Life in Diesels Yet?

[ThomasG]

You remind me that Asterix comic book..
And village inhabitants.
Any teeny weeny excuse and there was fish fight.

Just like here

[biggbn]

I loved asterix!! Like obelix, I fell in the cauldron when I was a baby...😅

[ThomasG]

Originally Posted by biggbn

I loved asterix!! Like obelix, I fell in the cauldron when I was a baby...😅

It wasn't engine oil by any chance?

[GrahamHR]

Originally Posted by Harvey1512

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/cars/news/...cid=spartandhp

Really interesting if this can be rolled out. A game changer.

The same Bosch company that developed/ provided the "cheat" diesel emission software, but advised VW not to use it ?

[360beast]

If the new egr is as good as they say, how often will it need taking off and the soot cleaning out as it is blocked?

[chrisfr]

The debate about diesels is a bit backwards if you ask me. There are some pretty horific emissions on older cars both diesel and petrol.
Here in france, whenever you purchase and register a used car you pay an on off eco tax which is based on emissions. Also if the car has higher than 200g emissions it is charged an annual eco tax.
Stop start also makes a difference as it moves the car into a lower eco tax band.
The debate has seemed to runaway due to some pretty ill informed politicians mouthing off about a subject they know little about just to win brownie points ( a bit like michael grove and his plastic bags) The payback from emissions technology will not be for thirty years or so. In the meantime the planet is choking on fumes.
Where we used to live in the south of france there are so many emissions, ( so many cars) you can taste it. I used to go running on a track which was next to a dual carriage way and tied a hankerchief over my mouth for about five km. When i took off the hanky it was black. Not good , so i moved!

[Harvey1512]

Just adding to this. We get a free magazine at work, Company Car Today. An article in the latest issue talks about how Diesel 6 engines are giving out the same NOX values as the newest petrol engines. Bearing in mind the superior mpg of diesels then that swings the pendulum towards diesels again. However, and it is a big however, the political movement at the moment is anti diesel no matter the facts being put forward. Interesting though.

Another point put forward was how govt is trying to put the boot in to company cars. When people stop taking their company car, new, changed every 1-2-3 yrs, they usually buy a second hand car, not the latest engine, and run it into the ground. In effect they shun the latest, clean engines and buy older, dirtier engines. No criticism, if I got rid of my company car I would be buying a 2yr old car or similar. I had not thought of this but it does tend to show how policy is not thought through or joined up.

[Prufrock]

Originally Posted by Harvey1512

Just adding to this. We get a free magazine at work, Company Car Today. An article in the latest issue talks about how Diesel 6 engines are giving out the same NOX values as the newest petrol engines. Bearing in mind the superior mpg of diesels then that swings the pendulum towards diesels again. However, and it is a big however, the political movement at the moment is anti diesel no matter the facts being put forward. Interesting though.

Another point put forward was how govt is trying to put the boot in to company cars. When people stop taking their company car, new, changed every 1-2-3 yrs, they usually buy a second hand car, not the latest engine, and run it into the ground. In effect they shun the latest, clean engines and buy older, dirtier engines. No criticism, if I got rid of my company car I would be buying a 2yr old car or similar. I had not thought of this but it does tend to show how policy is not thought through or joined up.

Many companies are getting out of company cars, for many reasons. Also with diesels there's not only the issue of particulate emissions but of maintenance costs, especially with the new MoT testing criteria coming this month - biggest effect will be on newer, post DPF vehicles.

Also many buy/bought diesels because they were seduced by low excise duty, and for many, often low mileage users this was not a wise decision - for obvious (DPF failure) reasons. I've mentioned before SCR technology and Adblue is a crude way of reducing harmful emissions. Plus it adds on average £1500.00 per vehicle on top on the potential DMF and DPF failures.

The issues that the operation of diesels raises is not new (albeit brought to the public's attention by dieselgate), but the growth is quite interesting. In 1997 there were 2.4 million diesel cars on UK roads, by 2007 there were 6.6 million and by 2017 there were 12.4 million diesel cars on UK roads.

Diesel vans are also at an all time high of 3.9 million units.

In addition it could be argued that company cars distort the market, as do consumer PCP schemes. However, both consumers and companies taking residual risks/contingent liabilities are going to be in for a shock at defleet time.

Jon.

[Pigeon]

Originally Posted by chrisfr

The payback from emissions technology will not be for thirty years or so. In the meantime the planet is choking on fumes.

...and you are posting from a time machine

By which I mean... this has already happened. Air pollution levels have been falling steadily for the last couple of decades and are now lower than they have been for probably longer than most of us can remember, but you'd never know it given the way any discussion in the media is so careful to show graphs that only show the minor fluctuations over the last two or three years, and deliberately miss out the fall from much higher levels that would be seen on a graph covering a longer timescale because if they didn't miss it out it would show up their argument for the arrant nonsense it is.

The reason there is fuss about levels exceeding limits is not because the levels have gone up but because the limits have come into effect. They were originated many years ago, but in a somewhat surprising recognition that the figures were essentially pulled out of someone's backside, there was provision to put off the need to comply with them for several years so that "measures could be taken"; since there are no measures that realistically can be taken without converting the city concerned into a deserted ghost town, "taking measures" took the form of basically doing nothing and hoping that lowered-emission technology would do some magic. Which it did, but since emissions and technology are real while the limits are matters of imagination, it wasn't quite enough.

So we get the ridiculous situation where fantasists with good publicity make the fantastic and patently false claim that air pollution in London is as bad as it was during the 1950s smogs, and get away with it because there aren't many people around any more who can remember what the 1950s smogs were really like. Nor does it seem to matter that when the 1950s smogs killed thousands of people there were thousands of dead bodies to prove it whereas when they make the same claim about present levels the lack of dead bodies proves the claim false, which I suppose, to be charitable, we should put down to people's fear of death making them not want to go and check for dead bodies themselves. Nor do people seem to notice the utter irrelevance of an article about air pollution in London being illustrated with a photo of smog in Beijing, at which point I run out of charitable excuses and put it down to people just being too thick for words.

Then, of course, there was all the hysteria over VW that made it a fashionable subject in the first place and gave it the power to sell newspapers which has kept it going. I despair at the sight of the dribbling maniacs who screech about evil VW "deliberately killing people". VW did not kill anyone. It wasn't noticed because it was actually doing anything bad, it was noticed because someone got bored enough to measure it for the crack. If that someone had decided to turn the TV on instead it would not have been noticed, and it still wouldn't have been noticed now because there isn't anything actually noticeable about it.

The only people who seriously benefit from all the kerfuffle are the car manufacturers, because it generates a push for people to buy more new cars with new engine technology or with batteries. Of course, building all those new cars and obtaining the raw materials for them causes far more pollution than the negligible reduction in the already-very-low emissions saves, but it happens somewhere else so it doesn't matter.

[Prufrock]

Apologies, but the above is a nonsensical flat earther's rant. No wonder it's attracted thankers.

Jon.