Diesel cars (toxic tax) announced

Sporky

sweepy said:

Petrol engines are so efficient that they are nearly on a parity with diesel

Diesel typically still does 20% or so more mpg for the same performance. Petrol is catching up, certainly.

sweepy

Sporky said:

sweepy said:

Petrol engines are so efficient that they are nearly on a parity with diesel

Diesel typically still does 20% or so more mpg for the same performance. Petrol is catching up, certainly.

That's why I balanced it with higher fuel costs and servicing, when a Diesel engine goes mechanically wrong its usually terminal compared to a petrol unit although most Dealerships bin the whole unit 

Nitefly

Make cars run on Soylent Green - two birds, one stone.

Fretwired

Foggy thinking of the Air Quality Directive

SIR – Why do we still pay attention to EU directives? The Air Quality Directive that declares our emissions are too high seems wholly ill-judged. If our air is more polluted than Germany’s, for example, this is surely more to do with population density and weather patterns than with the number of people driving diesel cars and HGVs.

The claim that diesel is more harmful than petrol still needs to be proved. Currently diesel is 15-20 per cent cheaper than petrol in Germany, France, Spain and Italy. How can the EU try to impose a policy on us that contradicts its policy elsewhere?

Professor R G Faulkner
Loughborough, Leicestershire

crunchman

@fretwired - maybe because 40,000 people a year are dying prematurely in the UK because of air pollution.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-35629034

That's from the Royal College of Physicians and of Paediatrics and Child Health who are far more qualified to comment on the health affects than a professor in Materials Science.

Edit:  I don't give a monkeys about what the EU thinks but we have to clean up our air.

Fretwired

crunchman said:

@fretwired - maybe because 40,000 people a year are dying prematurely in the UK because of air pollution.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-35629034

That's from the Royal College of Physicians and of Paediatrics and Child Health who are far more qualified to comment on the health affects than a professor in Materials Science.

Edit:  I don't give a monkeys about what the EU thinks but we have to clean up our air.

What is the cause of the air pollution? If it's cars ban them from cities. Khan and other city leaders just see cars as a cash cow for more money. If diesels kill people ban them tomorrow. It's also been proven that wood burners are harmful to health. Ban them.

However, in warmer months the UK 'imports' high levels of pollution from Europe which is often exacerbated by other factors such as sand from the Sahara.

I don't see much of a plan to tackle the root causes - just a bit of virtue signalling from people like Khan and a raid on the wallets of diesel drivers.

Sporky

crunchman said:

@fretwired - maybe because 40,000 people a year are dying prematurely in the UK because of air pollution.

That's not actually what the link says.

Axe_meister

Modern petrols are at least as complicated as modern diesels.
My new Honda Civic has a 1.0l turbo.
Other than displaced volume, spark plugs and injectors there is very little difference between the two engines.
But when it comes to fuel efficiency in town we are defiantly seeing parity.
My outgoing Civic diesel did 34mpg around town my petrol 32mpg.
we will have the same discussion in about 5 years I recon but with petrol vs Electric/fuel cell.

Sporky

Axe_meister said:

But when it comes to fuel efficiency in town we are defiantly seeing parity.
My outgoing Civic diesel did 34mpg around town my petrol 32mpg.

Around town I can well believe it, and I agree with those who've said that any car that stays in a city centre most of its life shouldn't be a diesel.

Haych

sweepy said:

Petrol engines are so efficient that they are nearly on a parity with diesel, factor in other costs such as servicing and fuel prices and the Petrol versions just edge it 

Not sure that's strictly true. 

Diesel is more energy dense, which I believe contributes to the both the efficiency of the fuel and the pollution problem.  It also takes less energy to produce diesel than petrol but requires more raw materials (oil, I assume) per litre than petrol.

Maybe inner city driving and small engine cars will have similar performance and MPG figures but in the real world derv still beats petrol for economy.  I drive both a petrol and diesel.  Both cars are comparable in terms of size, weight, engine displacement, performance and transmission.  The petrol costs 6p more per mile to run in fuel alone over the derv.

The TDi is also significantly older and has been tuned with big injectors, MBC and remap and has some of the emission control systems removed.  Ironically doing this cleaned up the emissions no end.  Before I did the mods it used to smoke like Eddie Grant, now there's almost no visible smoke even when driven hard.  The MoT smoke test is the cleanest it's been since I've owned the car, too.

See, modding diesels is the way to go to clean up emissions - big nozzles, massive turbos and fancy software (but not written by VW)

Garthy

Sporky said:

crunchman said:

Garthy said:

Cirrus said:

So, if you've got a diesel that gets realistically 65mpg, how bad does the fuel economy of a petrol car have to be before it's worse? Or is it never worse, because on balance 20 gallons of petrol is still better that a pipette of diesel gases?

A golf 1.6 TDI punts out NOx69:0 mg/km, a 6.2 litre Corvette with a Supercharger puts out NOx 27:0 mg/km. 

I cannot find a petrol car that gets anywhere close to the Golf (as an example) for pollutants, and remember that NOx figure is the fiddled one. 

I've copied the figures and formatting from a green car website, it was just quicker and easier on the phone.

I think the actual figure is probably about 6 to 8 times the fiddled one so you are probably looking at somewhere over 400 mg/km - compared with 27 mg/km for the big petrol engine.

So are we now saying that NOx is the only important thing? Only that leads to just as daft a rabbit hole as saying CO2 is the only important thing, with everyone driving supercharged V8s to pay less tax.

I also think some verifiable figures would be handy here, not "found it on a website" "multiplied it by 8 for you"...

I know you just love to put words into people's mouths but just for once could you just read what is written and take it at face value.

Sporky

Garthy said:

I know you just love to put words into people's mouths but just for once could you just read what is written and take it at face value.

I didn't put any words in your mouth; I asked a question. Wind your neck in.

ICBM

Sporky said:

sweepy said:

Petrol engines are so efficient that they are nearly on a parity with diesel

Diesel typically still does 20% or so more mpg for the same performance. Petrol is catching up, certainly.

Yes, but diesel contains 16% more carbon per litre, which is were most of that comes from - which is why I keep going on about diesel needing to be more expensive by that amount in order to correctly tax the carbon dioxide emissions . Currently it's nowhere near that.

Diesel *is* still slightly more efficient even on top of that, but not a lot.

At the end of the day you have to burn a similar amount of carbon to release a similar amount of energy, so this isn't very surprising. As Evilmags said, fuel should be sold by mass and not by volume really.

pintspiller

Stevepage said:

Every time the government comes across a problem they're having difficulty solving, they seem to always settle for taxing the shit out of it. 

This isn't how problems are solved surely? 

It never really worked with ciggies. 

Bidley

pintspiller said:

Stevepage said:

Every time the government comes across a problem they're having difficulty solving, they seem to always settle for taxing the shit out of it. 

This isn't how problems are solved surely? 

It never really worked with ciggies. 

Nobody in government wants anyone to stop smoking though...

pintspiller

Too bad. I've been off them nearly seven years. 

That's two-fingers to them!

ToneControl

ICBM said:

ToneControl said:

hotpot said:

WoW! £20 a day tax to use your diesel vehicles in towns cities. http://www.msn.com/en-gb/cars/news/if-you-drive-a-diesel-car-you-could-soon-have-to-pay-up-to-£20-a-day/ar-BBzbbDU?li=AAmiR2Z&ocid=spartandhp

what party would do this to voters?
I assume about half of normal working people have diesels. Overnight they will all be charged £440 per month extra (or is it £600 if you live in the town?) just to get to work or take the kids to school? I don't think so

You mean like the parties (both Labour and Tory) who chose to make *all* the normal working people pay to drive into London?

Or the parties who have made parking so restricted and prohibitively expensive in Edinburgh that it amounts to the same thing?

It's going to happen. It has to happen, for the good of everyone who lives and works in cities. For what it's worth, I'm resigned to not being able to work in Edinburgh during the daytime for this reason, because I can't transport amps without using my car.

It should happen in 10-15 years, but not in any Uk city before that, except London

ToneControl

crunchman said:

Garthy said:

Cirrus said:

So, if you've got a diesel that gets realistically 65mpg, how bad does the fuel economy of a petrol car have to be before it's worse? Or is it never worse, because on balance 20 gallons of petrol is still better that a pipette of diesel gases?

A golf 1.6 TDI punts out NOx69:0 mg/km, a 6.2 litre Corvette with a Supercharger puts out NOx 27:0 mg/km. 

I cannot find a petrol car that gets anywhere close to the Golf (as an example) for pollutants, and remember that NOx figure is the fiddled one. 

I've copied the figures and formatting from a green car website, it was just quicker and easier on the phone.

I think the actual figure is probably about 6 to 8 times the fiddled one so you are probably looking at somewhere over 400 mg/km - compared with 27 mg/km for the big petrol engine.

http://www.air-quality.org.uk/26.php
says diesel without a cat does the same NOx as a petrol with???? is that right?

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/mar/11/have-diesel-cars-been-unfairly-demonised-for-air-pollution
says Diesels make 10x
but says "diesel’s contribution to air pollution is overblown, given the relatively small contribution (14%) cars make to the nation’s overall NOx emissions."
"“It would take 42m Euro-6 diesel cars (almost four times the number on the roads) to generate the same amount of NOx as one UK coal-fired power station,” says the Diesel Facts website."

http://www.autoexpress.co.uk/car-news/consumer-news/90816/euro-6-emissions-standards-what-do-they-mean-for-you

Euro emissions standards for diesel cars 

Euro standard	Date	CO	NOx	PM
Euro 1	July 1992	2.72	-	0.14
Euro 2	January 1996	1.0	-	0.08
Euro 3	January 2000	0.64	0.50	0.05
Euro 4	January 2005	0.50	0.25	0.025
Euro 5a	September 2009	0.50	0.180	0.005
Euro 6	September 2014	0.50	0.080	0.005

Euro emissions standards for petrol cars

Euro standard	Date	CO	NOx	PM
Euro 1	July 1992	2.72	-	-
Euro 2	January 1996	2.2	-	-
Euro 3	January 2000	2.3	0.15	-
Euro 4	January 2005	1.0	0.08	-
Euro 5	September 2009	1.0	0.060	0.005
Euro 6	September 2014	1.0	0.060	0.005

EU6 looks very similar for both

ICBM

ToneControl said:

"diesel’s contribution to air pollution is overblown, given the relatively small contribution (14%) cars make to the nation’s overall NOx emissions."
"“It would take 42m Euro-6 diesel cars (almost four times the number on the roads) to generate the same amount of NOx as one UK coal-fired power station,” says the Diesel Facts website.

That may well be true, but these days there aren't many coal-fired power stations in cities.

crunchman

ToneControl said:

Euro emissions standards for diesel cars 

Euro standard	Date	CO	NOx	PM
Euro 1	July 1992	2.72	-	0.14
Euro 2	January 1996	1.0	-	0.08
Euro 3	January 2000	0.64	0.50	0.05
Euro 4	January 2005	0.50	0.25	0.025
Euro 5a	September 2009	0.50	0.180	0.005
Euro 6	September 2014	0.50	0.080	0.005

Euro emissions standards for petrol cars

Euro standard	Date	CO	NOx	PM
Euro 1	July 1992	2.72	-	-
Euro 2	January 1996	2.2	-	-
Euro 3	January 2000	2.3	0.15	-
Euro 4	January 2005	1.0	0.08	-
Euro 5	September 2009	1.0	0.060	0.005
Euro 6	September 2014	1.0	0.060	0.005

EU6 looks very similar for both

As I've said over and over and over again, diesel cars don't actually meet the Euro 6 standard in the real world.  Even the ones who didn't deliberately fiddle the tests like VW still don't get anywhere near.  I remember reading that the average diesel produces 6 to 8 times as much NOx as it's supposed to.  Some of them are even worse than that.  The governments former chief scientific advisor was quoted in various articles a week or two ago using a figure of 12 times higher for some cars.

Also, even if cars make up 14% of the overall emissions,as @ICBM said it's concentrated in the big cities.  The majority of that 14% is probably concentrated in abut 3% of the country.