Diesel Crackdown

[Tony Harrison 2]

Whatever the science behind diesel v petrol pollution, I doubt extremely that the latest pronouncements are based on a strict interpretation of the best scientific advice. For as long as I can remember, for example, governments of all hues have been inveighing against the demon drink and the even worse demon tobacco, and taxing both to the hilt - while steering clear of banning or seriously restricting either, since HM Treasury makes huge sums out of booze & fags...

Mayor Khan in London is the latest in that office to posture about the wickedness of something - in this case, diesel. As today's Press notes, local authorities throughout the land are watching eagerly, ready to copy his tax-grabbing initiative so that they will have even more money to waste on trivia such as translating H&S leaflets into twenty different languages.

I've driven petrol cars since the 1970s, and diesels for the past nine years: the latter are great. Especially since I do a higher than average mileage, including about 7000km annually in France (most of that on Autoroutes), and diesel in France and the rest of Continental Europe is cheaper than petrol, I'm quids in. My Ford Grand C-Max 1.5 and (surprisingly) the bigger S-Max 1.8 I owned previously give nearly 50mpg overall. For years now I've been avoiding driving into central London because of Livingstone's crazed, punitive "Congestion Zone" tosh: now I'll have a further incentive to avoid going there if at all possible. If other cities ape Khan/London, I'll try and avoid them too. I already avoid urban areas where the authority is clearly anti-motorist, through parking charges etc, and if enough people did the same, the result might be educational.

[post edited for inmappropriate language]

Edited By Biggles' Elder Brother - Moderator on 29/01/2017 18:30:14

[john stones 1 - Moderator]

I don't like bans, but you shouldn't be allowed to drive them in public places, all your cars/vans should have health warnings painted on them, and the salesroom windows should be curtained to prevent others from taking up this disgusting habit.

John..

[Tony Harrison 2]

Posted by john stones 1 on 28/01/2017 22:18:04:

I don't like bans, but you shouldn't be allowed to drive them in public places, all your cars/vans should have health warnings painted on them, and the salesroom windows should be curtained to prevent others from taking up this disgusting habit.

John..

Perhaps we could have yellow stars sewn onto the back of our jackets...?

[Bob Cotsford]

Seeing as the Government previously pushed us to buy these diesels maybe they should offer to buy them off us with an incentive bonus to encourage us to switch back to the previously demon petrol powered cars as a stopgap until electric becomes truly viable?

As for the 1L 3 cylinder jobs, they gave me a Fiesta loan car with this spec and it really was a surprise how well it performed, even when compared to my 2L diesel Mondeo - at legal speeds of course and under day to day use. If a 1.4L petrol Mondeo estate performs that well I could be persuaded. If it also had a 12,500 mile service interval and 125000 cam belt interval... and it was on the Governments money

Oh yes, just remembered when Honda introduced the VFR800 with variable valve timing, and annual services went from £300 to £800 or so...

Edited By Bob Cotsford on 28/01/2017 22:55:38

[ted hughes]

Unfortunately, because Gordon Brown's gov't made a mistake, doesn't stop diesels being carcinogenic:**LINK**

[Martin Harris - Moderator]

We're all doomed. Other carcinogens in this category include wood dust and sunlight. Heaven help you if any of your clubmates smoke upwind of you...

[Mark Kettle 1]

Diesels in use, a very good video.

[ted hughes]

I agree with you all.

I am having an extension to my house, the floor tiles are being chipped up by someone in a hazmat suit, I'm not allowed in until he has finished.

Silliness, or safety?

[Rich too]

Just more tax. Watch out those of you with company cars, they are being clobbered over the next 5 years, including very low emissions hybrid models.

There is a ridiculous amount of development going on in London, what about all the additional lorries and pollution that brings?

[Ernie]

Mon Dieu, will I have to sell my ED Bee?

ernie

[Colin Leighfield]

It's surprising to hear that recent diesels with a high level of particulate filtration are considered to be in this categorisation, although of course we have new thinking on nano-particles.. If the risks being described are as serious as now being implied than I will be the last to argue. The trouble is that when you go into these things you often find risks being analysed on a theoretical predictive basis that doesn't square with your own understanding. I am still involved with some of these EU originated regulatory initiatives and the current big one is attempts by the Commission to ban the use of hexavalent chrome, that is vital to hard chrome plating and a number of other metallurgical processes. This is because it is a known carcinogen, but not through dermal absorption or even being close to it, the risk exists if it is becomes part of an aerosol through air bubbling primarily. However, this knowledge isn't new and in over forty years of practical experience of using these processes in normally controlled conditions I have never seen a single case of respiratory disease associated with Chrome6. The current EU work is based on theoretical risk predictions from a German source, not on practical experience. Some of you will remember the film called (Erin Brokovitch, something like that) starring Julia Roberts. It was about a heroine taking a huge water supply business to court over the contamination of water supplies with hexavalent chrome in a town called Hinkley in the US, allegedly causing cancer deaths. It has since been discovered that the rates of such diseases there were actually lower than the US norm and that contamination of the kind described can't cause cancer. Yet the juggernaut goes on, Ford Motor has threatened to move car production out of Europe if this goes ahead. The latest from the European Chemicals Agency being considered by the Commission is a proposal to ban the use of methanol in car windscreen washer fluid, based on the claim that it is a safety issue and will save the EU €180 million a year. They have worked this out on the basis that it will prevent the deaths of 60 people that die from drinking the stuff every year and valuing each life at €3 million. They completelyignore the fact that the poor souls who do drink the stuff out of desperation will simply go and find something else similar to drink (they probably already do anyway) and where they get the € three million per person from I can't imagine, people in that condition probably aren't contributing anything to the economy anyway.

I'm not trying to say that this is wrong, but my experience of working on stuff like this over many years and still doing so now, demonstrates that time and again the way that figures are manipulated and presented in a manner that is frightening is a misrepresentation and truth is often over-ridden by political pre-conceptions. Sometimes our cynical instincts are justified. Anyway, the rate of change is such that we are probably only ten years away from a massive swing to electric, hydrogen fuel celled and other forms of vehicle drive that progressively eliminate this problem. I've seen work done recently that demonstrates that it will be possible to power a supersonic airliner with electricity based on battery breakthroughs. Big changes ahead.

[Former Member]

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[ChrisB]

It all seems to me to be a bit like the classification of a crime.

If an individual attempts to break into your property but only gets as far as smashing a window and doesn't steal anything then its not classed as burglary, its classed as criminal damage...a lesser crime. However, most people would call that burglary, as they got as far as being able to gain entry to the property.

Damn lies and statistics!

Funny how new car tax changes are coming into force. Smaller, more efficient petrol and hybrid cars may cost more to tax than larger, less efficient cars.....why? Because, in recent years there has been a move towards small city cars, Corsas, Micras etc and hybrids, all of which are free or very cheap to tax. This has meant the treasury has seen a reduction in the income gained from tax (RFL) and so they are shaking it up to try and claw back some of the funds! £££££

Edited By ChrisB on 29/01/2017 09:34:14

[ken anderson.]

when we have an A380 aircraft burning 100K Lts of fuel in the sky and a lot of our fellow humans in the far corners of the world burning and polluting the atmosphere I think we should look at the bigger picture instead of concentrating on diesel in our small island.if everyone in the uk had an electric car ...we don't have the capacity to generate the juice to power them......the solution....put a tax on it......problem solved /not... its all about the money ££££££.every activity we carry out on the planet is good and then bad...nothing is 100% and unfortunately we love our cars...my opinion anyway(I have a diesel car)

ken Anderson...ne...1.... diesel dept.

[Mark Kettle 1]

Roads could go the way like Canals did !

I agree Colin -'Big changes ahead'. I was thinking the other day about the Industrial Revolution in Britain and how we used canals to move stuff about. Then rail and roads took over and the canals where left behind and got over grown. In the context of current main roads used for example down south like the A1 M1 and the M25, all passing centres of populations, then imagine a change in new transport system/s that are to be used and link this in to a big move to protecting people's health and well being.

So in two generations say 40 years can you envisage some roads not being used anymore and getting over grown with brambles as we move around less and those that do commute, it is done by different means on new and different routes. Goods now being transported automatically and efficiently on some chosen existing roads used by less cars so cutting down pollution and time.

If it did happen imagine on a future weekend in 2057 you'll be able to book a tour of the London Colony A1 - M1 - M25 loop, on a super efficient bus/coach because the volunteers from the 'Slip & A and M Roads Trust ' has renovated a old route for pleasure trippers.

[Keith Simmons]

Even if we all have electric cars, we will still be taxed, why?? How is electricity created? From power stations and they are polluting.. In the old days, coal and now gas, don't know about diesel powered, maybe for peak times? but we don't generate enough so we buy electricity abroad, mostly from France.

[Former Member]

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[Colin Leighfield]

Plenty of lateral thinking here chaps. One prediction that you can guarantee is that something we haven't thought possible will happen and make something different to what we expected! "Life is what happens to you when you're busy making other plans -------". After spending 15 years in the first Commission "heavy metals risk assessment" between 1995 and 2010, I became extremely cynical and was forced to accept that information is manipulated on a massive scale and we are deliberately mislead on many things. Cynicism is wholly justified these days and our disillusionment with the political system has some merit.

I don't object at all to being fairly taxed, society would be replaced by anarchy if we didn't properly fund our priorities. It is the lack of honesty and being driven by narrow self-interests that gets me down. Science has become politicised, our government will only fund university research that confirms their pre-determined political objectives. Anything that objectively challenges those preconceptions won't get the money. A professor in Manchester University described this to me, it made my hair stand on end.

Edited By Colin Leighfield on 29/01/2017 10:57:15

[Keith Simmons]

I agree that money has to come from somewhere, but this thread is likely to go off topic.

It's a shame that VW has tried to cheat the system and so brought the Diesel pollution awareness to the public eye.

It may be a good thing for this awareness, but as it's so rightly said, Diesel engines are everywhere from little diesel aero engines to massive engines that drive supertankers. (109,000 horsepower that weighs around 2,300 tons)

[Former Member]

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[Former Member]

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[John Privett]

Posted by Keith Simmons on 29/01/2017 10:08:09:

How is electricity created? From power stations and they are polluting.. In the old days, coal and now gas, don't know about diesel powered, maybe for peak times? but we don't generate enough so we buy electricity abroad, mostly from France.

Have a look here to see a real-time view (updated every 10 minutes) of how our electricity is sourced. The amount bought from France is fairly small - the link is anyway bi-directional and maxes out at 2GW.

Right now the demand on the national grid is around 40GW and we are actually supplying France with 0.1GW, though we are getting 1GW from the Netherlands. Coal is contributing a bit over 5GW, nuclear 7.4GW and Combined Cycle Gas Turbines nearly 21GW.

[Former Member]

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[Colin Leighfield]

Keith, sorry, that was my fault. Back on track I know that there are big concerns about pollution from marine diesels, which have been ignored until recently. Electricity is the coming thing, but you've got to think about emissions from power generation, I don't like the look of carbon capture.

One reason that the government is worrying about short-term electricity supply is that the assumption we can always balance the grid through the cross channel connection is under threat. The French system is in trouble because 25% of nuclear capacity is closed down because of technical problems. They are facing power shortages themselves. Doesn't bode well for Hinckley "C".

In the meantime, our modern diesels, even though there are far more than there used to be, by any measure emit far less than they used to and will be further improved. I'm not flogging mine any time soon. If the introduction of electrically powered vehicles is managed progressively in a co-ordinated gradual replacement process over some years, it will probably work out ok.

[Gary Manuel]

Posted by Mark Kettle 1 on 29/01/2017 01:39:39:

Diesels in use, a very good video.

Good documentary.

I like Mark Evan's Engineering stuff - he speaks my language.