Diesel cars (toxic tax) announced

Sporky

crunchman said:

As I've said over and over and over again, diesel cars don't actually meet the Euro 6 standard in the real world. 

Do petrols?

The problem with any official test is that it has to be to a fixed standard or you can't make comparisons; that opens the test up to gaming. Even leaving the VW thing aside (and worth remembering that that applied to the last generation of engines, not the ones that have been on sale for the last few years), all the manufacturers build cars to do well in the tests. Small engines with turbos? Good on paper and in tests because the acceleration is gentle, so the throttle gets mapped to prevent the turbo from boosting in test conditions. Gear ratios are chosen for the tests. Start-up modes are set for the tests.

The new "real world" tests won't be much better because, again, they'll be to a set regime, and the manufacturers will exploit that regime.

strtdv

It looks like (initially at least) the changes will affect 2006 and earlier diesel cars, so I wouldn't​ panic sell your euro 6 diesel just yet!

I think there should be a well subsidised scrappage scheme for low earners to get rid of old diesels as many can't afford to just go out and buy a new hybrid.

My wife drives a 10 year old diesel Golf which we're planning to change later in the year. It seems a shame to scrap it though as mechanically it's still 100%, it's decent to drive, and has proven very reliable. Not too mention the fact that she paid £10k for it 7 years ago and you'd still get about £3k for it now..

strtdv

Oh, and it'll take a few years for the supply of decent petrol cars to catch up after years of diesel. I drive an estate, and currently the options on the used market for a nice spec petrol estate are a Golf R and a Volvo V60 Polestar, so not exactly built for fuel economy

Bucket

Fretwired said:

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.

At least once Brexit happens this will stop.

British pollution for British people!

hotpot

Talking of emissions it's a watershed day today ......Britain is set to run without coal power for a whole day on Friday (today) for the first time since the Industrial Revolution.
https://www.rt.com/uk/385587-coal-industrial-environment-greenpeace/

Haych

My diesel is almost 20 years old and still drives perfectly. My personal worry is how it will affect people who tow. Diesel autos are very popular among tow car drivers as they just pull better than the equivalent petrol powered car and still return a decent MPG. 

We did 120 miles last Tuesday with the caravan behind the old Volvo and it pulled like a train and still did over 30 ampg. My BMW 525i doesn't have nearly the same torque and it doesn't get much over 24mpg in any situation. Ask it to pull another tonne and a half and I reckon it'd be in single figures!

Diesel might not be politically correct anymore but it has some very practical applications for which there isn't an equivalent alternative. 

Anyway that's just my own concern. I'm sure diesel won't be banned, it'll just become a lot more expensive to own and run one. 

Sporky

Haych said:

Anyway that's just my own concern. I'm sure diesel won't be banned, it'll just become a lot more expensive to own and run one. 

Plus you'll have to put up with hysterical hand-wringers using words like "toxic" and phrases like "won't someone think of the children!" while ignoring that recent diesels are very clean and very efficient.

crunchman

Sporky said:

Haych said:

Anyway that's just my own concern. I'm sure diesel won't be banned, it'll just become a lot more expensive to own and run one. 

Plus you'll have to put up with hysterical hand-wringers using words like "toxic" and phrases like "won't someone think of the children!" while ignoring that recent diesels are very clean and very efficient.

I know you don't want to acknowledge this but recent diesels are not clean.  That's the problem.  The ironic thing is that diesel HGVs are clean:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jan/06/diesel-cars-are-10-times-more-toxic-than-trucks-and-buses-data-shows

It is possible to make cleaner diesel cars but the current Euro 6 cars are not.

On the subject of towing, a diesel makes sense for towing, but you are unlikely to be towing your caravan into central London, or any other big city.  It shouldn't really be an issue.  It's just unfortunate for caravan owners that they are likely to get hit with extra costs.

Wolfetone

What really hacks me off is the  state and cost of alternative means of transport. Our railways are expensive and an absolute shambles. I do a lot of EU travel and I can testify to this.

Sporky

crunchman said:

recent diesels are not clean. 

I disagree, and every time someone uses "toxic" or similar hysterical language it just reinforces that this is an emotional argument for them, not a logical one. Same for all the talk of punishment.

You never answered my question about whether petrol cars meet the Euro 6 standard in normal use, so I assume they don't either - at which point singling out diesels is daft.

Haych

Wolfetone said:

What really hacks me off is the  state and cost of alternative means of transport. Our railways are expensive and an absolute shambles. I do a lot of EU travel and I can testify to this.

More than that, although what you say is true, but what hacks me off more is that we have a transport problem and the cure is to attack the symptoms, not the cause. 

Same thing with Brynglas tunnels in South Wales, it's a nightmare so the solution is to build a new road. 

However, wouldn't it be a better idea to remove, not the traffic per se, but the need to drive to start with?

Shouldn't the government really be giving businesses the incentive to keep commutes to a minimum? Ok it won't work for everyone, but a lot of jobs can be done just as effectively from home as going to the office. 

My job can but I travel 25 miles each way into the city every day into an eight storey office building to do the same job I could do in my pjs at home. 

Even if I only needed to be in the office 60% of the time for meetings etc then that cuts down my personal travel a lot. Do that for 30% of the country's workforce and there's a lot less cars on the roads at peak times. Less cars driving into inner city areas and less pollutants as a result. 

Businesses could feasibly reduce the size of their premises and save on overheads too. 

Why this isn't embraced and encouraged in the business world I don't know, but it should be IMHO. 

Don't simply target drivers, remove the need to drive at least some of the time. 

speshul91

The issue there is its common sense, which there is a monumental lack of these days. 

Garthy

Sporky said:

crunchman said:

recent diesels are not clean. 

I disagree, and every time someone uses "toxic" or similar hysterical language it just reinforces that this is an emotional argument for them, not a logical one. Same for all the talk of punishment.

You never answered my question about whether petrol cars meet the Euro 6 standard in normal use, so I assume they don't either - at which point singling out diesels is daft.

Some do, some don't like the 1.0 ecoboost in Fords. The big difference is that they passed the lab tests legitimately where's the diesels didn't. 

menamestom

Sporky said:

crunchman said:

recent diesels are not clean. 

I disagree, and every time someone uses "toxic" or similar hysterical language it just reinforces that this is an emotional argument for them, not a logical one. Same for all the talk of punishment.

I'm pretty sure diesels affect my asthma more than petrols.  I've had plenty of new diesels that were supposedly clean but on start up, if I reversed and fumes entered the cabin, it would induce wheezing.

I wouldn't call them any more toxic than petrol, they'd both be toxic if you breathed the exhaust air directly, but diesels definitely are a trigger for me, whereas I love a good lungful of petrol fumes.  Anecdotal I know but there you go.

Plus it never ceases to amaze me how many diesels chuck out black smoke, even when relatively new.  I assume it's because they are not running right, therefore not really the cars fault, but you don't really get that with petrol.  Probably the DPF filter being clogged with the short journeys.

I'm not totally against diesels.  Wine makes me wheeze also and I have that still. And that needs delivering in trucks, so I wouldn't ban its use ;-)

Haych

Plus it never ceases to amaze me how many diesels chuck out black smoke, even when relatively new.  I assume it's because they are not running right, therefore not really the cars fault, but you don't really get that with petrol.  Probably the DPF filter being clogged with the short journeys.

When you put your foot on the gas in a diesel car the fueling is increased - that's how a diesel increases power for acceleration.  Unlike a petrol you can't just throw more air in without also throwing in more fuel - all that will do is increase combustion temperature until something melts. 

On most diesel engines the throttle is usually fully open very early in the rev range, fuel is used to regulate engine power.

So you throw in more fuel to get more power but until the turbo spools up there isn't enough air in the combustion cycle to efficiently burn all the fuel so you get black smoke.

Some emission controls don't help either.  EGR valves are pointless in my experience.  They're fitted I think to help reduce Nox emissions but they usually just allow the intake manifold to become sooted up and that hinders the flow of clean air needed to burn the fuel properly.

I blanked off the EGR valve on my car completely and the difference it made to black smoke was quite dramatic - it went from smoking quite badly on very mild acceleration to hardly smoking at all under very hard acceleration. 

hywelg

crunchman rsaid:

I know you don't want to acknowledge this but recent diesels are not clean.  That's the problem.  .

No the problem is we do not know how polluting diesels are in real world tests. There is some evidence that some are heavily polluting but until the EU finalise changes to the testing regime we will not have a definitive answer. And the part you are omitting is that we don't know how polluting petrol cars are either.

Sporky

Garthy said:

Some do, some don't like the 1.0 ecoboost in Fords. The big difference is that they passed the lab tests legitimately where's the diesels didn't. 

The only diesels that have been shown to have cheated are a particular generation of VW Group ones, none of which are still on sale. I'm not saying that was OK, but it doesn't include any recent (ie Euro6) diesels.

crunchman

hywelg said:

crunchman rsaid:

I know you don't want to acknowledge this but recent diesels are not clean.  That's the problem.  .

No the problem is we do not know how polluting diesels are in real world tests. There is some evidence that some are heavily polluting but until the EU finalise changes to the testing regime we will not have a definitive answer. And the part you are omitting is that we don't know how polluting petrol cars are either.

@hywelg - real world tests:
http://www.theicct.org/news/press-release-new-icct-study-shows-real-world-exhaust-emissions-modern-diesel-cars-seven-times
They found that the average Euro 6 diesel produced 7 times more than the limit.  I've seen other studies reporting figures that are lower than 7 times the limit but they were all around 4 times the limit or higher.

Please also bear in mind that the limit for diesels is still higher than for petrols in the first place - 80mg/km vs 60mg/km.  Seven times higher than the diesel limit would be 9 times higher than the petrol limit.

@sporky please read this:
http://www.carbuyer.co.uk/news/153072/petrol-outperfoms-diesel-in-new-real-world-emissions-index

To quote the relevant part of it:
Nearly every petrol engine claimed to comply with Euro 6 was rated 'A'.

That means they comply with the (lower for petrols) limit.  There were only a handful of exceptions.

Sporky

Ta!

So mine does comply with Euro6 in the new tests... ironic that the VW ones seem to do well.

Certainly highlights that - as I suspected - its not just diesels, though clearly diesels do worse in this test regime.

It'd be interesting to see how manufacturers adapt to the new test cycles. We all know they will.

hywelg

crunchman said:

@hywelg - real world tests:
http://www.theicct.org/news/press-release-new-icct-study-shows-real-world-exhaust-emissions-modern-diesel-cars-seven-times
They found that the average Euro 6 diesel produced 7 times more than the limit.  I've seen other studies reporting figures that are lower than 7 times the limit but they were all around 4 times the limit or higher.
.

That's a 2014 report so it's isn't actually testing the latest EURO 6 engines. for instance Ford didn't introduce their 1.5 EU6 engine until late 2015, same withe VW and their 2.0 102ps and 150ps engines. So they probably testes some nasty Asian 'EU6 '  engine. You do know dont you that Euro6 was not mandatory until Sept 2016? And The ICCT is a campaigning group, well intentioned no doubt, but their tests would have been designed to create a great headline. They would have picked 14 dreadful vehicles.

The second link shows that some of the newer Euro6 engines do actually comply in real.world tests. VW didn't introduce the 2.0 150ps EU 6 until late 2015 but it's there in that list as achieving A grade.