The battle over a proposed £25 Congestion Charge increase that would have been socked to big, dirty vehicles entering London is over. Porsche was the lead opponent of this fee increase, and announced the win on its Judicial Review website. I guess Porsche's huge PR campaign worked. Back when Ken Livingstone, who came up with the £25 congestion charge proposal, was still Mayor of London, the city announced that the majority was in favor of it. Porsche had other data.

The new mayor, Boris Johnson, was never in favor of the new C-Charge, so it's not a huge surprise that it's been scraped. He said he hopes the city will now institute a 'fairer and more effective' Congestion Charge. The agency responsible for the Congestion Charge, Transport for London, will now need to pay Porsche's legal bills. Porsche has said it will donate the money to Skidz, an anti-crime charity. h/t to TheRookie.

[Source: Porsche, What Car?, Times Online]

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The Republic of Turkey was founded in 1923. If you think this has nothing to do with green cars, you're mostly right. Today, though, it does, if only because someone (or a group of someones) has hacked into the news section of Porsche's Judicial Review website and posted a few messages in Turkish stating that the site has been hacked. I don't read Turkish, so I'm not certain what the hack says, exactly, but it doesn't seem to be the only time 1923Turk has struck. Right off the top of my head, I can't see any reason for pro-Turkey hackers to take aim at the ongoing dispute between Porsche and Transport for London's congestion charge (Forgot what this is about? Check out our previous posts here and here), but what do I know about haxors and their targets?

Speaking about the Porsche fight, the company announced today the Borough of Kensington and Chelsea has applied to be an interested party in the judicial review against the £25 congestion charge. Read more after the break.

In the ongoing fight between Porsche and Transport for London over the increased emissions charges in that city (previous stories - in chronological order - here, here, here, here and here), Porsche has now taken another step towards requesting judicial review of the charge. Following TfL's rejection of an earlier request from Porsche about changing the congestion charge, Porsche is giving the Mayor's office three weeks to respond to this latest filing.

Porsche's side of the story is being told at Porschejudicialreview, a Porsche website. There's more after the jump.

Well, this Porsche-London fight certainly isn't going to end any time soon. Earlier today, London mayor Ken Livingstone told Porsche to butt out of local politics, but the German automaker isn't displaying any such intention. In fact, Porsche released a statement yesterday (available after the jump) that calls on Livingstone to make public the full tables of a poll showing that the public supports the increased congestion charge or else retract a mayoral statement that announced the support. Porsche, you see, says it's done its own polling and found 74 percent of Londoners think that the new £25 congestion charge is too high and various other majorities that are negative on the increase. You can read the letter Porsche wrote to the Mayor here and check out the company's statement after the jump.

The next step happened today, when the mayor said at a press conference that the full details have indeed been published. Porsche - surprise - disagrees and I'll let you read their detailed reasons why in a second press release pasted after the jump if you're into the minutiae here. The general gist remains: Porsche is calling the mayor's facts into question. Again. There will be more to this sory, I am sure.

Once the new London congestion charges were officially announced earlier this month, Porsche started a legal process against the Transport for London group (TfL is behind the c-charge). London officials responded to the threat and in response Porsche has put out a slew of numbers to defend their stance that the congestion charge won't reduce CO₂ emissions in the slightest. You can read their argument for yourself after the jump or check out the company's new website dedicated to the fight.

Porsche's basic argument goes like this: the emissions the fees on gas guzzlers in London will prevent in a year will be equal to the emissions generated at Heathrow airport in anywhere between four minutes and four hours. What Porsche isn't tackling in this debate is that the name of the fee is a "congestion charge." While taking a car off the streets is a car off the streets no matter what comes out of the tailpipe, the Transport for London organizers have decided that swapping out dirty cars for cleaner ones is the right move. There's no question that a lot of CO₂ enters the sky at Heathrow, but that's no excuse for spewing it in downtown London. Instead, it should be a call to clean up the vehicles at Heathrow.

Following Porshce's threat to start a legal process against the City of London for the city's upcoming increase in the congestion charge, a spokesperson for Ken Livingstone, the Mayor of London, has issued a response, calling Porsche's action a "double attack on Londoners." The two prongs are an attack on Londoners democratic rights and an attack on clean air in the city. The statement ends with, "No one is allowed to throw their rubbish in the street and Porsche should not be allowed to impose gas guzzling polluting cars on Londoners who do not want them." Doesn't sound like the city is willing to back down in this fight. More to come, I'm sure.

Related:

• Mayor of London bashed for new congestion charge
• Porsche officially starts legal process against London's congestion charge

[Source: Transport for London]