing and maintenance
offers the consumer financial and environmental advantages over Automated
modern car ownership.
1. Energy and natural resources A durable car consumes about 20% of the
resources used in modern car production
2. Financial depreciation A durable car might depreciate by 10% over
ten-years. A modern car 85% over the same period
3. Employment Labour intensive manufacturing maximises use of skilled
labour. Modern automated systems are designed to minimise the use of
labour
4. Owning a durable car costs at least 30% less overall than running its
modern equivalent
5. Our labour intensive joint Sri Lanka/UK manufacturing company is cost
effective and very beneficial to a developing country
Written submission backed by the enclosed written information
showing the logical benefits of Durable over Modern production methods
1. Energy and natural resources
The components for durable and modern cars use the same level of energy
and resources in their production but during the minimum 40 years life of
a "durable car", 3 or 4 modern cars will have been scrapped - A waste of
resources.
In the assembly process, a durable car is put together by hand on
simple jigs, using very little non-human energy. Modern
automated/electronic manufacturing is continually re-inventing itself and
is largely dependant on the high use of energy in the
manufacturing/assembly process - A waste of energy.
2. Financial depreciation
The speed of the financial depreciation cycle determines the useful
economic life of a modern mass produced car. The constant fashion driven
research and development programme of automated production systems are so
capital intensive that manufacturers are dependent for their profitability
on high volume production.
For some years, real demand for new cars has been saturated, so in
order to keep production levels as high as possible, the bottom end
replacement market has been accelerated through a lethal combination of
financial depreciation value engineering and fashion.
Cars are now far better made than in the past, but value engineering
(planned obsolescence) is an essential part of the accepted life span of a
car. Why make very long-life components when the practical useful economic
life of a car is 10 - 12 years, after its value has dropped by 85%. Its
survival depends on luck. A modest accident or major component failure
costing more than the value of the car leads to its junking.
Fashion now dominates the marketing and manufacturing of cars and the
constant updating of the latest model ensures that a relatively new model
is undesirable in a very short time. The pressure on the consumer to
constantly trade upwards is built into the process and the length of the
car's life is as short as the market place will accept. The consequence of
this throw-away philosophy is that the consumer is obliged to pay the high
costs of financial depreciation, which over a life-time of motoring is
substantial.
A house is a Durable, which over the long-term always delivers a good
tax-free capital gain. Owning a modern car over a life-time is a constant
negative financial drain on its owners tax paid income, in many cases,
wiping out that capital gain usually achieved through home ownership.
3. Employment
Modern automated electronic manufacturing is designed to reduce labour
input to a minimum. Durable systems create the use of skilled labour on a
maximum scale. The cost of creating a new job in modern capital intensive
manufacturing is very high. Labour intensive jobs in Durable manufacturing
can be created on a huge scale, at low cost, because the skills used are
manually intelligent and have been proved over the centuries. They give
its workers pride and satisfaction in their jobs and skills, which is
socially and economically desirable.
4. The overall economic advantage of Durable versus Modern car
production are to be found in the written material submitted with this
introduction.
5. Sri Lanka
Using the relative values of the pound and the rupee, we know that a
panel, which would normally take a few minutes to make on a modern double
action press in the UK can be manually formed in Sri Lanka in four hours
and still allows the product to be viable commercially in the UK, whilst
creating well-paid skilled jobs in Sri Lanka.
The use to Sri Lanka's economy is that each skilled worker has on
average 10 - 15 dependants. These jobs do not threaten employment in the
UK. For example, the total annual production of our 30 workers in Sri
Lanka could be stamped out by 2 - 3 people in the UK.
Summary
Our industrial model, based on the continuing empirical history of the
Morris Minor is of course transferable. A new durable car could be easily
manufactured by a large company, at relatively low cost. We know, from our
modest experiment, that a very large cross-section of motorists really
want to own a long-term car, with known running costs. Of course, the
immediate likelihood of radically changing the direction of this global
juggernaut is highly unlikely. In the meantime, throw-away manufacturing
is taking its toll of our environment.
What could happen if industrial models like ours are properly
considered, is that small durable production systems could be developed in
parallel, to counter highly technology manufacturing's profligate use of
energy and natural resources.
