DIESEL SCAPEGOATS - WE ARE SCRAP?

LostKiwi

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I would be more impressed with those graphs if they were comparing apples with apples. The CO2/km for diesels isn't a direct comparison to CO2/KWh for EVs. There is also insufficient detail in the data used; does "well to tank" include the carbon footprint of the ships used to move battery raw materials around the planet and the emissions from the various smelters and other processes involved in refining the Lithium? And don't forget, this isn't a once in a lifetime event as batteries are not lifed for the lifetime of the rest of the vehicle.

Whilst the emphasis is currently (and maybe correctly) on the health effects of vehicles in our towns and cities we appear to be ignoring the environmental devastation caused by mining the raw materials for Lithium-Iron batteries.

Read the article - it includes the full lifecycle of the vehicle including manufacturing batteries etc.

The simple fact is (which is quite well shown in my view) that a diesel car is worse on emissions than an electric car over its lifetime. The shipping of batteries would only be a relatively small component of any emissions in the total as the emissions of a ship are spread across a large number of vehicles.

No matter how much you may like your diesel it is destined to fade into obscurity, just as my petrol cars are.
 

davemercedes

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Hi Dave, for the most part i think the work they do is vocational and a root problem is we as a nation have not realised the consequencies of over population, the EEC has watched us "fill our life boats" to the point where a lot will sink, the strategy is always more,more, more, and the masses suffer, the rich like the strategy because they can "duck down"when they need to, BUPA etc, and their businesses grow, the more people the better. It was Blair who opened the flood gates and let everybody in without any screening, so the NHS got the worst flooding and they still have it.
The Brexit vote was driven by this situation, but the wealthy do not want change and are able to keep away from the problems of over population, however the wealthy are running the job and the referendum, IMHO, was a waste of time, for the masses that is. Herbie.

Well Herbie, there is one undeniable truth in UK: "The rich get richer and the poor get poorer". IMO the whole EEC/EU thing for 25 years was mismanaged by lazy politicians that we seem to perpetually vote into power. Really, we should have ended up playing a major part in managing the EU instead of handing over whatever was demanded and signing off all the treaties.
 

Botus

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how any diesel driver (having been personally responsible for killing hundreds of people) can now have the cheek to complain about the cost of living is frankly ludicrous
 

C350Carl

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how any diesel driver (having been personally responsible for killing hundreds of people) can now have the cheek to complain about the cost of living is frankly ludicrous

Erm ok!!!
 

davemercedes

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how any diesel driver (having been personally responsible for killing hundreds of people) can now have the cheek to complain about the cost of living is frankly ludicrous

Well now as you're playing holier than thou.... why exactly is any pain from the cost of living ludicrous?

I didn't realise I was a mass murderer - but I'm not anyway, the figures certainly don't add up for my car usage since I've had a diesel: The quoted but unsubstantiated figures for deaths from diesel pollution vary massively from 5 - 40,000 p.a. and as I switched to diesel and have covered c30,000 miles over the last fie years (in the belief that it was relatively clean and safe as put out by HMG) I'm afraid I don't fit your "evil" profile. But silly me, I would have expected "them" in power to point out the dangers instead!

But now having suckered me and thousands of others to buy diesel isn't it the job of HMG to help the electorate financially to switch over ? NO - apparently that's an injustice not near to Mrs Mayhem's self-righteous heart.
- But it would be a useful way of influencing the "will of the people" which is so popular now.

And please tell me, why does the military, government departments and city transport still use diesel (like some of the 40 year old buses still running in London, not to mention the massive ships firing up every day in ports all around UK)? It has to be because they've continued to be more reliable than petrol and last MUCH longer and can take a lot more punishment than petrol cars. I would have expected our glorious leaders to do something about all that too.

But it's all part of the Downing Street hypocrisy - first we were bribed with incentives to buy diesel cars. But now they want to hit us with taxes etc and make us walk around self-flagellating in sackcloth and ashes (because we certainly mustn't drive!) to atone for having the temerity to have purchased a vehicle!

But judging by the tone of your opener, you obviously have the financial wherewithal for it not to bother you to switch over... which is great.
- For you, that is.
 

LostKiwi

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It has to be because they've continued to be more reliable than petrol and last MUCH longer and can take a lot more punishment than petrol cars.

Actually no.
The military uses diesel because it makes logistics easier to manage and creates less chance of a misfuel making a vehicle unusable or a vehicle being unusable due to the wrong fuel being the only one available. Why standardise on diesel? Because the larger vehicles run on it and for them the torque curve of a diesel better suits the application. Heavy vehicles benefit from high torque low in the RPM range, especially when used off tarmac.
Government in general uses diesel in part for the same reason and in part because it's cheaper (mpg) than petrol - the same reason 90% of diesel car owners buy diesel.
There are very very few 40 year old buses around (it's another of those hackneyed arguments that don't bear close scrutiny). Increasingly there are electric or hybrid buses being seen on the streets. Given the lifespan of buses it's not a change that can take place overnight for obvious economic reasons.
Ships don't run on diesel (at least not many do). The usual fuel for ships is heavy fuel oil with a carbon chain length of 12 - 20 whereas marine Heavy Fuel Oil has a carbon chain length of 20 - 70. HFO usually requires heating before it can be used as in its natural state it's thick like treacle. Increasingly ships are being fitted with carbon capture systems to clean the emissions. As with buses and HGVs the life span of a ship makes any change slow to spread across the board.

It's also a poor argument to use to say " if they're not doing X why should we?" Change has to start somewhere and the private motor vehicle is the most volatile market with the highest rate of vehicle renewal - only a very small percentage of cars on the road are over 20 years old.
If we wait for buses, trucks and ships to change before we car drivers do something we could be waiting for decades, by which time any damage will be greater than it needed be.
 

A.J.

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Unless I have just mis-read it in Auto Express, Porsche have now stopped producing diesel engine cars. !!
 

C350Carl

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Eventually fossil fuel will be replaced. Thanks to VW fiddling things I think the demise of diesel has been brought around a bit quicker.
 

Craiglxviii

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Read the article - it includes the full lifecycle of the vehicle including manufacturing batteries etc.

The simple fact is (which is quite well shown in my view) that a diesel car is worse on emissions than an electric car over its lifetime. The shipping of batteries would only be a relatively small component of any emissions in the total as the emissions of a ship are spread across a large number of vehicles.

No matter how much you may like your diesel it is destined to fade into obscurity, just as my petrol cars are.

I don’t think it’s that simple.

To make petrol one must first go through the diesel fraction. For each 42 gallon barrel of oil, 19 gallons of gasoline and 11 gallons of diesel will be produced. No one will ignore 26% of overall volume output particularly when it has such high energy density.

Yes I know 40 years ago the fractions were different and more of the diesel fraction was taken into very low grade petrols and higher grade marine distillates (remember there were significantly more, smaller ships around and many of those were of the tramp steamer cariety; they used up a sizeable portion of the overall diesel output. Also, output was lower.) That doesn’t change the fact that now vs then, diesel cars are a much more viable proposition performance wise.

So, politics aside, given that the tech exists (turbo CDI) and the fuel production volumes cannot be ignored, those both combine together to say “profit warning!” to leading blue chips.

That then leads into politics. It’s my opinion that a number of things came together in order to make Dieselgate possible. Part of that being a growing hysteria over global warming, social injustice, the state of the environment etc from the progressive liberal left. So, the public mood swung heavily against eeevil corporations cheating them, not helped at all by the agenda of any media organisations of course. The customers weren’t really cheated out of anything by VAG et al, the governments who set up the environmental legislation were- and as we have previously discussed that legislation didn’t really make much sense anyway.

So we have seen a sea change in automotive prime movers- the death of diesel, petrol ascendancy and the upcoming of electric power. We have also seen the massive increase of renewable power (at enormous governmental subsidy) which helps the electric power case.

We also have the very high price of the battery pack. £15k retail, the cost price is also very significant. That cost is very roughly equivalent to the fuel spend over the first ten years of the car’s life. That’s in addition to the cost per kW.hr to charge the car up. The cost of an ICEV vs an equivalent EV without its battery is fairly close, and if we could correct for volume effect would likely balance out.

So we arrive at a point where a prime mover is being influenced more by politics than engineering logic or financial sense.....
 

Craiglxviii

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Eventually fossil fuel will be replaced. Thanks to VW fiddling things I think the demise of diesel has been brought around a bit quicker.
It’ll swing back. Might be 15-20 years and need the wholesale execution of all SJWs but the world will see sense.
 

LostKiwi

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It wasn't about performance Craig. It was about cradle to grave emissions of diesel Vs electric. Given diesel and electric cars have about the same emissions in their manufacture (battery aside) do we really expect the emissions to be as bad for electric (battery + electricity) compared to everyday emissions from a diesel car (including tanker emissions and refining emissions of the fuel)? I certainly wouldn't.
 

keefysher

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Lets not forget the elephant in the room....

..... aircraft emissions and lack of taxation :rolleyes:
 

Jim2

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I have just reluctantly changed to petrol, I love the way that a diesel drives but I think there is a lot of grief to come like fuel taxation on diesel, additional congestion charges and probably even certain areas banning diesel engined car altogether. I was going to change the car anyway but with all of the anti diesel lobbying and so forth i decided to go petrol. :(

AJD, ultimately, they will want ALL internal combustion engines off the road......and replaced with Electric Vehicles. That's the way it's heading.
 

A.J.

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AJD, ultimately, they will want ALL internal combustion engines off the road......and replaced with Electric Vehicles. That's the way it's heading.
I think the Electric vehicle has a little way to go yet. Range is the big issue and the planning of a route where an Electric car can be charged is not the most convenient way to plan a route.

I'll stick with Petrol for as long as I am able, I like the freedom, frequency of places I can fill up and the range the internal combustion engine offers. :)
 

Craiglxviii

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It wasn't about performance Craig. It was about cradle to grave emissions of diesel Vs electric. Given diesel and electric cars have about the same emissions in their manufacture (battery aside) do we really expect the emissions to be as bad for electric (battery + electricity) compared to everyday emissions from a diesel car (including tanker emissions and refining emissions of the fuel)? I certainly wouldn't.

We have included in that the average emissions of that country or distribution region in the figures. now, for the U.K. when converting to an apples to apples per- mile comparison these seem to indicate that a typical 99g/ km ICEV has around 4x the emissions of an EV. But, that excludes the emissions* inherent in the build and operations of the generating plant required for recharging of the batteries. What that comes out to is very murky indeed; the power requirements to build wind turbines for instance come out to around a 5 year break even point for instance.

* of course we haven’t yet defined what “emissions” we mean, how “bad” they are and what concentrations of them are harmful...
 

Craiglxviii

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Lets not forget the elephant in the room....

..... aircraft emissions and lack of taxation :rolleyes:
Or marine... and the massively significant importance of marine transport.
 

Jim2

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I think the Electric vehicle has a little way to go yet. Range is the big issue and the planning of a route where an Electric car can be charged is not the most convenient way to plan a route.

I'll stick with Petrol for as long as I am able, I like the freedom, frequency of places I can fill up and the range the internal combustion engine offers. :)
Yes AJD, I agree completely with you....only for "Range Anxiety", and charging infrastructure,there would be many many more EV's on the road !!! But it will come, for sure. There are a few "minor" detail's yet to be ironed out...Battery manufacture, Maintenance, and disposal. These will definitely generate a large carbon foot print, not to mention the source of all the electricity which will be needed. Had a case recently in Dublin.. Nissan hooked up to a charger was clamped. had to remain too long to complete the charge..
 

A.J.

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Nissan hooked up to a charger was clamped. had to remain too long to complete the charge..
Love that bit Jim. :D
 

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