Diesel cars - all bad?

agrinnall

BBC business article today: UK motorists shunning diesel cars

trailingspouse

It's very simple. When I own a petrol car, every article you read will be about how economical diesel is and how the emissions aren't that bad really. The second I buy a diesel car, they change their minds.

Right now I'm driving a diesel, but will probably be changing the car withing the next year or so. You heard it here first...

System

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.

Doing 17000 miles a year returning 55MPG with my 2L diesel compared to the 37MPG of my 2L petrol car means only spending £1680 instead of £2440 saving me £760 a year in fuel. So over the 5 years I've owned it in fuel alone its saved me £3800 which is far more than the £1000 difference there was between the diesel and petrol variants of my car when I bought it and is equivalent to just over 40% of the purchase price. The savings on fuel have covered all but £1000 of the depreciation meaning that if I sold it now, the car I bought at 2 years old has cost me about £200 a year to own.

Individual service costs are the same but the petrol variant of my car needs servicing every 10,000 miles, my diesel every 12500.

phoenix_w

Tarambor wrote: »

Doing 17000 miles a year

...You are doing the kind of mileage diesel cars were actually designed for and you have missed my point entirely.

andrewf75

Johnmcl7 wrote: »

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

Same here. Don't worry about the emissions of my car, I just try to use it as little as possible using the bike or public transport where appropriate. A problem in this country seems to be a mentality where if people have a car they drive it everywhere regardless of the journey - 2 miles down the road, into a city centre. Cutting this behaviour out would do far more for reducing emissions than any changes to technology. Sadly as others have said, its always about selling us a new product rather than actually solving the problems.

reeac

Tarambor wrote: »

Doing 17000 miles a year returning 55MPG with my 2L diesel compared to the 37MPG of my 2L petrol car means only spending £1680 instead of £2440 saving me £760 a year in fuel. So over the 5 years I've owned it in fuel alone its saved me £3800 which is far more than the £1000 difference there was between the diesel and petrol variants of my car when I bought it and is equivalent to just over 40% of the purchase price. The savings on fuel have covered all but £1000 of the depreciation meaning that if I sold it now, the car I bought at 2 years old has cost me about £200 a year to own.

Individual service costs are the same but the petrol variant of my car needs servicing every 10,000 miles, my diesel every 12500.

Interesting logic but that £3800 isn't an actual SAVING as you didn't buy the petrol version and thus shell out more for fuel. Same logic would apply if you had considered buying a Rolls Royce doing 15 mpg and depreciating by, say, £40,000 over the 5 years ...think how much more you'd supposedly have saved by not buying it ....far more than the running costs of the car that you did actually buy, thus making its running costs negative.

Cornucopia

A comparison between diesel and petrol engines in the same car is always going to help analyse the long-term differences between the two fuels.

A comparison with a fantasy Roller... not so much.

daveyjp

No doubt the last ten years have seen diesel engines become more complicated and 20,000 miles a year with plenty of motorway trips would be my criteria for going back to one.

I did this mileage in my last diesel, but it still developed expensive problems after 20,000 miles, thankfully the warranty covered it. I quickly sold it as my mileage was dropping to less than 10k a year and the problems were mileage related - blocked EGR, regular DPF regens, reduced oil change intervals (6,000 miles) - I realised I was killing the car.

For short commutes they are a potential expensive headache as warranties won't cover faults due to 'user error' - e.g. the school run mum who bought a diesel for good mpg and cheap tax, but actually does 2 miles a day five days a week and spends a fortune on DPF forced regeneration.

Since my last diesel we've had three different petrol cars, covered 100,000 miles and not a problem with any of them. I'm happy with 40 mpg from them - the diesels didn't do much more.

kmb500

diesel engines are great, they are very economical. Seems to me that if you change a car from being petrol to diesel youll get 15-20% more mpg.

Ebe_Scrooge

kmb500 wrote: »

diesel engines are great, they are very economical. Seems to me that if you change a car from being petrol to diesel youll get 15-20% more mpg.

Well, diesel fuel contains more energy per litre than petrol does, so they are inherently more economical - that's a very broad rule of thumb, but generally true. I think the problem with diesels these days is the amount of "add-ons" that have had to be added to make them comply with ever-more stringent emission rules ( the DPF being one of the worst culprits ). Back in the olden days ( when I was learning to drive ! ), a diesel engine was pretty much the most simple engine in the world, with very little to go wrong.


I run a diesel car myself, but I do around 25,000 miles a year, the majority of which is high-speed motorway and open-road driving. Even with a very heavy right foot I get 52 mpg, much more than that if I take it a bit steadier. Touch wood, I've never had any problems at all with it - but then I guess I'm doing the sort of mileage that a diesel was intended for.