Diesel doom

[happypug]

Hi all.
  Has anyone else watched the channel 4 prog last night re dirty diesels. The presenter was very biast against diesel do cars, making all of us to be death merchants that we drive!!!!!  Statistics do not prove we are killing ourselves with fumes, he wants to come and breathe some proper air.  Major cities are a problem I know, but us country folk are ok.
 Mr arse boris Johnson wants to ban all diesel cars/vehicles from London, That's shit, what they gonna use to deliver goods, a helicopter I don't think so.  Lets all stick together and continue with great MPG. 
 I recall that 20+yrs ago petrol was the bad boy, it`s our turn now to be bashed.  Derv is here to stay with refinments, yippee. 

[Eeyore]

Yeh its a massive uturn for the government... having said previously we should all drive diesel and insentivising diesel cars... and now oh no they pollute more than we thought so everyone buy petrol again!

Living in london and in the country whenever I can you can really notice the difference in the quality of the air and water. Whenever I am at my London flat I feel ill because of the water. The countryside feels a lot fresher. Depending on where my job goes in th next few months I may get rid of that flat and just commute to the office when I need to.

[Mattcheese31]

Everything kills you, we're all dying slowly anyway, diesel makes me horny and what about svo anyway?

[Midnightclub]

Science doesn't lie, there's a lot more NO2 in diesel exhaust gas, along with soot and a few other chemicals (albeit newer cars with DPF's aren't going to cause as much of an issue). It's a big issue in major cities due to the sheer amount of diesel cars in such a small area meaning high concentrations. However, the fact that the government are the ones behind the push for everyone to go diesel and now a few years later they're saying they're completely wrong, is hilarious (in a bad way of course).

Guarantee it'll be the motorists that have to foot the bill in the end though, as always!

[r3k1355]

The government pushed Diesel cars hard, really f*cking hard.

This is their mess and they can't dump their stupid mistakes on us.

[zx_volcane]

Caught a bit of this - setting up a parent for a massive reaction shot when the reveal on how her supposedly eco diesel car was rotting her kids from the inside out from No2 was just a bit too much.

Pretty over dramatised, but then thats tv for you.

Think this all started with a bunch of politicians being kitted up with air pollution monitoring devices for a few days which opened their eyes to to the amount of death being pumped out of a congested city like London. I think the most death was being inhaled from sitting in a stationary taxi in the middle of rush hour - no real surprise there.

Anyway forcing everyone to ditch their current cars and buy into new is good for the economy right? Besides the 20 odd tonne of co2 from making the replacement car is bound to happen outside of the capital.

[Toms306]

Its your dirty old diesels that are the issue... I have a DPF and working EGR....nothing but fresh air leaves my exhaust.

Also who's buying diesels in London anyway? Hopefully no-one as they'll just be blocking up DPFs every week and getting no better mpg that a petrol anyway so its only really people from outside London that will have the issue.

That said, the biggest polluters are the busses, the cloud you get as they pull away is disgusting....Clarkson is on to something with getting rid of busses imo!

The gov't also aren't saying buy petrol....in London why not electric cars? Makes perfect sense there. My idea would be similar to park and ride or Boris bikes, that you drive your nice eco diesel ~50 miles to the edge of London, park up and hire an electric car for the day, no congestion charge, no fuel bill, and I'm sure on a big enough scale the rental could be fairly cheap.

[Ruan]

Oh my god, please don't start on electric cars...

You're telling me making batteries that last for a few years out of Lead, Cadmium, Sulphuric acid, Lithium and various other heavy metals are green for the environment... Yeah OK...

Also how are we going to charge these electric cars, we currently have coal and gas fired power stations and basically no nuclear - if we're talking air quality and lives affected per kWh generated, why the f*ck aren't we making Nuclear stations!

Also I just love this pie chart about NOx emissions from Camden in London:

[Mattcheese31]

I couldn't give less of a shit about London anyway, they don't give a fcuk about anyone but themselves, let em eat smog

[Toms306]

Its not a good idea everywhere Ruan, I wouldn't run an electric car out here for example, but in big city centres having petrol or diesel engines will always cause emmisions concentrated in one area. Short of walking or cycling (not ideal for commercial!), the only way round that is electricity atm (until hydrogen tech moves on).

Also, they should build more nuclear plants... I live near one and didn't get any superpowers unfortunately. I don't have a problem with them at all!!

[r3k1355]

The only positive point about Electric cars is the nasty emissions given off when they are created is usually in some shit-hole place no-one cares about.

They don't pollute the place the are used, so threfore they must be good for the environment right??

[bigcheez2k3]

Sit in traffic on the Strand and tell me you can't tell there isn't a problem. Windows up and air recirculater on because it stinks. Mixture of buses, cabs and delivery vans mostly.

[Toms306]

Everything creates emmisions somewhere, better there than having them here.

Electric tech needs to improve I agree, but there also needs to be a short term 'fix' and that seems a good compromise to me.

[ally406]

Diesels have never really gained a foothold in the states because even "clean" diesel is pumping out 5-7x the NOX of a petrol car, and a lot of the cars we drive here can't be sold state side. Despite NOX having a lot of serious health implications, politicians have priced petrol cars off the road and incentivised diesel to bring down CO2. Of course now we have several cities in the UK where NOX levels are breaching EU regulations by a huge margin and they have to do something about it. The new generation turbo petrol engines are delivering much improved fuel consumption and don't have the emissions problems of diesels, the future is likely small turbo petrol powered cars.

[Toms306]

Interestingly...newer gen small petrol, particularly tsi and similar tend to run very lean under light load...so they also have a problem with NOx...so they aren't the answer either lol.

There will NEVER be anything other than a compromise between emmisions while we're still burning shit like cavemen.

[tigerstyle]

and a lot of the cars we drive here can't be sold state side. 

Americanisms creeping into the English language is a bigger worry to the  UK than NOX 

[r3k1355]

Interestingly...newer gen small petrol, particularly tsi and similar tend to run very lean under light load...so they also have a problem with NOx...so they aren't the answer either lol.  

There will NEVER be anything other than a compromise between emmisions while we're still burning shit like cavemen.

There's also been alot of reliability issues with the VW Tsi engines, especially on the higher output models.
It's really only the really recent stuff thats actually worth buying.

[hotrodjacko]

Fancy watching this, what was the name of the program? I'll look on 4od...

Electric cars in big cities are the way to go I think, however where it comes from is important. We need more infrastructure whether its hydrogen/batteries/whatever.

I think that small petrol engines running as a generator would be a step forward - small turbo engines designed to run at a specific RPM, can be designed with great efficiencies; look at big gas gensets for example, almost 50% efficient.

[r3k1355]

Electric cars in big cities are the way to go I think, however where it comes from is important. We need more infrastructure whether its hydrogen/batteries/whatever.

To be fair I think the best way to go is more public transport, and have proper park and ride type facilities for drivers.

It's not good for every sod to drive their own car into a city centre, belching out fumes - the roads just get clogged up and no-one go's anywhere quickly.

The only solution is a futurama style tube system

[RetroPug]

Electric cars in big cities are the way to go I think, however where it comes from is important. We need more infrastructure whether its hydrogen/batteries/whatever.

To be fair I think the best way to go is more public transport, and have proper park and ride type facilities for drivers.

It's not good for every sod to drive their own car into a city centre, belching out fumes - the roads just get clogged up and no-one go's anywhere quickly.

The only solution is a futurama style tube system

The problem in the UK is that although great efforts have been made to make the proportion of people using public transport higher, they have focused on pricing motorists off of the road rather than simply making public transport so good you'd be a fool not to use it as it is the best option.

Other European cities (example Cologne in Germany) have nice, modern trams that run every few minutes, which are really cheap, with stations absolutely everywhere so you are never more than a few minutes walk from where you need to be and the outlying stations all have free carparks to park and ride and bus links. In this case, driving is more expensive and no quicker so people only drive if they need to. This also results in being able to drive into the city centre of a city over 1.2 million people in 15min from the outskirts and get parking quickly and easily and pay only a few euros for it as there is barely any congestion.

Obviously Cologne was bombed flat in the war so city planners had a lot of space to play with when designing infrastructure, however we should absolutely be looking at what works in other places as inspiration.

Public transport in most of this country isn't great and it certainly isn't cheap, hence people go to great lengths to avoid it.

[Mattcheese31]

Electric cars in big cities are the way to go I think, however where it comes from is important. We need more infrastructure whether its hydrogen/batteries/whatever.

Obviously Cologne was bombed flat in the war so city planners had a lot of space to play with when designing infrastructure, however we should absolutely be looking at what works in other places as inspiration.

so that's another vote for bombing London then? . . . . .

[RetroPug]

Electric cars in big cities are the way to go I think, however where it comes from is important. We need more infrastructure whether its hydrogen/batteries/whatever.

Obviously Cologne was bombed flat in the war so city planners had a lot of space to play with when designing infrastructure, however we should absolutely be looking at what works in other places as inspiration.

so that's another vote for bombing London then? . . . . .

All jokes aside...look at the road system in Coventry. Also totally rebuilt after WW2. It looks like someone threw a plate of spaghetti at a map and then built roads where it stuck. An industrious town in the heart of England that helped make Britain great is now one huge pile of concrete and overpasses.

[Alex]

My car has been on home made Bio-diesel for about ten years now. At MOT time, it reads 0.05 on the gasometer. Compare that to my Sprinter running on Diesel (same MOT station) chucking our 0.8 of the particles per million.

Ch 4 are biased anyway, they're part owned by the government so don't take everything they say as gospel.

[Orta]

Was talking about this issue in the pub a few weeks back and whilst none of us give a damn what happens in London how would they suddenly impose a ban on diesel cars? They would all instantly become worthless, people would be trading them in willing nilly, can you imagine the chaos? The price of a used petrol car (In particular small engined ones) will rocket. It'd be pandemonium. On the plus side I'd have an excuse to run the Rallye everyday haha.

What was the program's conclusion??

[Jonny81191]

how would they suddenly impose a ban on diesel cars?

Ch 4 are biased anyway, they're part owned by the government so don't take everything they say as gospel.

Same way they got everyone to buy a diesel. Media.

[Niall]

Now, although i do agree that media hype is shite, has no one realised that the biggest and most obvious thing which isn't under the control of the media is the change in technologies in the past 5 years. Small turbo petrol engines are becoming more and more popular and common. Very low emissions, shit loads of torque and power. May not be achieving the 80+mpg that modern diesels are but they are a lot cleaner and still meet the needs of most motorists who just expect a car to take off regardless of where you are in the rev range (e.g people just not knowing how to drive lol)
Diesel is never going to disappear but there is pros and cons to both. A petrol arctic lorry for example wouldn't be a great idea by far (depending how tech changes i suppose in the future) but what is the real need for a silly torquey diesel in your average saloon which spends all day on the motorway when you could fit a lower polluting petrol engine that does the job just as well!

[Toms306]

Was talking about this issue in the pub a few weeks back and whilst none of us give a damn what happens in London how would they suddenly impose a ban on diesel cars? They would all instantly become worthless, people would be trading them in willing nilly, can you imagine the chaos? The price of a used petrol car (In particular small engined ones) will rocket. It'd be pandemonium. On the plus side I'd have an excuse to run the Rallye everyday haha.

What was the program's conclusion??

They wouldn't be trading them in...dealers only take cars they can sell! You'd have no option but to break (for petrols) or scrap the car.

It'd be so easy to force diesels off the road without imposing a ban though, just base the tax on NOx or particluates instead of CO2 - if diesel tax suddenly became ~£300 people would soon buy petrols. It's all very well worrying about the environment but everything comes down to money at the end of the day.

Also, have you tried buying a small petrol car? They're the least depreciating cars you can buy new!! Low running costs and reliability (no DPF/DMF) mean people forget that a car can be comfortable, well built and refined if it means they're wallets are a little bit heavier. I did buy one of those for the reasons above and hated it...decided to spend the money on something older, diesel and much better specced....running costs so far are the same as my sisters C1 but I get refinement, space and spec as well.

They're the cars you make money on as well, if I was trading I'd be buying 107/C1/Aygo/Up! etc...that's where the money is these days because people believe the media far too much.

[Poodle]

Now, although i do agree that media hype is shite, has no one realised that the biggest and most obvious thing which isn't under the control of the media is the change in technologies in the past 5 years. Small turbo petrol engines are becoming more and more popular and common. Very low emissions, shit loads of torque and power. May not be achieving the 80+mpg that modern diesels are but they are a lot cleaner and still meet the needs of most motorists who just expect a car to take off regardless of where you are in the rev range (e.g people just not knowing how to drive lol)
Diesel is never going to disappear but there is pros and cons to both. A petrol arctic lorry for example wouldn't be a great idea by far (depending how tech changes i suppose in the future) but what is the real need for a silly torquey diesel in your average saloon which spends all day on the motorway when you could fit a lower polluting petrol engine that does the job just as well!

Unfortunately when you drive one of these amazing, does-it-all, only-£99.99-for-your-very-own-tin-of-snake-oil, petrol turbo engines, you will never come close to the pollution and mpg figures posted by the manufacturer because the european driving cycle upon which the categorisation is based is complete horse shit. They're becoming more popular and common for exactly the same reason diesels did - because the government have jumped in and made them attractive to buy, it doesn't mean they're any better than diesels, they're just the latest fashion. A turbine is one of the most efficient fuel burning engines out there, but strap it to the back of your car and see how efficient it is then - it's just not suitable for the application. What use is a silly pathetic petrol in something bigger than a hedge trimmer when a decent diesel could do the job better and without running flat out (ie out of it's efficiency range)?

[lolsteve]

We should get a giant pump and pump all the crappy pollution air from london and dump it somewhere where the residents are so off their face on special brew and attic grown weed that they wouldn't even know..somewhere like Hull for example
Public transport is the way to go, im a massive hypocrite at the moment as i drive instead of taking the bus but shut up as ill start walking in the summer
The Manchester tram system is pretty alright actually and if it's just you going in then it's definataly cheaper than driving you car there and parking up in the city. But when there's 2 or more its just more cost effective to drive really
It also doesnt smell that bad.

The london overground can eat a dick however as thats just full of chavs & single mums with too many kids running about

[Paul_13]

Just build a massive wall around the m25 and keep them all in.
Or Simpson style and put a massive bowl over it, then nuke it.
Population needs thinning out anyway ;P