The future of dieselshite: is it bleak, or bollocks?

[lisbon_road]

Really agree with that last comment. 

 

Don't forget all the stuff about particulates.  The notion that higher Euro diesels produce much more of the smallest most damaging particulates.  There are even views that most modern petrol also do, then that stuff about metallic particulates - we have VW to thank for the current NOX obsession - not that I am saying NOX isn't nasty, just that we're regarding it as a one issue problem.  It isn't.

 

We have a situation where the government is in the pocket of industry and saying that the answer is to penalise older diesels, and perhaps petrol.  The proposals seem to refer to the penalty being higher taxes on entry to zones for vehicles that actually aren't likely to be there in great numbers. 

 

I rarely drive into town here anyway.  Yesterday, went on the bus with my daughter, very convenient, but £5.50 return for both of us.  Phew.

[jonathan_dyane]

But why bring reality into it?

 

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DDCDsKHCE8s

[Lacquer Peel]

NOX is a problem with direct injection petrols and diesels isn't it?

 

Surely the answer is to bring back indirect injection diesels and simple multipoint FI petrols from the 90s.

[dieselnutjob]

smog is caused when hydrocarbons mix with NOx isn't it?

 

as diesel engines produce no hydrocarbons you could just ban all petrol engines from London.

 

No more hydrocarbons, no more smog.

[Snipes]

smog is caused when hydrocarbons mix with NOx isn't it?

 

as diesel engines produce no hydrocarbons you could just ban all petrol engines from London.

 

No more hydrocarbons, no more smog.

I can't find any specific figures after a quick google but diesel does contain hydrocarbons, and hydrocarbons in the exhaust is unburnt fuel so I can't see how they produce no hydrocarbons? I can see they might produce less, as there's no air throttle (unlike petrol).

[lisbon_road]

NOx is more of a problem with diesels than petrol engines as (by my understanding), peak combustion temperatures are higher, and there is always surplus oxygen as diesels don't have a throttle valve, they meter the diesel.  Now of course they have EGR valves to recirculate the exhaust gases to reduce peak temperatures and reduce the oxygen present, thus making less NOx, and exhaust treatment to remove NOx which has clearly highly variable efficiency providing it is switched on.  But the problem is intrinsic, and we get back to the difference between road and lab test results and so on. 

 

That's my understanding anyway.

 

Diesels will produce unburnt hydrocarbons in the exhaust but the quanities now are I believe considered very small.

[gordonbennet]

Depending how badly you need city access in your car, this demonising of Diesel might well work in our favour.

 

Bought carefully, preferably avoiding anything with a DPF, you can still buy some brilliant Diesels, if a panicing public do their usual and flog 'em off soon as (offloading which could be infectious when it starts) we might pick up some real bargains, OK so ved might go up a bit and some cities will probably try to extract their share of the loot, but the savings in buying fire sale style could well make up for the downwsides.

 

Buy the right models and when the taxes/charges/barring become too much just sell on to some bugger who'll send it to another country it can run around quite happily for another decade.

[Guest yertiz]

Hi I am new to this Forum and this is my first post, re the Diesel, what they need to do is let the engines breath, lets start by removing the EGR units, and the DPF systems, who ever dreamed the DPF up was a closet Pervert, now the engines are breathing lets look into the ECU settings, most Diesels are set for average Diesel fuel, just in case you need to drive across Africa etc etc, advance the timing a tad and see how they go, I do believe that would be a significant move to making them cleaner, the problem we have current young spotty designers don't know Diesels from old, they are told this is how it works so design round that, TOTAL IDIOTS ITS LIKE THE BLIND LEADING THE BLIND ans as always the general public pick up the tab Hey Ho

[forddeliveryboy]

 

 

The motorist is an easy target, they can effectively charge us what they like and we have no option but to pay it because we need to use our cars, its a bit like how they heavily tax cigarettes and alcohol, claiming theyve done it to put people off doing it, nonsense, if that was the real aim they could easily ban it or make it illegal, they do it because of the revenue it brings in, which if people did quit smoking and drinking theyd be fucked without!

 

 

 

 

It's tantamount to extortion, forcing people into cars then taxing them and their fuel so massively when there is no alternative. People are increasingly treated with the contempt a bad landowner did in the age of the feudal society, but sufficiently cleverly that most never realise.

 

How is it acceptable to tax something which is already taxed, as is the case with fuel?

[oman5]

According to Transport for London there are 2.56 million cars in London; 0.3 per adult.

London and many other cities need to face up to the fact that the car itself is the real pollutant.

Even if motor vehicles were fuelled by fairy dust transmuting into fresh air they would still ruin cities because of the sheer quantity of moving metal that results. A city that has space for 10 million people doesn't have space for 3 million vehicles. Private cars make no sense as the basis for transport in dense urban areas.

 

Anyway, as for Diesel engines - when I was in Los Angeles 20 years ago, the buses were Diesel / natural gas, which is basically an ordinary Diesel engine running ordinary diesel oil at low power; above tickover, power is increased as required by mixing the natural gas with intake air. Said to be down on power but pretty clean. I think this was tried in London Taxis recently. Not a way forward for a 12 year old 2.2DCi Laguna but maybe for city trucks, vans and buses? 

 

LPG conversion might be a way also to keep old classic vehicles acceptably clean, be they petrol or Diesel. Anyone tried LPGing an old Diesel?

Asda's Avonmouth depot runs a whole fleet of gas/diesel Volvo FMs. They run mainly on gas with a dribble of diesel to help things along, when you get to a hill they are supposed to swap over to diesel for more power. They are total shite. Down on power doesn't come close.

[Bianconeri]

It's tantamount to extortion, forcing people into cars then taxing them and their fuel so massively when there is no alternative. People are increasingly treated with the contempt a bad landowner did in the age of the feudal society, but sufficiently cleverly that most never realise.

 

How is it acceptable to tax something which is already taxed, as is the case with fuel?

The 'tax on a tax' thing has bugged me for years but you have to go back to when duty was first levied on fuel I'm afraid. Every government since then has felt able to put purchase tax / VAT on top of the Excise Duty. I suppose it would be fairer to just put VAT (nowadays) on the pre-duty price, remiving the VAT we pay on the Duty, but that would cost mega bucks.

 

Governments have to get money from somewhere and the more we as a society expect from government in the way of services the more it costs each of us. The motorist has always been a cash cow for every Chancellor for over 100 years.

[Bianconeri]

Really agree with that last comment. 

 

Don't forget all the stuff about particulates.  The notion that higher Euro diesels produce much more of the smallest most damaging particulates.  There are even views that most modern petrol also do, then that stuff about metallic particulates - we have VW to thank for the current NOX obsession - not that I am saying NOX isn't nasty, just that we're regarding it as a one issue problem.  It isn't.

 

We have a situation where the government is in the pocket of industry and saying that the answer is to penalise older diesels, and perhaps petrol.  The proposals seem to refer to the penalty being higher taxes on entry to zones for vehicles that actually aren't likely to be there in great numbers. 

 

I rarely drive into town here anyway.  Yesterday, went on the bus with my daughter, very convenient, but £5.50 return for both of us.  Phew.

It's particulate matter (PM10, PM5, etc - the smaller the number the smaller the particle) that has always seemed, to me at least, to be the nastiest part of the cocktail. You can reduce gas emissions by various chemical means, they are complicated and not neccesarily nice and you may end up with something worse...... Particulates are solid 'things' though and need to be filtered or burned ( creating more gaseous stuff), and it's de rigeur to remove filters.

 

I remember on Dodgy Jim or whatever the website is about 12-15 years ago, just about every thread was hijacked by the pro-diesel lobby. There was lots of speculation about the first compny to go diesel only and anyone who raised issues about things like particulates was a heretic.

 

I'll come clean, I've had a three diesels over the years. The Honda was great but not much fun, the Volvo D5 was unreliable and the Skoda (2.0 litre common rail) was a hopeless, noisy pile of crap. Then I got better!

 

I think the future is either hydrogen fuel cell or electric or maybe a hybrid of the two. But I know no more than the next man I'm afraid.

[DodgeRover]

Asda's Avonmouth depot runs a whole fleet of gas/diesel Volvo FMs. They run mainly on gas with a dribble of diesel to help things along, when you get to a hill they are supposed to swap over to diesel for more power. They are total shite. Down on power doesn't come close.

Those are CNG rather than LPG aren't they? Obviously been tuned for maximum polar bear saving.