It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Subscribe to our Patreon, and get image uploads with no ads on the site!
Base theme by DesignModo & ported to Powered by Vanilla by Chris Ireland, modified by the "theFB" team.
Comments
As a two-wheeler we've known diesel was the fuel of the devil for decades, both in terms of belching out black pollutants and in terms of generating slicks of grip-reducers on the road. It'l be a godsend to see it priced off the roads
Hopefully cities will start banning the use of diesel vehicles for anything other than the sort of work it's good for - pulling heavy loads and long distance travel.
For drivers who don't do a lot of miles, diesel is already actually more expensive. It's just that people look at the headline mpg figure and don't actually do the maths about what it actually means. If you do 10,000 miles per year in a petrol at 40mpg you are going to spend around £1350 per year on fuel. If you look at Ford's official price list, a base model petrol Focus is £13,529 while the cheapest diesel is £16,262. You need to do a lot of miles to make up that difference. Even if you save 20% of the fuel cost by buying a diesel it's still going to take around 10 years to make up the difference in price.
Add in potential problems with clogged diesel particulate filters, and the costs that will add and it really isn't worth getting a diesel for most drivers. It's just that they haven't figured it out.
Currently, someone who buys a new diesel will get some of the extra they pay back when they sell the car on especially as someone buying a second hand car will prefer the one with the lower tax. The new tax changes will hit resale value on new diesels so it makes the economics of diesel even worse going forwards.
Having said that, you do need to do more than that. I've said this in other threads, but I would put an immediate rise of 1p a litre on duty on diesel. It would be largely symbolic, and prices would still be lower than they were a few years ago, but it would send a message. It would also help make older diesels marginally less economical to run compared with newer petrols and might help get a few off the road.
There are other things that can be done. Some London authorities are now charging more for residents parking permits for diesels which is probably a good way forwards. At the moment it's only around £20 per year, and is largely symbolic, but it will probably help.
The other problem that needs to be addressed is delivery trucks. This is from an article on the London Evening Standard website I read this morning:
Gridlock has been blamed on the increase in delivery vans and minicabs, rather than private car use, which has been falling.
There is no reason that deliveries in cities can't be made with electric vehicles. If you charged £25 a day for a courier company to drive a diesel 3.5 tonne van in a city, they would soon switch to electric, or at the very least, route their deliveries more efficiently.
You also need to look at more click and collect type services. The same Standard article suggests that TFL should look at click and collect services at their stations so that people could pick up parcels on their way home from work.
Its the "middle classes" being targeted again because they are a soft target.
One thing that isn't mentioned here is that diesel Fuel is actually a LOT more efficient to make than Petrol. So the usage in cars only tells half the story. Petrol whilst lacking as much NOx particulates emits more CO, CO2, Benzene and other aromatics as well as being less efficient on the whole.
The correct answer is electric cars and Hydrogen fuel cells, but whilst most of the world econpmyis oil based, the elites will not allow the switch easily.
When you look at equivalent models the difference is about £6-800 across the board, which you'll get back when you sell it (unless you keep it ages at which point the difference per year is vanishingly small).
I agree completely that a lot of people end up with diesel when it's perhaps not the most economical choice for them, and that that results in more/worse pollution in towns and cities, but let's be honest about the numbers.
£2k plus difference seems to be common. This article quotes £2400 more for a diesel Fiat 500 compared with a petrol.
http://www.whatcar.com/advice/buying/do-i-choose-petrol-or-diesel/
As an example, the Fiat 500 diesel does nearly 14mpg more than its 1.2 petrol sister, but its purchase price is £2400 higher. On economy alone, owners would need to cover more than 130,000 miles in the diesel before the fuel economy/purchase price equation levels out. Once servicing costs are factored in, the petrol car builds its advantage, ending up more than £900 cheaper to run over three years or 36,000 miles.
With average mileage for car drivers now only around 8,000 miles per year, why are most new cars diesel? People are stupid.
Some counter-examples: the Porsche Cayenne is significantly cheaper as a diesel - around £11,000. The Jaguar F-Pace is cheaper as a diesel - £35k vs £52k. The Audi A8 is £20k cheaper as a diesel.
And again you've ignored the resale value which is higher for diesels - that has a serious effect on the overall cost of ownership. Mostly people don't scrap their cars when they buy new ones - they sell them.
Most new cars are not diesel. In 2015 it was 48.4%. Again, if we're going to use figures can we use correct ones - particularly if you're going to call people stupid based on them.
Alternatively you could just do what the USA does and make petrol so cheap that no-one cares about mpg and the market for diesel disappears overnight.
I see both sides. As a driver, I like diesels, they're efficient, they're torquey, and in my experience I've had more go wrong with petrol cars than diesel cars.
However as a cyclist I find diesel fumes definitely make my exercise induced asthma worse, and I appreciate concerns about high levels of NOx in cities.
Petrol has its own drawbacks though, as they emit more CO2, and also measurable amounts of platinum, which a lot of people are allergic to.
Electric or Hydrogen is probably the future, but until the technology comes on a bit I'm sticking with my diesel.
"Oh, but I can't do that because work is so far from home? "
Start there.......
It very much is his fault - probably not his alone since I'm sure he had advice, but at the end of the day it came down to him signing off on it.
That still doesn't mean it's wrong to undo the mistake he made now.
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
Also, those who paid little tax for a diesel vehicle, now you pay tax like the rest of us, don't cry about it.
I run veg oil in my Landy, Its 32 years old, I still have to pay over 230 quid a year to tax it.
Genuine question - what are the particulates like when burning vegetable oil... the same as with mineral, or not? And the NOx? Obviously the carbon dioxide doesn't matter since the same amount was extracted from the atmosphere when the crops were grown.
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
It doesn't burn fossil fuels which is a good thing, but If I'm honest its the MPG and smoother running along with the power increase that makes me run it.
There is lots on Google regarding emissions, This came up in a brief search.
http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/2012/05/diesel-vs-biodiesel-vs-vegetable-oil/index.htm
Keep in mind my old Landy is old tech, its an indirect injection , no Egr or any emissions control for that matter, apart from the usual crank case vent back to induction, but its still on the road after 31 years and should last at least another 31 years so if what they say is true that scrapping a car causes the most pollution in a vehicles life then it cant be a bad thing, can it?
Does it look cool
Colour
Can I get my stuff in it
Does it need fixing
Will it need fixing
Make
MPG
Tax
Price
All the rest doesn't come into it, bit like buying a guitar