Cheapest/Greenest car to run?

Richard53

Green? Only one answer - a 40-year-old Land Rover. It might be heavy on fuel and have poor emissions, but all its production costs and use of raw materials are in the distant past, and it is infinitely repairable using hand tools and local labour. Sem-serious point: sometimes it is greener to use what we have, however imperfect, than to throw it away and build new. Then I saw the 400-mile journeys. Scrub the above - I've done that in a Series II, and I wouldn't do it again. Small diesel car, and put the money you save in to a good osteopath.

Petriix

Richard53 said:

Green? Only one answer - a 40-year-old Land Rover. It might be heavy on fuel and have poor emissions, but all its production costs and use of raw materials are in the distant past, and it is infinitely repairable using hand tools and local labour. Sem-serious point: sometimes it is greener to use what we have, however imperfect, than to throw it away and build new. Then I saw the 400-mile journeys. Scrub the above - I've done that in a Series II, and I wouldn't do it again. Small diesel car, and put the money you save in to a good osteopath.

That's why I'm still running my 2005 Peugeot 206SW (1.4 HDI). I get around 50 mpg which is not terrible and, the longer I run it, the lower the overall impact of its manufacture. However, [I'm] reaching the point where maintenance starts to escalate and technology has moved on far enough to look at better options. I'm hopeful that my next vehicle will be an EV depending on finances and the choices available; I like the look of the upcoming MG estate, but that will likely cost £20k+.

ElefantEd

Or even just take the train - if this is possible, obviously it depends on where the ends of the 200 mile journey are. But even with the price of train tickets, you get a lot of 400 mile journeys for the price of a car. And you can read a book and sit in comfort (usually).

DrEskimo

Richard53 said:

Green? Only one answer - a 40-year-old Land Rover. It might be heavy on fuel and have poor emissions, but all its production costs and use of raw materials are in the distant past, and it is infinitely repairable using hand tools and local labour.

Petriix said:
That's why I'm still running my 2005 Peugeot 206SW (1.4 HDI). I get around 50 mpg which is not terrible and, the longer I run it, the lower the overall impact of its manufacture.

This may seem logical, but the evidence suggests the complete opposite. The vast majority of the lifetime CO2 from an ICE is from the tailpipe emissions. The more it is driven the higher it's overall impact is. Whilst you are averaging out the manufacturing CO2 over time, you are adding far more to it's lifetime emissions overall. The manufacturing impact from a CO2 point of view isn't the issue. The issue is the tailpipe emissions.
The best thing you can do to reduce the lifetime CO2 of an ICE is not drive it at all!

We can see this demonstrated in Figure 1 of this report:

https://theicct.org/sites/default/files/publications/EV-life-cycle-GHG_ICCT-Briefing_09022018_vF.pdf
"An electric car’s higher manufacturing-phase emissions would be paid back in 2 years of driving with European average grid electricity compared to a typical vehicle."

MinuteNoodles

iamshell86 said:

Hi
Every time I drive my van I feel guilty about the impact on the environment, but it's so expensive to use public transport!
I want to buy the greenest car AND keep costs as low as possible to run.

The vast majority of a car's environmental impact is in it's manufacture therefore anything second hand is going to be more green to own than buying a new car.  Personally I'd not be overly guilty about the impact on the environment of your van especially if it's new enough to be a Euro 5 engined vehicle, so pretty much anything made from 2009 onwards. If it's diesel and has a DPF it'll be Euro 5.

The cheapest vehicle to run is the one you already own. The cost of replacing it will wipe out any savings on fuel.

MinuteNoodles

DrEskimo said:

This may seem logical, but the evidence suggests the complete opposite. The vast majority of the lifetime CO2 from an ICE is from the tailpipe emissions. The more it is driven the higher it's overall impact is. Whilst you are averaging out the manufacturing CO2 over time, you are adding far more to it's lifetime emissions overall. The manufacturing impact from a CO2 point of view isn't the issue. The issue is the tailpipe emissions.
The best thing you can do to reduce the lifetime CO2 of an ICE is not drive it at all!

We can see this demonstrated in Figure 1 of this report:

https://theicct.org/sites/default/files/publications/EV-life-cycle-GHG_ICCT-Briefing_09022018_vF.pdf
"An electric car’s higher manufacturing-phase emissions would be paid back in 2 years of driving with European average grid electricity compared to a typical vehicle."

Quite clearly you didn't actually read that document. I found a very big "gotcha" in it which comes as no surprise given it's been made by a body with a particular political aim.

So it says in one of the paragraphs on page 4 entitled "Life-Cycle Emissions of Electric Vehicles";

"Efficiency and emissions for both conventional and electric vehicles are adjusted to reflect real-world driving conditions rather than test-cycle numbers.3"

When you look at what the "3" is in the footnotes you get:

3. CO2 emissions (g/km) for internal combustion engine vehicles adjusted upward by 40%, and electric vehicle efficiency (km/kWh) adjusted downward by 30%, relative to the NEDC test cycle.

So they've fudged the figures with absolutely no explanation why they've chosen those figures for adjustment. Why have they fudged the results of a test which is standard to both the ICE and EV vehicles?

Funny how research from engineering bodies with no particular axe to grind find very little difference between the two.

Goudy

I don't know where you are based, but is there any Car Clubs in your area, like Enterprise Car Club, Ubeeqo or Zip Car?
It's like renting, but you pre register first, sometimes for a small cost, then pick whatever you need up off a local street.

I used to run a car and a van. The van was just so I could indulge in a hobby every other weekend.
It all worked out quite expensive even though I was dabbling in my own biodiesel at the time, so I sold the van and started hiring, trouble was I was getting hammered with weekend rates even though I only needed it Sundays, plus is was a pain returning first thing Monday mornings when I should have been at work.

I ended up joining several Car Clubs, but I'm lucky living in London were there are many.
I get a choice now, there's always much more cars than vans but there's always something suitable locally, I rarely have to book up in advance, usually it's minutes before I collect it. (so I can check the weather first before deciding to go out).

All the cars are pretty modern and some offer hybrids, bonus for me is they all include the congestion charge in the price, which will save me a packet when they up the CC price and extend it's operating days/hours.

There's a few owner car clubs about, where owners hire out their own car.
I've never used them myself, but a couple of colleagues have without any problems.

DrEskimo

MinuteNoodles said:

DrEskimo said:

This may seem logical, but the evidence suggests the complete opposite. The vast majority of the lifetime CO2 from an ICE is from the tailpipe emissions. The more it is driven the higher it's overall impact is. Whilst you are averaging out the manufacturing CO2 over time, you are adding far more to it's lifetime emissions overall. The manufacturing impact from a CO2 point of view isn't the issue. The issue is the tailpipe emissions.
The best thing you can do to reduce the lifetime CO2 of an ICE is not drive it at all!

We can see this demonstrated in Figure 1 of this report:

https://theicct.org/sites/default/files/publications/EV-life-cycle-GHG_ICCT-Briefing_09022018_vF.pdf
"An electric car’s higher manufacturing-phase emissions would be paid back in 2 years of driving with European average grid electricity compared to a typical vehicle."

Quite clearly you didn't actually read that document. I found a very big "gotcha" in it which comes as no surprise given it's been made by a body with a particular political aim.

So it says in one of the paragraphs on page 4 entitled "Life-Cycle Emissions of Electric Vehicles";

"Efficiency and emissions for both conventional and electric vehicles are adjusted to reflect real-world driving conditions rather than test-cycle numbers.3"

When you look at what the "3" is in the footnotes you get:

3. CO2 emissions (g/km) for internal combustion engine vehicles adjusted upward by 40%, and electric vehicle efficiency (km/kWh) adjusted downward by 30%, relative to the NEDC test cycle.

So they've fudged the figures with absolutely no explanation why they've chosen those figures for adjustment. Why have they fudged the results of a test which is standard to both the ICE and EV vehicles?

Funny how research from engineering bodies with no particular axe to grind find very little difference between the two.

They do give an explanation. In fact that very footnote provides an entire reference to another report which explains the need to adjust the CO2 figures for ICE by 40% to reflect real world use. If you just continued reading the footnote that you have quoted you will read "For details, see Uwe Tietge, Sonsoles Díaz, Peter Mock, John German, Anup Bandivadekar, & Norbert Ligterink, From laboratory to road: A 2016 update (ICCT: Berlin, 2016). http://www.theicct.org/laboratory-road-2016-update".

From that linked article:
"The new study, jointly prepared by the ICCT and the Netherlands’ Organisation for Applied Scientific Research (TNO), describes the increasing real-world efficiency gap using systematic statistical analysis. “We analyzed data for approximately one million vehicles from seven European countries, and all data sources confirm that the gap between sales brochure figures and the real world has reached another all time high,” said Uwe Tietge, a researcher at ICCT Europe and lead author of the study. “When we published our first study in 2013, the gap had widened over ten years from roughly 10 per cent to around 25 per cent. Now it has increased to 40 per cent for private cars, and 45 per cent for company cars.”"
https://theicct.org/sites/default/files/ICCT_FromLabToRoad_PressRelease_2016.pdf

Further still, the EV's efficiency has been reduced as this is based on the now outdated NEDC consumption, which is known to be overly optimistic when it comes to efficiency. 30% reduction is much in line with what I have observed from many range tests of many EV's (spent far too many hours watching Telsa Bjorn on YouTube do the 1000km challenge on practically all EVs on the market!).

So I strongly refute your claims that the study lacks internal validity or that it is in anyway 'fudging' figures with 'no explanation'. Quite the opposite...

Petriix

DrEskimo said:

Richard53 said:

Green? Only one answer - a 40-year-old Land Rover. It might be heavy on fuel and have poor emissions, but all its production costs and use of raw materials are in the distant past, and it is infinitely repairable using hand tools and local labour.

Petriix said:
That's why I'm still running my 2005 Peugeot 206SW (1.4 HDI). I get around 50 mpg which is not terrible and, the longer I run it, the lower the overall impact of its manufacture.

This may seem logical, but the evidence suggests the complete opposite. The vast majority of the lifetime CO2 from an ICE is from the tailpipe emissions. The more it is driven the higher it's overall impact is. Whilst you are averaging out the manufacturing CO2 over time, you are adding far more to it's lifetime emissions overall. The manufacturing impact from a CO2 point of view isn't the issue. The issue is the tailpipe emissions.
The best thing you can do to reduce the lifetime CO2 of an ICE is not drive it at all!

We can see this demonstrated in Figure 1 of this report:

https://theicct.org/sites/default/files/publications/EV-life-cycle-GHG_ICCT-Briefing_09022018_vF.pdf
"An electric car’s higher manufacturing-phase emissions would be paid back in 2 years of driving with European average grid electricity compared to a typical vehicle."

I agree that not driving at all is best (from an environmental perspective). Working on the basis that I will be driving anyway...

An EV produces in the region of 15 tonnes of CO2 to manufacture. My current vehicle produces around 1 tonne of CO2 per year of driving. If my fantasy EV lasts for 10 years then the embedded CO2 from the manufacture will outweigh the tailpipe CO2 from continuing to run my diesel car. However, because my car will need to be replaced, I am going to cause the purchase of a new car (even if I buy second hand because ,assuming that overall car ownership remains constant, someone will buy a new one to replace it). I therefore only need to consider the difference in CO2 between the new EV and the average ICE vehicle that might otherwise have been bought; I would estimate this at around 5 tonnes. I would easily save that over the life of the vehicle, especially as I have solar PV which will cover a significant portion of my regular miles.

Paula_Smith

Diesel is greener than petrol if you are driving outside the urban environment.
https://www.rac.co.uk/drive/advice/emissions/is-diesel-actually-better-for-the-environment/