How much longer will diesel be a viable option
Discussion
Very soon I'm going to be starting a lot of regular long journeys circa 400 each way bi Weekly
I currently have a petrol mondeo and in the past months have thought about replacing my shed with a diesel equivalent or similar. But the government and papers kept kicking up stink about diesel and now the whole VAG saga.
How long will Joe public still be able to use diesel. Or am I over thinking and there's still years if not decades of diesel motoring to go.
I currently have a petrol mondeo and in the past months have thought about replacing my shed with a diesel equivalent or similar. But the government and papers kept kicking up stink about diesel and now the whole VAG saga.
How long will Joe public still be able to use diesel. Or am I over thinking and there's still years if not decades of diesel motoring to go.
Ice engines in the round might be diapalced by electric motors in passenger cars in a decade or so maybe. But for everything else I think the diesel will be the choice for a while. Certainly, current road maps for diesel go out to 2070.
Edited by Otispunkmeyer on Monday 28th September 21:42
It will be around for decades yet. Cheaper and more economical than petrol. Electric cars are still years away from being suitable as a replacement so I think you will be safe.
All VW have done is bodged the tests to show their cars as more efficient but it's not the end of the world.
All VW have done is bodged the tests to show their cars as more efficient but it's not the end of the world.
Challo said:
IAll VW have done is bodged the tests to show their cars as more efficient but it's not the end of the world.
Why do people persist in saying that the VW thing has anything to do with economy/efficiency? In answer to the OP, "it depends". Ultimately the question is political rather scientific or engineering. Diesel will persist as long as the government(s) prefers people driving diesels to petrols; as soon as that ceases to be the case, taxation will be modified to make petrols cheaper to run for most people and diesels will start to die off. As long as the primary political focus is on CO2 (and battery technology prohibits EVs replacing ICEs for long-range drivers), diesels are probably safe.
Edited by kambites on Monday 28th September 21:59
Challo said:
It will be around for decades yet. Cheaper and more economical than petrol. Electric cars are still years away from being suitable as a replacement so I think you will be safe.
All VW have done is bodged the tests to show their cars as more efficient but it's not the end of the world.
Wait until Tesla do the 3 series equivalent (2017?) 4secojds to 62mph 400-500mile range £35k. All VW have done is bodged the tests to show their cars as more efficient but it's not the end of the world.
Servicing costs ummm zilch.
kambites said:
Challo said:
IAll VW have done is bodged the tests to show their cars as more efficient but it's not the end of the world.
Why do people persist in saying that the VW thing has anything to do with economy/efficiency? In answer to the OP, "it depends". Ultimately the question is political rather scientific or engineering. Diesel will persist as long as the government(s) prefers people driving diesels to petrols; as soon as that ceases to be the case, taxation will be modified to make petrols cheaper to run for most people and diesels will start to die off. As long as the primary political focus is on CO2 (and battery technology prohibits EVs replacing ICEs for long-range drivers), diesels are probably safe.
Edited by kambites on Monday 28th September 21:59
Given that most commercial vehicles are diesel, the cost of replacing huge fleets of diesel engined vehicles for their petrol engined equivalents (which have to be designed to do the same job as diesels, and heaven only knows what size their fuel tanks will have to be to give them equivalent range?) is something the country is not in a good position to handle financially now, or for some time to come. Good or bad, it looks like diesel will be around for some time to come, because for the time being it has to be.
Pan Pan Pan said:
Petrol (and petrol engined cars) has been cheaper than diesel for years. It has only been in the last few months, that diesel fuel has become less expensive than petrol, but that did not kill off diesels. In fact despite the price / tax differences between equivalent petrol / diesel vehicles, the number of diesel engined cars has risen.
People have been buying diesel (cars) because they believe the total cost of ownership is lower. If the government wanted to reduce the number of diesels, it could very easily reverse that situation for the huge majority of drivers. ETA: I think we're probably going to see two changes in the nearish future which will push up the cost of running a diesel relative to a petrol. Firstly I expect to see major cities start to ban pre Euro-6 diesels in a bid to improve localised air quality; and secondly I think we'll see diesel fuel duty rise to be in line with petrol per unit energy (as opposed to per unit volume as it is today).
Edited by kambites on Tuesday 29th September 07:49
kambites said:
Pan Pan Pan said:
Petrol (and petrol engined cars) has been cheaper than diesel for years. It has only been in the last few months, that diesel fuel has become less expensive than petrol, but that did not kill off diesels. In fact despite the price / tax differences between equivalent petrol / diesel vehicles, the number of diesel engined cars has risen.
People have been buying diesel (cars) because they believe the total cost of ownership is lower. Pan Pan Pan said:
When actually the diesel equivalent of a specific vehicle has in the main been more expensive, yet still they bought them in their millions.
If the total cost of ownership isn't lower, it'll be even easier for the government to push people back to petrols should they choose to. Ultimately though I think the push will be to get people out of ICE powered cars and into EVs and the first target of that will be people who drive primarily in cities, not those doing 800 miles a day on the motorway. kambites said:
Pan Pan Pan said:
When actually the diesel equivalent of a specific vehicle has in the main been more expensive, yet still they bought them in their millions.
If the total cost of ownership isn't lower, it'll be even easier for the government to push people back to petrols should they choose to. Ultimately though I think the push will be to get people out of ICE powered cars and into EVs and the first target of that will be people who drive primarily in cities, not those doing 800 miles a day on the motorway. EV`s may well be the future, but to believe they are less polluting than ICE vehicles is just nonsense, since pollution does not recognize any boundaries (either in cities or countries) When the wind blows from the East, the UK gets all the pollution from the Oh so clean EU countries, and of course Russia, which does not give a rats a*se about pollution.
Perhaps if we can all get to a fully nuclear generation set up, EV`s might be regarded as a viable relatively clean option. but that may be decades and decades into the future (not to mention the infrastructure set up, that will be needed to make EV`s as viable as ICE vehices a currently are) based on the dire way we are dealing with the lights out scenario we are facing now.
Pan Pan Pan said:
...since pollution does not recognize any boundaries...
Of course it does! That's the whole point of this VW thing, really. Nitrous oxides in the sort of quantities that these diesels are emitting would be a complete non-issue if they were being released away from populated areas. Where pollution of this type is produced is very important. We do not get significant quantities of nitrous oxide pollution from the EU or Russia. But yes, the key thing with EVs is that it doesn't matter where the electricity comes from or how it's generated. At the moment they may not be significantly better than ICE powered cars in terms of end-to-end fuel economy but focusing on improving electricity generation is much easier than focusing on improving our electricity generation and cars. Certainly for what I use my car for, an EV would be both more efficient and more practical/convenient than my ICE powered car. However a diesel would be utterly stupid for my usage, which is why I think diesels have less to fear from EVs than petrols, at least in the short term.
Edited by kambites on Tuesday 29th September 08:17
Ive had a Nissan Leaf for the past 7 days. As a commuter/school run etc car I cant think of any negatives about it. It drives pretty well, is responsive, ok the suspension is set up to soak up the bumps but that isnt a bad thing when you are plodding to work back and forth. The real bonus is the price to charge up. I live 5 mins away from a motorway services so can basically run the car for free using their charge points. It wont be long till the technology is available to travel 300 odd miles, and not just for the Tesla owners.
kambites said:
Pan Pan Pan said:
...since pollution does not recognize any boundaries...
Of course it does! That's the whole point of this VW thing, really. Nitrous oxides in the sort of quantities that these diesels are emitting would be a complete non-issue if they were being released away from populated areas. Where pollution of this type is produced is very important. We do not get significant quantities of nitrous oxide pollution from the EU or Russia. If you sat in a closed garage with a running petrol engined vehicle for half an hour, would you feel wonderful? How does the UK prevent pollution from other countries collecting here. Ever heard of volcanoes, and the way they spread `their' specific type of pollution around the world? what makes you think we can decide on, and then prevent specific types of pollution from reaching the UK?
Pan Pan Pan said:
Do you only want to focus on one type of pollution but blithely want ignore the rest?
No but that appears to be what you're doing. You said it makes no difference where pollution is produced, I'm just saying that's a ridiculous over-simplification; it makes an enormous amount of difference in some cases and a significant difference overall. Just breathing air in Shanghai for ten minutes and tell me localised pollution doesn't exist!
kambites said:
Pan Pan Pan said:
Do you only want to focus on one type of pollution but blithely want ignore the rest?
No but that appears to be what you're doing. You said it makes no difference where pollution is produced, I'm just saying that's a ridiculous over-simplification; it makes an enormous amount of difference in some cases and a significant difference overall.
Me, I don't want to breath in any of them, but that is not how the world we live in now works. So I just get on with what is, and hope I last a reasonable number of years, Some will get a lot more than me, others less, but that is how life works.
I never liked working in London, even many years ago, long before many diesel engine HGV`s let alone cars were in existence, and even then it was a filthy foul aired sh*thole (in fact it was even filthier and diseased, when we had no ICE at all and everything was pulled around by horses)
Whilst flying North of London, all one could see was a bubble of filth on the horizon
with the city set in the centre of it.
If we will insist on cramming millions of people into a small area, it is always going to be a filthy sh*thole no matter how we choose to move around inside it.
The answer of course is to get out of London, or any other sh*thole cities, where large numbers of root cause pollutants (people) are crammed into a relatively small area.
Edited by Pan Pan Pan on Tuesday 29th September 08:46
We don't have the infrastructure to charge EVs.
This (from here) shows that cars, light vans and motorcycles used 12.9 million tonnes of petrol and 12.4 million tonnes of diesel in 2012.
For petrol the energy density is 45.8MJ/Kg, lets use an engine efficiency of 25%. So that's 45.8MJ/Kg * 12.9M Tonnes *1000Kg/Tonne * 0.25 = 147705000 GigaJoules per year that actually get used for propulsion. The other 75% is wasted as heat.
Similarly for diesel, energy density is 45.5MJ/Kg, but engine efficiency is higher at around 35%, giving : 45.5MJ *12.4M Tonnes *1000Kg/Tonne * 0.35 = 197470000 GigaJoules.
Our combined energy need to drive EVs is 345,175,000 GigaJoules per annum. But the EVs aren't 100% efficient. If we use a figure of 90% efficiency (combined efficiency of EV motor, battery, charger, national grid, it's a guess & a very generous one), that need rises to a more realistic 383,527,778 GigaJoules per annum.
Since the national grid capacity is measured in Watts and 1J is 1W for 1s, we divide the EV energy need in Joules by charging time to work out the wattage that the national grid needs to supply.
Time available is 1 year, which is 31,556,926 seconds.
But these magical EVs won't be available to be charged 24/7. So the load can't be spread evenly onto the national grid over any 24 hour period. Let's guess that of the 24 available hours per day, all the cars are out and about during daylight hours & get plugged in at night. I'm going to use 8 hours per day out and about, 16 hours plugged in.
That reduces the time available to 21,037,950 seconds.
So the potential EV load on the National Grid is 383,527,778 GigaJoules / 21,037,950 seconds = 18.23GW.
Our 2015/2016 capacity (p36) is about 75GW. So we need an extra 24%, but current spare capacity is a woeful 5%
Waving a magic wand and fixing the EV battery / range problems is only half the problem. We'd need a lot more power stations and a serious upgrade to the electricity distribution network. The cabling from generating station all the way to our houses may need replacing / upgrading.
Oh, for anyone interested, I present Gridwatch.
This (from here) shows that cars, light vans and motorcycles used 12.9 million tonnes of petrol and 12.4 million tonnes of diesel in 2012.
For petrol the energy density is 45.8MJ/Kg, lets use an engine efficiency of 25%. So that's 45.8MJ/Kg * 12.9M Tonnes *1000Kg/Tonne * 0.25 = 147705000 GigaJoules per year that actually get used for propulsion. The other 75% is wasted as heat.
Similarly for diesel, energy density is 45.5MJ/Kg, but engine efficiency is higher at around 35%, giving : 45.5MJ *12.4M Tonnes *1000Kg/Tonne * 0.35 = 197470000 GigaJoules.
Our combined energy need to drive EVs is 345,175,000 GigaJoules per annum. But the EVs aren't 100% efficient. If we use a figure of 90% efficiency (combined efficiency of EV motor, battery, charger, national grid, it's a guess & a very generous one), that need rises to a more realistic 383,527,778 GigaJoules per annum.
Since the national grid capacity is measured in Watts and 1J is 1W for 1s, we divide the EV energy need in Joules by charging time to work out the wattage that the national grid needs to supply.
Time available is 1 year, which is 31,556,926 seconds.
But these magical EVs won't be available to be charged 24/7. So the load can't be spread evenly onto the national grid over any 24 hour period. Let's guess that of the 24 available hours per day, all the cars are out and about during daylight hours & get plugged in at night. I'm going to use 8 hours per day out and about, 16 hours plugged in.
That reduces the time available to 21,037,950 seconds.
So the potential EV load on the National Grid is 383,527,778 GigaJoules / 21,037,950 seconds = 18.23GW.
Our 2015/2016 capacity (p36) is about 75GW. So we need an extra 24%, but current spare capacity is a woeful 5%
Waving a magic wand and fixing the EV battery / range problems is only half the problem. We'd need a lot more power stations and a serious upgrade to the electricity distribution network. The cabling from generating station all the way to our houses may need replacing / upgrading.
Oh, for anyone interested, I present Gridwatch.
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