The End of Diesels is here... FT article

The End of Diesels is here... FT article

Author
Discussion

neil1jnr

Original Poster:

1,462 posts

155 months

Thursday 19th March 2015
quotequote all
Apologies becuase I realise this topic has been covered numerous times but I don't know if this article has been posted before.

Just had a read of this:

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/627c6812-7faf-11e4-adff-...

'The promotion of diesel cars was a mistake'

'Aim to progressively ban diesel cars'

Based on everything I've read (my knowledge on this subject is quite low), including this article, I think it would be a good thing if taxing cars based on CO2 emissions was scrapped and an alternative method put in place. Banning diesels does sound a bit ridiculous though but in my mind, if diesels really are a bigger 'killer', becuase they are a bigger contributor to poor air quality than petrol powered cars, then I am all for having more petrols on the road than diesels.

The advent of moderns turbo petrols matching the low end shove of diesels and much improved mpg over NA petrols from 10-15 years ago, in my mind does make the diesel cars quite a silly prospect. Bring on low tax for petrol and high tax on diesel wink

Discuss?

MysteryLemon

4,968 posts

191 months

Thursday 19th March 2015
quotequote all
We shouldn't be taxing cars on any kind of emissions rating. It serves no purpose what so ever. VED should be scrapped and have the tax on fuel upped slightly to compensate. The more you use your car, the more you pay in Tax.

kambites

67,576 posts

221 months

Thursday 19th March 2015
quotequote all
MysteryLemon said:
We shouldn't be taxing cars on any kind of emissions rating. It serves no purpose what so ever. VED should be scrapped and have the tax on fuel upped slightly to compensate. The more you use your car, the more you pay in Tax.
That would still favour diesels as things stand because diesel has less tax per unit energy than petrol.

Monty Python

4,812 posts

197 months

Thursday 19th March 2015
quotequote all
No mention of articulated lorries and buses, which throw out more pollution due to lack of particulate filters and so on.

As for economy, petrol engines may have made some progress but they're still 30-40% behind when you compare like-for-like.

Jamesgt

848 posts

233 months

Thursday 19th March 2015
quotequote all
Don't forget the awful noise pollution they create too

snowley

183 posts

126 months

Thursday 19th March 2015
quotequote all
As stated above, for me the main issue is lorries and buses for which there has been no progress with petrol powered engines.....

V88Dicky

7,305 posts

183 months

Thursday 19th March 2015
quotequote all
Just tax cars on particulate emissions / hydrocarbons?

Steve_F

860 posts

194 months

Thursday 19th March 2015
quotequote all
Diesel works for certain vehicles currently and will continue to do so in the future. Large family cars, tow cars, vans and larger vehicles it makes a huge amount of sense. What would you rather take a family of four with luggage and a trailer/caravan in, a 1.0t petrol or a 2 litre diesel? Both would likely give similar mpg unloaded but can't see the petrol being efficient fully packed... Of course a large petrol engine would be nice but that's not the way to get a similar mpg.

Taxing it out of the ball park is just another way to ruin small business that run vans or similar. It would also do a lot of damage to the people who have these cars and can't fuel them or trade them in as they're so undesirable.

Where it went wrong was push to make small city cars diesel, it didn't make a huge amount of sense and never played on the diesel strengths.

Tax on the fuel just makes so much sense. Betting what is done though won't be the sensible option!

MrBarry123

6,027 posts

121 months

Thursday 19th March 2015
quotequote all
But isn't the problem only with those cars that don't have a DPF?

Why don't we therefore give owners of such cars two options: 1) have a DPF installed and allow a tax break of sorts as a thank you or 2) don't have a DPF installed but pay additional tax as a result.

toerag

748 posts

132 months

Matt UK

17,703 posts

200 months

Thursday 19th March 2015
quotequote all
kambites said:
That would still favour diesels as things stand because diesel has less tax per unit energy than petrol.
I'm sure the powers that be would just increase tax on diesel to further distance the two options (btw, this is what they'll do)

liner33

10,691 posts

202 months

Thursday 19th March 2015
quotequote all
Monty Python said:
No mention of articulated lorries and buses, which throw out more pollution due to lack of particulate filters and so on.

As for economy, petrol engines may have made some progress but they're still 30-40% behind when you compare like-for-like.
Modern trucks have euro 6 compliant engines with dpf's , not sure about buses but I would expect them to have to meet the same standards

knitware

1,473 posts

193 months

Thursday 19th March 2015
quotequote all
Ridiculous. After the amount of money and ‘education’ into kidding the masses into driving diesel cars the government now admits that they are wrong, remember how evil you were to drive a 6 or 8 cylinder petrol car.

Now they will spend money to educate us into scrapping diesel and get us into petrol, then electric, then back to diesel because petrol and electric are bad how about methane, lpg, hydrogen, no all evil, oh wait, maybe not hydrogen, no, hydrogen is bad, back to petrol or diesel.

Drive what you want to drive, otherwise you’ll end up a confused mess. Diesel hate is as much a fad as petrol was.

boz1

422 posts

178 months

Thursday 19th March 2015
quotequote all
kambites said:
MysteryLemon said:
We shouldn't be taxing cars on any kind of emissions rating. It serves no purpose what so ever. VED should be scrapped and have the tax on fuel upped slightly to compensate. The more you use your car, the more you pay in Tax.
That would still favour diesels as things stand because diesel has less tax per unit energy than petrol.
Both good points.

VED should be scrapped immediately. I can only assume they have not done because of politics "wah wah, I only bought my Aygo because it was VED-exempt..."

And clearly the per-unit-energy tax on diesel should be raised to a level such that, based on expected diesel consumption at the higher price, the revenues are sufficient to compensate for the damage of the particulate emissions. There are clearly bigger issues with this due to the consumption of diesel by various modes of transport that are important to the wider economy and the lack of readily available substitutes. Therefore I think they'd have to combine this with some transitional measures to have different tax rates for freight and other businesses who don't really have alternatives to diesel vehicles at the moment.

anonymous-user

54 months

Thursday 19th March 2015
quotequote all
£30 ved & 55+ mpg from my Diesel Superb
The headline is clearly nonsense as usual

ATG

20,577 posts

272 months

Thursday 19th March 2015
quotequote all
Air quality is also an urban problem. Traffic congestion is primarily an urban problem. Urban areas are far better served by public transport than rural areas. So ... how about varying the fuel tax by location? Assign a sales tax rate to each petrol station by some location banding.

Iang84

962 posts

166 months

Thursday 19th March 2015
quotequote all
liner33 said:
Monty Python said:
No mention of articulated lorries and buses, which throw out more pollution due to lack of particulate filters and so on.

As for economy, petrol engines may have made some progress but they're still 30-40% behind when you compare like-for-like.
Modern trucks have euro 6 compliant engines with dpf's , not sure about buses but I would expect them to have to meet the same standards
Trucks and buses are where the dpf/egr tech came from and has filtered down to personal vehicles they are normally a few years ahead of cars when it comes to emission standards

2005 Daf truck euro 4
2005 Ford focus euro 3
2009 Ford Mondeo euro 4
2009 Mercedes truck euro 5

BGarside

1,564 posts

137 months

Thursday 19th March 2015
quotequote all
Banning diesel cars would be farcical while the streets are still full of diesel-powered vans, buses and trucks emitting pollutants exactly where the pedestrians breathe them in.

If emissions matter, why is the government not incentivising proven cleaner fuels such as LPG, biodiesel and CNG?

A mileage-based tax, or additional fuel tax would be far more relevant if emissions were really a concern. Why should drivers like my father, who cover less than 1000 miles a year, pay the same as company car users doing over 20k miles per annum?

The system is a joke. I imagine the treasury is not happy with falling fuel tax revenues as people have switched to more economical diesel cars, which in turn has been driven to an extent by VED banding.

Ask yourselves does a Conservative government care about money or the environment? It's blatantly about tax, not emissions...


kambites

67,576 posts

221 months

Thursday 19th March 2015
quotequote all
I think the problem really is they want to find a way to tax diesels in heavily populated areas and petrols in unpopulated ones.

neil1jnr

Original Poster:

1,462 posts

155 months

Thursday 19th March 2015
quotequote all
Jimboka said:
£30 ved & 55+ mpg from my Diesel Superb
The headline is clearly nonsense as usual
Did you read the article? I don't get your point?