The mayors of Paris, London and Seoul on Wednesday launched an initiative to rate the most polluting vehicles in a bid to keep them off the roads of their cities.

The aim of the "Air'volution" scheme is to help drivers avoid buying the most harmful diesel vans and cars.

Speaking at a press conference in Paris, London Mayor Sadiq Khan said respiratory problems caused by emissions led to 9,000 deaths a year in his city.

"It is imperative that we do something," Khan said.

He said the index of vehicles would be the "first of its type in the world".

Major car manufacturers have been invited to participate in the scheme, but Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo admitted that trust "needed to be rebuilt" after the scandal over emissions test cheating that embroiled Volkswagen and has also drawn in French giant Renault.

"This must be a co-production with car manufacturers and it is work that must be a win-win situation," Hidalgo said.

French automakers' association CCFA said it supported the initiative.

"The improvement of air quality remains a major challenge in the development of the car of tomorrow," CCFA said in a statement.

The mayor of the South Korean capital, Park Won-Soon, said his city had slashed harmful emissions by converting 7,500 buses to operate on gas rather than diesel.

On the day that Britain triggered the formal process to leave the European Union, Khan said the scheme was a reminder that big cities in Europe "simply must continue to work together".

India court bans sale of 800,000 vehicles over emission levels
New Delhi (AFP) March 29, 2017 - India's top court Wednesday banned the sale of more than 800,000 new vehicles which fall short of new emissions standards, declaring public health more important than company profits.

The Supreme Court ordered a halt to the sale and registration of vehicles that will not meet new pollution standards come April 1, when a cleaner model of engine will become the norm.

The ruling is expected to affect as many as 824,000 vehicles not yet sold or registered, said the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM).

These include mainly motorcycles but also commercial vehicles and three-wheelers, the Press Trust of India reported.

"The health of the people is far, far more important than the commercial interests of the manufacturers or the loss that they are likely to suffer," Judges MB Lokur and Deepak Gupta said in their order.

Millions of new vehicles pour onto India's roads every year, worsening air pollution in cities that already rank as the world's dirtiest.

New Delhi took the unenviable title of the world's most polluted city in a 2014 survey of 1,600 cities around the globe by the World Health Organization.

Twelve other Indian cities also ranked in the top 20.

In a move to combat escalating pollution, the government announced in January last year that all vehicles sold in India would have to meet higher emissions standards from April 1, 2017.

In court, SIAM and automakers argued that they should "be given reasonable time to dispose of the existing stock" manufactured legally until March 31.

The court dismissed this appeal, saying auto companies "chose to sit back and declined to take sufficient pro-active steps" despite the looming April deadline.

India, the world's fifth biggest auto market, has said it will switch directly to BS-VI standards by April 2020, skipping the interim BS-V grading altogether.

Wednesday's order was the latest to hit auto companies in India. In 2015 the same court ordered a moratorium on the registration of large diesel luxury cars in Delhi.

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China's giant Tencent Holdings has taken a five percent stake in the Tesla electric car company as it moves to ramp up production, according to an official filing Tuesday. Tencent paid about $1.8 billion for the small share of Elon Musk's company, according to the document filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The Chinese technology company runs WeChat, the world's ... read more

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