The diesel controversy

[charadamParticipant @charadam]

Gents, Ladies,

I am not a political person – I despise the lot of them – and yet recognise the harm that they do.

Tonight I have seen this: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/05/02/diesel-drivers-will-paid-scrap-cars-improve-air-quality/

And this:

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/610927/Air_Quality_National_Statistic_apr17_FINAL.pdf

One seems directly to contradict the other.

How does one proceed?

[charadamParticipant @charadam]

[Barnaby WildeParticipant @barnabywilde70941]

I was told by a very successful businessman to stop trying to understand politics but to learn economics instead.

Only then will the way the world works make any sense.

In the old days of the pioneers you would load up your wagon & drive out to stake your claim, every day you worked that claim your life got a little bit better, a little bit more comfortable and gradually there would be less work to do.

Today we have computers & machines to do much of the work for us, yet the average working week is getting longer, the pay in real terms is getting less, the fringe benefits are fast dissapearing.

That successful businessman told me start by looking up 'the hut tax'. If you can get to grips with it, it basically turned an existing economic model that worked for the people, into a new model that worked for their masters !

Edited By Mick Charity on 03/05/2017 05:58:29

[Russell EberhardtParticipant @russelleberhardt48058]

Posted by Mick Charity on 03/05/2017 05:56:45:

Today we have computers & machines to do much of the work for us, yet the average working week is getting longer, the pay in real terms is getting less, the fringe benefits are fast dissapearing.

Really? You must have a rosy view of the past.

Russell

[Barnaby WildeParticipant @barnabywilde70941]

Posted by Russell Eberhardt on 03/05/2017 08:01:42:

Really? You must have a rosy view of the past.

Russell

Depends how far back you wish to go.

Of course, we are all 'better off' than we were 50yrs ago. But you need to take into account that back then we all lived like that, as we all live like this today.

When a machine has replaced 20hrs of my labour why am I not enjoying 20hrs less work?

[MWParticipant @mw27036]

Posted by Mick Charity on 03/05/2017 08:23:26:

Posted by Russell Eberhardt on 03/05/2017 08:01:42:

Really? You must have a rosy view of the past.

Russell

Depends how far back you wish to go.

Of course, we are all 'better off' than we were 50yrs ago. But you need to take into account that back then we all lived like that, as we all live like this today.

I remember the 90's and I was definitely poorer than I am today. Everything seemed more expensive, I would get glances if I actually got to eat at a nice restaurant then. 

Did I really notice it at the time though? No, not really because I didn't know any better. 

Michael W 

Edited By Michael-w on 03/05/2017 08:34:03

[MuzzerParticipant @muzzer]

There's a lot of very sloppy journalism going on here. The current / latest diesels are very clean, with low NOx emissions and of course better fuel consumption than petrol by quite a way. We have been measuring and legislating emissions levels for decades, including NOx. Petrol engines also emit NOx although not so much.

The tragedy is that some of the OEMs and their suppliers (including the likes of Bosch) have undermined these decades of dramatic progress with cynical, illegal corner cutting. For one thing, this must have set back progress of diesels in N America after many years of slow but steady progress.

There's also ignorance or cynical misunderstanding of the emissions testing. You have to choose some form of standardised test to compare and legislate against and obviously when you are homologating a vehicle you try to get the best result you can (often robots are used to ensure consistency). Those standardised drive cycles will never be exactly the same as what we experience each day, even if we had the talent to drive economically (which very few drivers do). And selling a car on the basis that it will achieve those published figures is simplistic and wrong.

No matter what drive cycle you choose, it will not be right for everyone's driving. City driving and motorway driving are entirely different and most emissions are created during warm-up. There are literally hundreds of drive cycles but no single one can be "right". That company Emissions Analytics(?) is also cynically riding a wave of ignorance for its own gain. Great PR and marketing by its senior team but not actually doing anything particularly constructive.

Not quite fake news but very sloppy reporting.

Murray

[MWParticipant @mw27036]

One of the best things they ever did was to remove lead from fuel, that was downright hazardous. Never mind the emissions.

My great grandfather worked at a smelter in london and he died from lead poisoning when my grandfather was just 5 years old. 

I cant really decipher whether or not that had anything to do with it, it could've been from drinking water from lead pipes but i'm pretty sure standing near or directly over where it's being melted would be a lot worse. 

Michael W

Edited By Michael-w on 03/05/2017 08:49:35

[Clive HartlandParticipant @clivehartland94829]

AdBlue is an option on some models, also some time back the chap who makes plastic expensive cleaners designed a particle remover for diesel exhausts, these particles which are now implicated in serious illness claims. It seems it was never taken up by anyone.

Having had one VW Passat for 17 years and paying £230 tax a year I then bought the latest Passat which has an emission of less than 108 and pay only £20 a year tax. All due to an engine that ha metered full injection depending on how the engine is being used.

Another point, when the VW disaster erupted I had the software upgrade and the mpg dropped to 34 mpg against 44 mpg before! Also the engine performance was badly affected and will now stall in 2nd gear going up a ramp in a multi story car park, whereas before it did not.

[Cabinet EnforcerParticipant @cabinetenforcer]

Posted by charadam on 02/05/2017 23:41:41:

And this:

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/610927/Air_Quality_National_Statistic_apr17_FINAL.pdf

Exactly which aspect of the 17 page report that does not feature the word diesel once, contradicts the telegraph article?

You should note that the headline observations (and to a lesser extent the detail of it) of the report do not consider the wider context of transport policy and changing usage, nor do they appear to be corrected for economic activity levels.

In a nutshell, despite many regulatory steps taken to reduce PM10 levels, the observed incidence is not falling as fast as it should, even worse, it is not falling as fast as it used to before the early 2000's. This has been caused by two factors 1) Increased use of diesel vehicles 2) Real world emissions of newer diesel vehicles have not realised the incresed demands placed by regulation (Volkswagen et al).

The only apparent outright falsehood I can see is the suggestion in the Telegraph that NOx emmissions, (or any of the other diesel filth) is somehow a newly discovered aspect of diesel engines.

The political point scoring is tedious, since the Tories would have done exactly the same, had they been in power at the time.

[Henry ArtistParticipant @henryartist43508]

Long, long ago (so the story goes) if a car manufacturer discovered a fault in the design of one of their vehicles which might potentially lead to death or injury they would do a costing exercise which would give two cost figures –

Cost A was how much it would cost to change the design and make new, safer components, possibly alter the production line, and possibly do a recall to retro-fit the new components to all the existing vehicles with the fault.

Cost B was how much they would have to pay out in compensation if they did not fix the fault.

If Cost B was lower than Cost A they would not fix the fault.

Of course, modern vehicle manufacturers will vigorously deny that such scurrilous and morally questionable practices continue today.

Edited By Henry Artist on 03/05/2017 09:19:00

[Ady1Participant @ady1]

Diesel was always heading for a cliff edge at some point, you only had to observe the black smoke belching out of the back of a van or taxi to know the writing was going to be on the wall in the future

The main restrictions will be in city and town centres, if you stay oot o' the toon then your diesel shouldn't get penalised too badly

Around 99% of the UKs buses and taxis will need to be upgraded

Edited By Ady1 on 03/05/2017 09:33:20

[Russell EberhardtParticipant @russelleberhardt48058]

Posted by Mick Charity on 03/05/2017 08:23:26:

Depends how far back you wish to go.

Well, I can't remember anything before my childhood in the 1940s. Then we had no washing machine, fridge, or TV. I only saw my father on Sundays and Saturday afternoons as he went to work at about 5 a.m. and returned after I had gone to bed. In the winter there was ice on the inside of the windows in the mornings. It was freezing in the outside toilet in the mornings. So our life is much more comfortable now although not necessarily better.

Going back a bit further, my father left school at the age of 12 to work long hours for a pittance as an apprentice.

As for the American pioneers, they had to work very long hours just to survive. Don't believe everything you see in films!

Russell

[Martin KyteParticipant @martinkyte99762]

Posted by Muzzer on 03/05/2017 08:39:11:

There's a lot of very sloppy journalism going on here. The current / latest diesels are very clean, with low NOx emissions and of course better fuel consumption than petrol by quite a way. We have been measuring and legislating emissions levels for decades, including NOx. Petrol engines also emit NOx although not so much.

The tragedy is that some of the OEMs and their suppliers (including the likes of Bosch) have undermined these decades of dramatic progress with cynical, illegal corner cutting. For one thing, this must have set back progress of diesels in N America after many years of slow but steady progress.

There's also ignorance or cynical misunderstanding of the emissions testing. You have to choose some form of standardised test to compare and legislate against and obviously when you are homologating a vehicle you try to get the best result you can (often robots are used to ensure consistency). Those standardised drive cycles will never be exactly the same as what we experience each day, even if we had the talent to drive economically (which very few drivers do). And selling a car on the basis that it will achieve those published figures is simplistic and wrong.

Murray

Can't fault what you say regarding comparing like with like under test conditions but as I understand what VW did was to detect when the engine was under test and change the control parameters to a lower performance better emissions set up. The engine under test was then not then the engine that was being delivered.

The relevance of lab test results to actual on road performance is a separate issue as you correctly allude to.

regards Martin

[Rick Kirkland 1Participant @rickkirkland1]

VW vehicles have the lowest emissions of any vehicle at all, ever, . They have figures and graphs to prove it.

[Swarf, Mostly!Participant @swarfmostly]

Now I guess there are a lot of you guys who know a lot more about the infernal combustion engine than I do. But I'll throw my understanding into the ring in the hope that the ensuing corrections will enhance the discussion.

I've been driving a succession of diesel cars since about 1984. I 'went diesel' because I was told that in a petrol engine the charge had to be over-rich or the flame wouldn't propagate through the whole combustion chamber. So there wasn't enough oxygen in the charge to burn all the fuel. This resulted in the exhaust gases containing un-burned fuel. (That might have been the motive to progress from carburretors to fuel injection.)

In the diesel engine, with its higher compression ration, the charge of air is adiabatically compressed, raising its temperature above the flash-point of the fuel. The fuel (a theoretically correct metered dose) is then injected as a fine spray. Each fuel droplet, finding itself surrounded by oxygen and above the flash-point, has no option but to combust COMPETELY!

I'm left not understanding where these (carbon?) particulates come from – on my understanding they should have been burned?

I know there has been a move to make diesel fuel sulphur free but I think that's a different issue from the particulates.

Best regards,

Swarf, Mostly!

[pgk pgkParticipant @pgkpgk17461]

I bumped into a fellow (a few years ago) who was doing his Phd about the propagation of the wave front in deisel engine ignition. It's far from a simple subject (beyond me) but the jist was to reduce unburnt and improve power recovery.

[Ady1Participant @ady1]

You can't burn carbon "away" it will always be present

Carbon has the highest melting point of the elements, and when you melt carbon you are on the way to making a diamond

They do have rather good particulate capture technology nowadays though, but at the end of the day a million combustion engines produce a lot of CO2 etc daily

[Niels AbildgaardParticipant @nielsabildgaard33719]

Diesel in familly cars are there due to politicians and their stupid voters trying to evade taxes.

The extra cost of diesel injection equipement will not balance the real world cost of using sligthly more kgs of petrol in a real car versus kgs of diesel oil in tax evading polluter cars.

Diesel car buyers are to blame,not VW.

[Russell EberhardtParticipant @russelleberhardt48058]

One problem seems to be the lack of understanding of the difference between "air pollution" and "greenhouse gas emission".

In general diesel cars produce less CO2 than petrol (except hybrids perhaps) but diesel produces more particulates and NOx. So we have to judge which is more important, the health of our present population, particularly in cities, or the effects of global warming on our grandchildren.

Russell

[not done it yetParticipant @notdoneityet]

Naughty though, as it has been demonstrated, part of the reason for the dieselgate problem was, or still is, the way the americans arrange their compliance comparisons. They do it on amount per unit volume of fuel, not amount per unit distance travelled.

That puts economic vehicles at a distinct disadvantage over the typical 'gas guzzler' vehicles manufactured in the US. Now, had VW only fixed the tests for export cars (to the US) I might have had some sympathy for the company!

[KWILParticipant @kwil]

Swarf, Mostly!

The Lamda sensor and the cat converter in a "closed control loop" deals with the problems in a petrol engine you allude to. The diesel is just plain filthy by comparision.

[Cornish JackParticipant @cornishjack]

Diesel cars, diesel lorries, vans, ships even motorcycles and aircraft and ALL referred to as 'diesels' . They are different!! The major polluters are the lorries, taxis and ships. If we look at cars and compare diesel v petrol we have to consider usage, and research tells us that the MAJORITY of car journeys are short < 15 miles. Why is that significant? Because petrol cars require their catalytic exhaust systems (supposedly reducing emissions) to be up to working temperature to be effective. For most of those short journeys the 'cat' won't be working. Diesel, on the other hand works, as advertised, from the word go. And just how much of the present blather has included the above? The late Paul Daniels summed it up -"Not a lot!"

rgds

Bill

[KWILParticipant @kwil]

Now that is an example of a really closed mind.

We need to solve the PM problem not scream "my diesel car is not the problem".

[J HancockParticipant @jhancock95746]

Using any fossil fuel for road transport, really, has to be one of the most wasteful ways of using that resource anyway ( maybe just short of open fires ).

And as for using it for air travel , humping half empty aircraft through the skies, l then go apoplectic.

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