Car Regos Go Eco in The Netherlands and Portugal
by Warren McLaren, Sydney 
on 07.23.06
If you are off to buy a new car in either the Netherlands (or Portugal) this month you might be in for a surprise. You could be forking over €540 more than last month, or you might be paying €6000 less. The two countries have decided to employ the carrot and the stick approach to drive demand for vehicles which spew out less CO2 emissions. Seven classes of car have been devised in the Netherlands, with hybrids being the most favoured. In Portugal, where they’ve gone with a simpler four category system, such vehicles receive a 40% reduction in car registration taxes. The follows on from our story earlier this year of France applying eco-tags to new vehicles, that indicate the CO2 emissions per kilometre for each car. Via ::DTI's Auto Industry News.
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"...vehicles which spew out less CO2 emissions.."
Please excuse my denseness, but aren't a car's CO2 emissions directly proportional to its MPG? (or KPL?)
(at least for all vehicles using the same type and octane of fuel)
This is what people who know more about cars than me have told me; if they and I are wrong about this, how does the variation in CO2 emissions (for a given quantity of a given fuel) occur?
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editor note: Incomplete combustion can create more CO, NOx, etc.. But yeah, in general it's pretty safe to generalize that CO2 is proportional with MPG.