Diesel cars - all bad?

brownedge

The MSE article "20+ Tips for Buying a New Car" compared petrol and diesel cars in an unbiased way, without lecturing the reader about the effects of their emissions. So also, to its credit, did the latest RAC newsletter, which has an impartial questionnaire to help in choosing which type of car to buy. In contrast to these articles, much of the media, including the BBC, has accepted without question all the condemnation of diesel cars. Of course, they are all London or city-based, with dense traffic. I like my economical Fiesta diesel, and I cannot believe that by driving it in this part of rural windy North Wales I am choking people with particulates and toxic gases.

BeenThroughItAll

All depends on the use case as to whether or not a diesel is good/bad from a personal point of view; but from the perspective of society, diesels produce greater NOx and particulates, which are both, apparently, 'bad' - particularly in respect of the microscopic particulates which have been shown to cross the blood-brain barrier.


However, CO2 emissions from petrol cars are also 'bad'.


Basically, burning fossil fuels is 'bad'. Allegedly.


And no, I'm no tree-hugging, environ-mentalist, sandal-wearing rice-muncher. I like my 19-21mpg petrol car, thanks.

Strider590

Well the media, the govt and the big corporations all sleep together.
In 2008-2012 they were praising Diesel cars and really pushing sales, with incentives such as zero VED. Anyone with half a brain saw that diesel couldn't possibly be all that great.

Now it's all changed again and they're praising electric vehicles instead.

At the end of the day, all they're doing is looking after each others interests, new car sales in the UK is over 2 million cars per year and the average car price is £25'000, generating over £10'000'000 in VAT alone.

Give it time and they'll be demonising electric vehicles. to drive sales of something else.

phoenix_w

Diesel cars are one of the biggest cons of our time - a classic example of how marketing can sell a product suitable for only a small amount of drivers to the wider market. It'd be interesting to see how many drivers actually save money from them when factoring in the higher purchase price, fuel savings and maintenance costs - my money would be on fewer than half of purchasers actually saving anything.

andrewf75

Strider590 wrote: »

Well the media, the govt and the big corporations all sleep together.
In 2008-2012 they were praising Diesel cars and really pushing sales, with incentives such as zero VED. Anyone with half a brain saw that diesel couldn't possibly be all that great.

Now it's all changed again and they're praising electric vehicles instead.

At the end of the day, all they're doing is looking after each others interests, new car sales in the UK is over 2 million cars per year and the average car price is £25'000, generating over £10'000'000 in VAT alone.

Give it time and they'll be demonising electric vehicles. to drive sales of something else.

I’m sure there is some truth in that, but I don’t buy the all-out conspiracy theory. It is also simply the case that new data has come to light. But the nature of our capitalist system is that they will always try and sell us new products. I imagine there will soon be an incentive to scrap diesel cars, which of course is nonsensical from an environmental point of view.
My motto is that the most environmentally friendly car is the one you already have. In fact that goes for virtually everything. But if everyone was like me, the economy would collapse.

redux

I read a couple of articles about this recently.

Apparently the older diesels on the earlier Euro standards 1 2 and 3 consist of 17% of all diesel cars and cause 15% of all the nitrogen dioxide pollution from diesels.

That is lower than average.

This would presumably be because people with older cheaper cars might also drive them less than average.

I can't see any point in feeling guilty about it, especially against a backdrop of the absolute marketing lie that electric cars cause zero emissions.

Nasqueron

phoenix_w wrote: »

Diesel cars are one of the biggest cons of our time - a classic example of how marketing can sell a product suitable for only a small amount of drivers to the wider market. It'd be interesting to see how many drivers actually save money from them when factoring in the higher purchase price, fuel savings and maintenance costs - my money would be on fewer than half of purchasers actually saving anything.

There are 2 versions of my car - the 150ps 2.2l diesel and 165ps 2.0l petrol are only £625 different (I didn't want the 2.0l 120ps petrol which was £2350 cheaper than the diesel)

The diesel, which I have, is £20 a year VED (0 first year) vs £130 so in 6 years on VED alone I would have saved more than the difference in price (£100 for the diesel vs £780 for the petrol).

The "best case" mpg for the diesel is 68.9mpg which is nonsense of course, I average 49 in a mix of motorway driving and urban - around 10,000 miles a year - the petrol seems to be around 41mpg (same site said 50mpg is realistic for the diesel) so 8mpg more which is around 88 miles more per tank of fuel - whether that works out cheaper or more expensive given the comparative fuel costs, when it's only 2-3p a litre different as it is at the moment...

Car_54

Strider590 wrote: »

At the end of the day, all they're doing is looking after each others interests, new car sales in the UK is over 2 million cars per year and the average car price is £25'000, generating over £10'000'000 in VAT alone.
.

£8.3 billion by my calculator.

forgotmyname

Ive had the petrol and diesel version of my current car and the diesel wins for the economy by a long way.

Short heavy traffic journeys to work and back 23mpg in the petrol car and 38mpg in the diesel.

A run to the coast and back, 36mpg in the petrol car and 57mpg in the diesel car.

Towing a caravan, 26mpg in the petrol car, 34 - 39mpg in the diesel.

The diesel was one tax group lower than the petrol car, so little saving there.
Everything else was the same, brakes/tyres etc...

I change the oil a little more often in the diesel so thats a little more costly. Probably balances out the saving in tax.

The thing is my car sits unused for several days at a time so causes NO pollution. I do less than 6000 miles a year. If they wanted to make it fair then they should be targeting the high mileage users.

Strider590

Another issue of course, if we all started buying electric vehicles, power demand is going to go through the roof and this will almost certainly be used as an excuse for ramping up electricity prices.

Johnmcl7

I have a petrol car after a few diesels simply because I dislike that diesels are getting increasingly complex to meet emissions regulations and I don't do the mileage to justify the hassle. I wouldn't hesitate to change back to a diesel if it suited my needs, a car is not environmentally friendly at all and not using it as much as possible rather than switching to another technology is much greener.

I predominantly use a pedal bike for transport these days and do more miles on the bike than I drive in the car, nice cheap running costs for the bike and keeps me fit.

John