So, I am keeping the diesel car.....................Issues ?

[Thrustyjust]

Is all this dieselgate stuff just a load of nonsense or is this going to amount to all diesel cars being worth poop on your shoe in the future ? We have a Volvo XC60 diesel and has come up to the decision on if we buy it or hand it back. The car was £40K new and will be worth £17.5 at 2 years and not many miles old . So, looking at petrol cars as the world seems to point us to, we are not throwing shed loads of money ( another £40k) at a new car to replace it. Although very nice the V60 T5 , it seems daft to do this. Yes, we dont need to spend £40k on a car, but thats up to me  and not the argument.

So with Volvo saying they wont build diesel engines again in 3 years time and now frantically trying to sell of D3 engined V60's ( drove one yesterday as a demo to see if I liked the V60 car ) and it was dull and gutless, the options are petrol or petrol hybrid. If a petrol version is £40k , dont even think about the cost of the part battery versions. 

1/ Are we going to have future governments saying that we cant process all these high tech hybrid cars and leave them dumped on a runway near us ?

2/ Are we going to have more potential for vehicle fires ? ( See all the Tesla stories currently)

3/ Are vehicle weights going to mean we need hgv licenses to drive them ?

4/ Are diesels 'really' going to disappear ?

5/ Do the tree huggers think that diesel vehicles being taken off the road is not going to affect them, even if everything is transported by diesel, whether ships or lorries ?

6/ Is diesel cost at the pumps going to be the way people are forced to stop using their cars ?

7/ Am I looking too deeply into this and should just go for a drive in my Westie instead ?

We decided we are going to buy the XC60 when its time comes as its value ' currently' is worth far more than the current value owed, with the money we put in it and dont want to give it away for a song and is a good car. Ironically the only version that was available as a petrol was the T6 with 300 bhp and another £15k to buy it , but no one bought those and are a rare beast.

[stephenh]

Well my daily drive car is a diesel, and I have no intention of getting rid of it until it is getting too long in the tooth for my liking. 2 litr. turbo which gives me adequate performance. OK, so the particulates are dangerous, but so is just about every sort of energy available at present. Even electric, where does the power to charge the batteries come from? And the modern particulate filters seem to be quite efficient. And you cannot get away from the fact that my car is giving me the better part of 50 mpg on longer runs, and 40 plus just on short runs around town etc.What petrol engined car is going to get anywhere near that? I'm talking here of a reasonably roomy 5 seat estate car, driven reasonably spiritedly.

[jeff oakley]

There was an article in a magazine last week that pointed out that the newest euro 6 diesels are cleanest of all at the moment as all the dangerous particulates are taken out by the DPF. 

A lot of this hysteria on fossil fuelled cars is because most of the worlds oil reserves are in countries which are not stable. Venezuela, Russia, middle East Africa so the urge to get everyone into electric is seen as a two fold good deal. One is it keeps despots in their place and secondly electric is overall cleaner, if you ignore others by products.

I would continue with diesel cars until we know what the policy is going to be longer term.  Your dilemma is why Jag are slipping amongst other manufacturers as no one knows what to produce or what customers will buy going forward.

We are years away from electric being a real alternative as it needs range, and charging infrastructure before that happens as in the UK we have no spare generating capacity and buy a lot of electric from France's Nuclear stations already.

[Rory's Dad]

They 'always' say that the greenest thing you can do with your old car is to keep it! 

[Thrustyjust]

Electric cars are not , in the long term sustainable within the power system of the country and network of power supplies to our homes. If we all went electric and charged our cars at 6pm, we would be eating cold dinners by candle light.

[Dave Eastwood (Gadgetman) - Club Chairman]

I had a similar decision when my Ranger came to the end of its contract. (2.2 diesel).

I knew it’s history, it had below average miles for its age and I was happy with it. So I bought it.  The whole pricing diesel out has been yet another triumph of faux green eco policies over engineering/science, and I’m not wholly convinced we won’t see a turn round at some point. Though I’m not relying on it.

We’re just not far enough down the alternative/electric timeline yet, and have nothing like either the generation capacity or distribution infrastructure to cope with a huge uptake in electric only, even if the range and charge rate issue were resolved tomorrow.

[nice_guy]

1 hour ago, jeff oakley said:

 all the dangerous particulates are taken out by the DPF. 

Ah, the media.

That's the case. At the time being. For what is socially considered as dangerous. Now. Socially because lawmakers are somewhat not anyhow knowledgeable in basic science.

And that tackles only what fart comes out of the exhaust of the car during the time it is driven.

Let's say that's at best considering the fresh snow on top of the iceberg.

Car building involves emission. Have anyone ever considered where the material that is worn out of tires was going ? Mabe brake dust, too ?  What about recycling the car (and a battery powered car is not significantly, at the time being, better or worse recycled / upcycled that their IC counterparts : a car nowadays is a messy tangle of very, very different materials, pretty hard to recycle. Unless it's burn, melt, and grab what's floating.

(And wait until a lawmaker figures out the amount of fine particles THESE DAMN FLOWERS emit in spring. Pollen particle filters on trees anyone ?)

I believe in electric cars, because they're, to my daily driver usage, better to drive. I don't have range anxiety, because I seldom drive more than a hundred mile in one go.

(range anxiety is a funny thing : that's considering the longest drive as basic minimum required mandatory thing. A bit funny, because you're bound to buy a sofa during the year, or something sizeable, you'd buy a van. And I see a LOT of people going on vacation with that weird coffin sized box on the roof, because the car they've bought is not suitable for vacation and need additional luggage. No boot anxiety though ?)

 

(Charging infrastructure is another kettle of fish, but you don't often design a networked system for full-full capacity, like everyone using it to the max. (See broadband providers). I believe charging will happen during the 98% of the cars life time that happen empty, standing still. That would at least work for me, in the case of car ownership. That would not work in the casse of a massive "tomorow everyone en e-wagons with same power infra", obviously. And there's the slight issue of people who don't enjoy a powered parking space. Like most of city dwellers. All in all people will only put in the battery what they have used (plus self discharge and convertion ratios).

I am pretty convinced it's a credible way to go : i've witnessed significant amount of people ditching the expensive <insert expensive saloon of your choice> in favor of a model S (socially acceptable, better to drive, power is insane, hard to park and eats rubber like crazy until you quit playing with the silent pedal).

If I were (that's a big if) in the market for a new family car I'll be sniffing the hyundai ionic or model 3 (but I'm more at the small rodent-scavenger end of the used market) (so I keep my diesel so old it's going to be able to vote soon, until it just dies, hopefully at the same moment it's deemed illegal-sooty-oil-burner-you-enemy-of-the-atmosphere, I don't believing that scraping 1.5 tons of functionnal product is good for the planet.)

[Dave Eastwood (Gadgetman) - Club Chairman]

Unfortunately in the UK our distribution and charging infrastructure has been severely under funded and under developed for decades. We didn’t have the capacity to meet our demands in the near future before electric vehicles were a serious proposition, and investment has only got worse. Plus we’ve been decommissioning nuclear, with little significant major replacement work going on.

[nice_guy]

I believe those hypnotic windmills, with all their drawmbacks (non-pretictable output) would dance well with charging loads : the way to store electricity is in people's car, and you can make sure there's propabably going to be someone with a non full battery that'll need (and buy) wind generated power. But that, obviously, doesn't solve the wiring issues of getting the precious energy from the far windmills to the garage socket.

(I didn't believe in windmills for a long time, but I changed my mind : they are designed for life, they sprout in no time, and beside the hypnotic factor I think they're close to the perfect power generation deployment)

 

I think i'tll wane in the future, when late starters on the electric car market (yes, you german "we've announced a fabulous electric car that'll be available in 3 years" carmakers) quit bragging about charging 700 miles range in 3 minutes thanks to a 2.21 gigawatts charging station, when people will get that fast charging is reducing battery life, and that range anxiety will be a thing of a distant past, we'll be on a quieter peak power assumption.

[Peter Robinson]

Here an interesting thing I was told last night by an Esso employee that that are spending 880 million on a new Diesel plant in Fawley Refinery. Do they know something we don't?

[Thrustyjust]

There was talk about the Porsche 911 when driven round New york ( about 15 years ago) the air was cleaner coming out the exhaust than that people were breathing around . So, with technology moving forwards then I would hazard a guess at diesels being as clean , if not more so.  Dont get me wrong, but to stop fossil fuels from being the doom of the planet by setting fire to them in the internal combustion engine, having a regen to clear the particles of soot , involving burning more fossil fuel is then adding to the climatic issues ?  Our exhaust on the XC looks just as unsooted and basically the same as when I picked it up with 12 miles on the clock. 

As for the French and creating no zone cities for certain diesels. The French always had diesels , more so than the UK in the past. I always remember going on holiday and wondering what that clatter was from the Renault 5 / 18 etc as we always bought petrols in the family. My uncle being cornish loved diesels and clattered everywhere in his. But the clattering is virtually gone from the massive compression they used to have and PD pumps. But I suppose families in france just carry on in their predecessors tyre treads and diesels popularity created this smog zone.

[jeff oakley]

I have nothing against Electric cars however they are not the answer yet and polices are not keeping up with the headlong rush into them. For may electric cars are no hardship, they do short journeys and have charging at home, but hundreds of thousands do not have a parking space outside their home and  finding charging points is still an issue.

Range is still an issue for many of us on the roads and if you have to have a local car and then another for long journeys then that is not a good solution.  When I retire range will matter less.

As for how we generate the electric that is a huge issue for the UK. The wind and solar farms are only able to function due to subsidies being loaded on them and burning coal stacked against the others. In Germany they are burning more coal than ever with new carbon capture plants as the Greens do not want nuclear after Fukushima went wrong after a natural disaster. 

You also have to take into account the carbon used in making the wind farms, that will not be offset for years if ever.

I would like to have seen hydrogen given more of a chance as it seems to offer the best of both worlds but you still need energy to produce it.

What is for sure is the world is changing, in the developing world they are hungry for cars of any type in the UK saying you love cars is met with anger in some corners or apathy unless you are on a site like this one.

For example in the UK there has been a 20% drop in young people taking up driving, they have cheap Uber, if in a city useful buses and trains so they say why bother?

Petrol and diesel will be here until long after I am gone, which will hopefully be a long time, but we will see things change unfortunately driven by the wrong reasons as more restrictions are piled upon us to drive us to mass public transport.  

[TAFKARM]

Some light reading for you

https://www.bp.com/en/global/corporate/energy-economics/energy-outlook.html

[nice_guy]

2 minutes ago, Thrustyjust said:

As for the French and creating no zone cities for certain diesels. The French always had diesels , more so than the UK in the past. I always remember going on holiday and wondering what that clatter was from the Renault 5 / 18 etc as we always bought petrols in the family. My uncle being cornish loved diesels and clattered everywhere in his. But the clattering is virtually gone from the massive compression they used to have and PD pumps. But I suppose families in france just carry on in their predecessors tyre treads and diesels popularity created this smog zone.

Diesel was (until recently) way cheaper than unleaded. Or leaded given the cretaceous references. Way cheaper, better mileage, well, the default choice was obvious.

Add the reliability reputation of diesel engines (not a undesserved one, before engine cyles went complicated by egr, twenty stage turbos, particle filtering, moon landing, it was just a thick, immortal iron lump), it was the sensible choice. Agricultural noise did not unfaze the wallet, if I may say do.  No shame has ever been attached to heavy oil burner ownership, more of the opposite : the gas car was the small cheap "wife" car.

Secondhand market is also massive in france, and finance not that popular, hence you walk in your ancestors path just by the mere inertia of the market. Diesel market share was massively upset recently because of (old) diesel being somehow banned form some cities, and black pump showing same prices as unleaded thanks to tax levels being somehow reaching equal levels, thus having so much hi-vis on roundabouts in the news. Previously, Diesel was 75% of the new vehicles market. Now rather 40-50ish. People tend also to see cars as an investment they keep for a long time, average car age is nearly nine years for the whole country.

You still get better mileage from diesel, and that's thermodynamics. But the reliability is gone thanks to both engines types reaching the same level of absurd complexity (particles filters in gas cars, turbo'ed city microcars, 4 valves diesel, direct injection gas, uh). And to me that sounds the swansong of reciprocating powertrain (for my daily usage). Went too far. Brum brum noise in the speakers, electric compressors to fill the gaps in the powerband, what will be next, connecting with your telephone ?

Electric car is, in comparison, dead simple.

(funnily enough, the most notable engine that make me look for the source of that very clattery racket nowadays is either something with a mechanical pump (black and white tv era) or a member of the ingenium family. Alloy block I assume)

[nice_guy]

21 minutes ago, jeff oakley said:

I would like to have seen hydrogen given more of a chance as it seems to offer the best of both worlds but you still need energy to produce it.

I go past an hydrogen refilling station daily. Way too close to the place where my kids sleep for my comfort, should I admint.

Daily, I see that big diesel lorry unloading a full cargo of industrial sized steel tanks, for an handful of Mirai taxis. It takes a lot of energy to produce and transport, takes ages to fill the damn car. Fuel cell is nice, but that's also only the thin coat of snow on top of the iceberg, the rest of the chain is realy, really ugly. Plus the hazard (I won't be wondering from where comes the boom that wiped a sizeable chunk of the city map if that happens to detonate).

(regarding windmills, I thought the same for the carbon balance, but funnily enough, it's mostly made of steel, and the huuuuuge hypnotic blades are often made of fiber wrapped on a wooden core, for mechanical reasons. And it's nothing compared to a thermoelectric power plant. But you still cannot command wind)