Diesel backlash

[Censorious]

We could use public transport but much of that is diesel and if demand goes up, guess what might also happen?

Yes, emissions!

We could walk or cycle.

My experience of an 8 mile walk to the garage the other week involved me having to walk on semi rural roads without pavements where cars failed to see me (despite wearing bright clothing and it being mid day).

Being brushed past by a car doing 50mph if fecking frightening!

So that is one hurdle to walking instead of driving.

The other downside was that it took me around an hour to walk 8 miles (I know ...I walk slow), whereas it would have taken 10 minutes by car.

Would I give up my cars?

No!

[Pan Pan]

The ecomentalists bleat on about flying, but an airliner is just a bus with wings and possibly more efficient per passenger mile than any ground crawling bus.
What the ecomentalists hate is people having the freedom to move about.
A classic case is the environmental section of the Grauniad. Sometimes with several articles denouncing the practice of flying in airliners, but right next to the Environment section tab, there is a travel tab, with articles encouraging its readers to fly from the UK to Hong Kong, to try the meatballs! or to Mexico, to watch the street festivals FFS.

[CrisW]

Censorious said:

We could use public transport but much of that is diesel and if demand goes up, guess what might also happen?

Yes, emissions!

We could walk or cycle.

My experience of an 8 mile walk to the garage the other week involved me having to walk on semi rural roads without pavements where cars failed to see me (despite wearing bright clothing and it being mid day).

Being brushed past by a car doing 50mph if fecking frightening!

So that is one hurdle to walking instead of driving.

The other downside was that it took me around an hour to walk 8 miles (I know ...I walk slow), whereas it would have taken 10 minutes by car.

Would I give up my cars?

No!

You walked down a road? No wonder the drivers were cutting it close they were undoubtedly incensed that you were clearly without either road tax or insurance. Frankly you are lucky that they didn't execute you on the spot.

[aeropilot]

Censorious said:

The other downside was that it took me around an hour to walk 8 miles (I know ...I walk slow), whereas it would have taken 10 minutes by car.

One hour for 8 miles, that's hardly slow....... that's light jog, not a walk, considering that the a reasonably fit adult human is considered to be able to walk at 3 miles per hour.

[jmorgan]

We used to work on 3-4 miles an hour on a good surface when route planning. Down to 2 or less for the rougher terrain.

[edward1]

Most car buyers don't know what a DPF or DMF is let alone what it may cost them should it have an issue. The recent focus on nothing but CO2 emissions has resulted in current VED bands. Joe public wants a nice shiny new car doesn't like having a once a year bill for £280 for road tax and the fact that you notice on a weekly basis when your fuel bill goes up, so they are tempted by the promise of mega mpg (only ever achieved when on a test rig performing the current north European drive cycle) and no/low tax. They don't care about the stuff coming out the back only the money in their pocket.

I was ventured into diesel ownership, I was getting fed up with the consistent increasing fuel costs, so when my car got written off, I bought a 156 JTD16v. No DPF thankfully. It had the same BHP as the petrol it replaced and at the time (having driven a great number of oil burners through work) the JTD engine was one of the more progressive in terms of power delivery. For normal driving it wasn't a bad experience in fact the mid range torque meant it felt quicker. However on average it only did around 10mpg more than the petrol and seemed to like clutches. Shortly after getting it I had to replace the clutch and DMF then after 50k miles it started slipping again. Needless to say I traded it in. Given my last petrol had done 160k on its original clutch I was assuming it wasn't down to my driving.

For the family vehicle I have gone back to petrol. The main reason that I don't believe my 25-30 mile round trip with no significant high speed sections would keep a DPF clear and not leave me with big bills.

On my other car I run on LPG which if we really car about clean exhaust emissions should have caught on more than it has. Not to mention the cost saving, a big V8 for the fuel costs of a oil burner.

Also as a cyclist I can definitely say that diesels stink. Until more people get bitten by the potential costs of a diesel or the tax system changes we won't see any change on our roads any time soon.

[windy1]

Is this diesel clean?


corsapipe 001 by windy911, on Flickr

[MH]

ORD said:

I get the point that most car buyers dont think very deeply about the total cost of running a car, but how on Earth was anyone ever persuaded that diesel was the way to go for economy and/or the environment?

The current generation of highly complex diesels are still very polluting (in the ways that matter), do not actually get great MPG in the real world.

Ha ha, talk to the hand
My 2.0 diesel does 62 mpg easily on 120 miles a day. But I did do quite a bit of real mpg research before buying it.

[The_Burg]

Diesel winter shed does high 40's mpg and actually is quite rapid. 60+ on long distance.
(1.9 TDi remapped to 170hp allegedly). Pretty impressive and the shove in the back is impressive.
Normal car has 140 ish and does 30mpg and would be left for dead by turbo shed.

On paper the shed is over 3 seconds slower to 60. In the real world it would struggle.
Diesels have the peak where it is actually used. For a petrol you need to be revving to double the rpm. Which is much more fun, but in normal go to work / shopping etc the diesel wins every time.

[Flibble]

The MPG thing is a bit of a red herring as so much is down to driving style. People who buy fuel efficient cars mostly drive them for efficiency and get high MPG. People who buy fast cars mostly drive them fast and so get low MPG. If you compare one to the other (as has been done countless times in this thread) you're only really comparing drivers, not cars or fuel types.

Simply buying a diesel without changing driving style won't magically get you double the MPG, you'll get around 10 mpg more at best as mentioned above. Buying an underpowered car to "save fuel" in some cases lowers MPG as you end up ragging it hard to get some performance out of it.

[ORD]

The_Burg said:

Diesel winter shed does high 40's mpg and actually is quite rapid. 60+ on long distance.
(1.9 TDi remapped to 170hp allegedly). Pretty impressive and the shove in the back is impressive.
Normal car has 140 ish and does 30mpg and would be left for dead by turbo shed.

On paper the shed is over 3 seconds slower to 60. In the real world it would struggle.
Diesels have the peak where it is actually used. For a petrol you need to be revving to double the rpm. Which is much more fun, but in normal go to work / shopping etc the diesel wins every time.

I have never understood this argument about diesel acceleration. You ARE allowed to change down to get into a petrol car's power band. A lot of journos now assume that is beyond the average driver so talk about 'usable' power (i.e. how well a car will pull in a high gear).

[wemorgan]

Pan Pan said:

The ecomentalists bleat on about flying, but an airliner is just a bus with wings and possibly more efficient per passenger mile than any ground crawling bus.

But no one flies 20 miles to work. When flying you typically travel >1000 of miles. When looking at pollution per person per year then flying is quite extravagant.

[StuntmanMike]

Yet another tedious pointless thread about diesels, if you don't like them don't buy them.

[stuart-b]

I love my diesel
It has 210 bhp, lots of torque
It drives easier than petrol BMW's, but not as exciting admittedly
I got down to 14 mpg with a twin turbo BMW petrol around the Alps
Driving across Europe covering 1000+ miles, with 140+ mph autobahn stints and cruising at 85-90 mph, I still get 47 mpg
It hasn't blown up yet, nor injectors gone pop, turbo is fine, no soot at all (confirmed by friends)
I average 650 miles to a tank which costs 60 euros in Europe

I really want a petrol, but only as a fun weekend car!

[mybrainhurts]

My diesel is so clean it doesn't register on the MoT kit.

[Matthen]

JamesK said:

Even assuming the following:

Average price per litre of £129.75 petrol / £136.26 diesel (current national average prices)
A saving of £20,000 in fuel (the absolute minimum I can infer from your comment)
That your petrol was HALF as efficient as your diesel (25mpg / 50mpg)

You would have to do over 178,000 miles to achieve that saving.

If all that is true then well done. Yes I am bored.

I object. I paid 132 pence for a litre of diesel last week - a damn sight less than the 136 pounds you're suggesting is average. Incidentally - My diesel car returns 72 mpg @ 60 mph - the petrol equivalent returns 35... so your numbers aren't completely unrealistic.

[ORD]

Matthen said:

JamesK said:

Even assuming the following:

Average price per litre of £129.75 petrol / £136.26 diesel (current national average prices)
A saving of £20,000 in fuel (the absolute minimum I can infer from your comment)
That your petrol was HALF as efficient as your diesel (25mpg / 50mpg)

You would have to do over 178,000 miles to achieve that saving.

If all that is true then well done. Yes I am bored.

I object. I paid 132 pence for a litre of diesel last week - a damn sight less than the 136 pounds you're suggesting is average. Incidentally - My diesel car returns 72 mpg @ 60 mph - the petrol equivalent returns 35... so your numbers aren't completely unrealistic.

I expect those numbers are closer together over a tank, though, aren't they?

I did the same run in a 320d and a Cayman S recently, driving both like a granny (except for overtaking and a few bursts of acceleration): 55mpg in the BMW, 35 mpg in the Pork.

I think a lot of the difference that most people see results from the fact that people drive fuel efficient cars in a fuel efficient way (because it's no fun no matter how you drive it), whereas it's hard to resist driving a fast petrol car like a fast petrol car. If you wanted to, though, I reckon you could push 40mpg over a tank in some pretty decent petrol cars (including NA ones).

[Pan Pan]

heebeegeetee said:

otolith said:

heebeegeetee said:

What has diesel got to do with the smog?

Oxides of nitrogen would be the main thing, not particulates.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/jul/08...

See, in that link it says "At the end of June, the EU refused to give the UK more time to meet limits for long-term public exposure to nitrogen dioxide. Originally set in 1999, these limits should have been met by 2010. Urban nitrogen dioxide is mainly from traffic. While exhaust catalysts have decreased total nitrogen oxides from petrol cars by around 96%, real-world tests show that pollution controls on diesel cars are not as effective. "

There must be more diesel cars in use in Europe, how is that we are suffering problems caused by diesel cars more than they are?

Most of the emissions which choke cities, come from houses, and industry, lets ban houses, factories and office buildings completely, and schools and hospitals, supermarkets and cinemas, that way our air will be perfect. (except it won`t, because emissions don`t respect boundaries, and other countries are far more polluting than the UK.)

[daemon]

MH said:

ORD said:

I get the point that most car buyers dont think very deeply about the total cost of running a car, but how on Earth was anyone ever persuaded that diesel was the way to go for economy and/or the environment?

The current generation of highly complex diesels are still very polluting (in the ways that matter), do not actually get great MPG in the real world.

Ha ha, talk to the hand
My 2.0 diesel does 62 mpg easily on 120 miles a day. But I did do quite a bit of real mpg research before buying it.

+1

My golf 1.6TDI has average 65.5mpg with brim to brim fills over the last 24,000 miles (a year). On typical work commutes i easily break 75mpg, with the average dropping back because of evening and weekend short runs.

[daemon]

ORD said:

I have never understood this argument about diesel acceleration. You ARE allowed to change down to get into a petrol car's power band. A lot of journos now assume that is beyond the average driver so talk about 'usable' power (i.e. how well a car will pull in a high gear).

And likewise you are allowed to change UP in a diesel car - something that a lot of petrol advocates dont seem realise - "oh oh but its all out of power at 3,500 revs"