[Closed] The price of running a diesel car - crystal ball gazing

I can't honestly see diesel itself going up by much in the next three years. A targeted campaign on diesel increases would cause a world of shit for any government due to virtually all road based delivery vehicles being oil burners. Then move on to construction and farm vehicles and it's all the same. Any of those extra costs are going to be passed on to the consumer which isn't going to be taken well. I could well see more cities take on some kind of emissions tax though but with the latest ad blue technology etc in the car you buy I'd suggest it wouldnt be as wallet bleeding as an old mk 5 diesel focus.

The uncertainty of this is pushing me toward a lease.  I was going to buy mine - 120d - but think I might lease a diesel for 2-3 years to see how the electric/hybrid Vs diesel plays out to avoid having a worthless car in my ownership.

Totally agree with Wrighty. They will increase duty but it'll be pennies per budget. No big leaps. Bigger impact will be city charging or even bans. Could be £5-£10 per car so a big difference if you go into a lot over the year. It'll hit second hand values but obviously not an issue if you aren't buying.

remember if you walk away from the newspaper headlines which blanket all diesels the same and say *diesels banned from XYZ*

you then read it and its certain euro standards vehicles - typically older more poluting ones....

Based on that i still bought a diesel euro 6 car as it'll still be more cost effective(even if the cost of stuff goes up dramatically) than me buying a hybrid or electric car coupled with the fact that if diesels are banned from cities then its big enough for a couple of E bikes in the back - i tried to buy a petrol version but found that they didnt get close to promised economy and when you look at their emissions - they aint great either - anyway Cars
(of all varieties) should be banned from city centres at least during daylight hours - and i believe london are trialing it soon for streets/areas  - works for the dutch and the belgians really well. )

Maybe in the future we will look back and see this time as the tipping point to get rid of cars from cities, like the ‘stop der kindermoort’ campaigns in the netherlands.

in the meantime, im gonna stick with diesel, until i can move closer to my work, then i will switch to petrol or get rid altogether.

I'm already anticipating banning of motor vehicle from city centres.  I use diesel car to get to cities, and then electric bicycle for local transport.

Just bought a circe morpheus tandem as a car replacement for home with the money saved from not driving in cities.

Im in and out of Edinburgh almost Daily, (bus driver) and I’ve definitely seen a big increase in the likes of teslas, bmw i8/3 golf gte type cars, so it bodes well for the future imo.

I'm sure that increase has nothing to do with free charging and parking in cities , and free tax.

Moving from one car to another isntthe solution

If you do 25k a year diesel every time. Tax won’t change enough to offset the fuel saving. Don’t believe the hype about small petrols the fuel economy claims in my experience ( we have a small Fabia petrol and a diesel Leon) are rubbish.  Nox is a problem in built up areas. CO2 is a problem for everybody everywhere.  Modern diesels are very good if they are used how they should be ie 25k a year and not the school run.

Thanks for the input - interesting article and comments here:  https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/apr/21/dieselgate-uk-car-industry-sales-slump?

What mpg do people honestly get out of a diesel ?

i used to have a BMW 320 ED which was of the most efficient diesels. I averaged 47mpg across all journeys.

Now in a hybrid 330e and it’s the same mpg if not better, is way more powerful, is much nicer to drive than any diesel (you will never go back to a ICE only vehicle after driving electric) and doesn’t kill baby Robins in cities

Depends massively on the kind of driving you do and how you do it.

I usually get mid 50's from my TDI, but it will do over 60 mpg on a run if conditions are right (eg no strong headwind). (Mark 4 golf estate.)

Mpg Mased on my daily 70 mile round trip plus business miles and personal, A roads and motorways

VW TDI lupo 60ish per gallon

VW golf 1.9 TDI MK4 50ish

Seat 1.9 177bhp 42 mpg

Audi A6 40 mpg

Last diesel engine I will own

I got an average of 44 mpg in a 320d xDrive touring.

That was a mix with quite a bit of motorway driving.

and doesn’t kill baby Robins in cities

Unless pricing pretty much forces me to, I wouldn't buy an electric car until they've learned to recycle the batteries rather than dig yet another big ****-off mine somewhere just to keep western city centres smog-free

I've a recentish diesel that's well maintained.  I'd buy another as replacement if I needed a new car (but hoping this'll get me to retirement).  If the govt really gives a toss about all this it'll be emissions on the MoT that'll make the difference, though it may take a bit of fiddling with heavy commercial/public transport testing rules.  I hope that'll be what takes my car off the road - proof that it's eventually become unsafe - rather than some stupid "oooh, bad diesel" knee-jerk

I'm currently tootling around in an octavia 2.0tdi 66 plate manual hatch. Have had *upto* 500m from a tank - it's a "50l" tank (=45l in real world) so that gives a calculated 48.5mpg (computer says 55-56 long term average). Bit of a surprise that. It's a pain for me as I routinely do 250m journeys so inevitably have to top up before my return journey.

Old Golf estate 60 plate (mk6) 2.0tdi did up to 600 per tank off 50l, which is about 55mpg (probably indicated 60-63 when getting 600 mile range)

I drive at around 85 on adaptive cruise on the derestricted parts of the autobahn. Cross country 60-65 (where short term mpg goes to 65-70 on the computer).

20-25k per year. Had the Octy for 18 months and strangely mpg seems to be getting worse not better.

I wouldn’t buy an electric car until they’ve learned to recycle the batteries

Well today’s your lucky day! Or rather a few years ago. Seriously! Lithium battery recycling has been cost effective and feasible for many years, as is re-use in power grids for sustainable energy. Google can find most information on the super-highway but you do have to go and look.

Given that Nissan's blowing the trumpets over half-arsed shit like like this, I'll be needing a citation for your credible, large-scale battery recycling (in the UK too, please, siince we're all about the environment)

The project will be led by 4R Energy Corporation, a joint venture between Nissan and Sumitomo Corporation, and will give the costly batteries new life after they pass their peak performance.

The batteries will be produced at the new factory in the town of Namie by reassembling high-performing modules removed from batteries whose overall energy capacity has fallen below 80 per cent.

Modules with capacities above 80 per cent are assigned for use in replacement Leaf batteries; lesser modules are reassembled and sold as batteries for fork lifts, golf carts and lower-energy applications such as streetlamps.

The plant can process 2,250 battery packs a year and initially plans to refabricate “a few hundred” units annually, Makino said, adding that 4R would see whether the process could also be used for batteries from the latest Leaf model, which uses a different battery chemistry.

Makino said it would be difficult for 4R to completely break down and recycle EV batteries on its own, but may consider partnering with another company to retrieve reusable materials, a process that industry experts say is key to sustainable EV battery production.

Until we get a fast charge infrastructure for  our cars at home and mid journey electric cars are pretty irrelevant at the moment if you do any real mileage. Most domestic supplies can only charge a car at 10 amps. A commercial charger can charge a car at 32 amps but tend to only charge at 16 amps. For every household that needs a car to have an upgraded supply will take years to implement. Some areas don’t even have broadband never mind a decent electric supply.

Why on earth would you assume Nissan would be recycling batteries? Do Coca-Cola recycle aluminium? That they are doing anything at all shows this is WAY better than you thought. When the lithium cells are beyond use that’s when the recycling starts. Try Google without that fog of assumption. Start with “Lithium battery recycling” and keep cars out of it. Your laptop, phone and many other gadgets have these and all can be recycled. Obviously you don’t believe that so I assume your personal ones go to landfill rather than the obvious recycle point at the supermartket set up specifically for this purpose. As far as I’m aware there isn’t currently a solution to recycle things that people send to landfill through ignorance, but cars are large enough that the WEEE directive will sort them out. Unless you voted Brexit...

Only 2 ways that they could make electric cars interesting to me.

1 - Complete renewable grid in the uk

2 - Either a 600 mile range per charge, or the manufacturers agree a universal battery type that can be replaced at ex-service stations so you can recharge by replacing a battery.

I don't see either of those happening so can't see me moving away from fossil fuels, which is actually a big shame

Either a 600 mile range per charge, or the manufacturers agree a universal battery type that can be replaced at ex-service stations so you can recharge by replacing a battery.

Is it really that big of a deal that you can't drive 600 miles continuously?

Why can't you just stop every 200 miles for half an hour?  You're not willing to change your behaviour a tiny bit to help improve the environment?  That's the problem, right there.

I could do yes, but when driving across the country (east anglia to wales) to go for a day on an uplift that would add a fair bit of time. Although that point is the lower of my issues with electric cars.

I still find the carbon footprint of electric cars to be my most significant issue. Making them and powering them is still massively damaging. Collectively there needs to be an overall change to zero carbon rather than just moving the source, electric cars are less polluting where they run, but I would argue about if they are less polluting overall

Inbred456 you really should have a look at some really obvious sources of information before posting. If your home electrics will power an electric oven they'll handle a 32A charge point.

Public/commercial chargers usually charge between 32 and 200A. 16A is a rare exception, 16A and 32A are usually free in places people want you to spend time shopping. If you are happy to pay for your electricity (I am) then 100A is common and the network of 200A is growing.

I have a Zoé 40. At home I charge at 3.2kVA (standard 16A breaker) on the green-up Renault installed for free when I bought the car. I could have paid a modest amount for a 7kVA (32A) charger but as there's a 22kVA (100A) I can see from my house at 2e/hour there was no point.

Driving across France there are lots of 22kVA chargers in nice little villages along the way just off autoroutes or nationales where it's pleasant to take an hour or two to charge. It's a good idea to take a break every 150-250km isn't it? In the UK there's a growing network of fast chargers but I'll admit they're in often grid-locked locations, hopefully Instavolt will spread as they have buisness model I like. I wasn't going to sign up to the various operators for just a week so used pod-points which are mostly 7kVA which means 3-5 hours. Britain is a pretty small island though, how often are you going to drive a long distance? We just plugged in where we were staying and used pod-points when that wasn't possible.

Anyhow have a look at the current state of infrastructure here:

https://www.zap-map.com/live/

Chargemap will give you an idea of how much infrastructure there is in France.

If there's one thing that iritates it's that I can buy a loaf in my local boulangerie with a swipe of my credit card but buying electricity usually requires a mobile phone - a reliable vehicle that is only as reliable as a mobile phone/network is stupid.

Unless pricing pretty much forces me to, I wouldn’t buy an electric car until they’ve learned to recycle the batteries rather than dig yet another big ****-off mine somewhere just to keep western city centres smog-free

As said above, the batteries can be easily recycled, and AFAIK, most battery modules use what are basically a whole shitload of 18650 cells wired together, so it’s not difficult to run a check on the cells and replace any performing poorly and use the whole lot in another format, usually industrial.

Tesla recently had a hire car returned that was showing below-par charging performance, so it was checked over and found to have a firmware issue, which was updated and charging was returned to normal. They changed the battery anyway, just so they use it for research. It had done something around 150,000 miles, possibly 200,000 miles, I can’t remember the exact figure, but considering the mileage most people get out of a car, I’m pretty sure that having a battery crap-out before the car is got rid of is not going to be a major concern.

Quite a few car companies are hoping to phase out diesel cars and go to petrol or electric etc, probably due to the cost of re engineering diesel engines or producing a whole new range of diesels,

Ina lot of major cities, a lot of the new buses are diesel electric eg an engine that charges batteries and starts the first  move of the bus from a stop, we also have full battery buses and even gas powered buses.

Whats needed is better public transport using renewables and battery or electric or even gas powered buses and trains, along with more dedicated cycle lanes to reduce car ownwership and needership of a vehicle

I could do yes, but when driving across the country (east anglia to wales) to go for a day on an uplift that would add a fair bit of time.

So in the future when my grandkids are scrabbling for food in the scorched wreckage of the earth, I'l tell them how important it was that people could get to their uplift days early.

Ok so that's hyperbole, but seriously - humans need to adjust.  The level of convenience we now enjoy is pretty arbitrary.  In the future, what we have now will be considered desperately inconvenient by the future dwellers.  It's not like these things are some fundamental baseline of convenience.  We make do with what we have to - we always have and always will.  So why not make do with something else?

Or, to put it another way - get over yourself.  Your convenience isn't that important.

lusty - I'm assuming that all the bluster up there means you don't have any evidence to cite, then ?

Course it's possible - but my understanding* is that it's too expensive using current (little electrical joke there for you) methods and at current raw material prices

*(clearly very limited compared to your own**)

**implied but unproven

I’ve spent the last two days wandering around downtown Vancouver, a thoroughly modern city and my observations are as follows

the majority driver one of two types of cars

a) an electric car

b) a v8/v12 truck, legacy or super car.

Not seen many 2.0 diesels about.

Molgrips - nice that you keep focusing on the convenience aspect of my post while ignoring the rest. But I guess that's how you "win" an argument on stw.

Until we have 100% renewable electricity in the uk, the electric car is simply moving the source of the pollution from the car to the production of the car and the power

I suggest you look at the share of renewable energy in the UK energy mix, Graham. Those offshore windfarms are really having an impact. The correlation between having PV on the house and owning an electric car is high. My panels produce more than I consume per year even with the car to charge. I charge at night where possible. Public charge points in SW France are 2e for as much as you can take after midnight.

You'll also find electric cars are remarkably economical because they're designed to go as far as possible which means they have to be as economical as possible. 12.6kWh/100km for my Zoé over the last year. 55bhp doesn't sound much and at high speed it isn't. However, it pulls away from all but the most determined petrolhead at the lights because there's maximum torque the instant you floor the go pedal.

As for E6 diesels, they're mostly still filthy and come nowhere near the norms in real use. 14 times the NOX allowed in real use for some models.

https://www.transportenvironment.org/press/%E2%80%98dirty-30%E2%80%99-diesel-cars-mostly-approved-carmakers%E2%80%99-home-countries-%E2%80%93-report

for those not wishing to open the link, this is the crux of it:

All 30 cars on the list have excess NOx emissions in real life and deploy strategies that turn down or switch off pollution controls in circumstances beyond those prescribed in the EU test, notably lower temperatures, hot engine starts, and rides longer than 20 minutes.

Yes, they turn off/down the adblue after 20 mins.

Edukator -  that is good to hear. I do appreciate the place that electric cars have in reducing pollution, but it has to be part of the wider plan.  So if that is happening then awesome.

Ultimately I don't need a new car yet,  but I definitely intend on getting a low emissions probably electric in the future

Molgrips – nice that you keep focusing on the convenience aspect of my post while ignoring the rest. But I guess that’s how you “win” an argument on stw.

I'm taking you up on a particular point, the one about convenience.  This is how argument works, isn't it?  Your other point is more valid so I didn't mention that as I have less of an issue with it.

Re the shifting of pollution - there is a lot of work going into improving renewable generation and also improving environmental standards in battery producing countries, from what I've read.  But it's rather difficult to find concrete information on that over the internet.  But nothing will be done if electric cars don't become mainstream, and they won't become mainstream if no-one buys them.

There is a trend for the production of batteries to shift back to NA and Europe when more stringent environmental standards are actually applied.

in development at the moment is the Northvolt project, which should see one of the largest battery maufacturing facilities in the world built in the Nordic region.

regarding the comments about recycling, given the increasing volume of packs/ cells that will enter the market the supply chain will develop. Getting a small nr it’s difficult to get high quality supply chain interested but once you have volume then the market will respond.

Pure electric isn't something I want, but the newer plug in hybrids are an excellent idea.

For 20k-25k annual mileage I'd personally still stick with diesel

I went petrol a couple of years ago but we do lots of short urban journeys with a few car based family holidays every year

I still find the carbon footprint of electric cars to be my most significant issue. Making them and powering them is still massively damaging. Collectively there needs to be an overall change to zero carbon rather than just moving the source, electric cars are less polluting where they run, but I would argue about if they are less polluting overall

You're right that they're still polluting, but the CO2 emissions are lower than even the most efficient diesel cars, and let's not forget that diesel is the dominant source of poor air quality in our towns and cities. I find it interesting that people keep talking about the damaging effects of producing batteries yet seem to forget the vast infrastructure required to find, harvest, refine, transport, store and distribute petrol and diesel.

The bigger problem with electric vehicles is scalability. I did some calculations a while back and reckon that to shift the UK's private car fleet to EV, you'd be looking at building another two Hinckleys. We all need to be talking much more about demand reduction.

@ransos - your last comment says it. We have to reduce where we can - and switch to other tech - but the 'less' isn't as sexy or interesting, and in fact has active resistance from industry and people who like their cars.

I also am the believer that running older cars is more sustainable at present than the overall environmental footprint of a new vehicle, albeit one that now has heavy metals etc in there instead of particulate and nox etc - we are trying to compare apples and pears.

I also have a deep suspicion that much of the current hype (and it is hype) over diesels is driven by the car manufacturers who started selling us safer cars in the 1990's, then the marketing moved onto diesel and mpg increase, then onto efficient diesels with new tech, then onto small petrol, then hybrid and now electric. Frankly, it is all a way of selling us mugs more cars. I predict in 5-10 years time we will have the 'battery scandal' and the 'recycling electronics' scandal. The *best* thing (apart from less use of cars) is the car folk coming up with modular, maintainble vehicles that last 20 years...but that is like asking the drug dealer to sell us less crack as it is better for us...

I just bought a big diesel estate - I do 20k a year, mostly out of town. We have small petrol engine for town and short trips. I am trying to cycle more, we try not to do any journeys around our town at the moment, even things like shopping is added onto a commute as we go past a supermarket.

I personally think this is affordable for us, and has a bigger environmental impact than buying a new 'wonder vehicle'.

I also aim to run this car absolutely into the ground in the hope that we can sort some of the challenges out and I will either not need another vehicle or have alternatives in a mature market.

I also have a deep suspicion that much of the current hype (and it is hype) over diesels

I don't disagree with much of your post, but on this point, no it really isn't hype. Researchers in air quality have been saying it for years and there is a wealth of data to support their view. Finally, as we've seen recently with plastic waste, it's getting the attention it deserves.

As for the older vs. newer car argument, that is very heavily dependent on how much you use it. My wife and I share one old car and do about 7k mile p.a. between us. In our case it would take a very long time for a cleaner car to pay back its costs of manufacture. Generally though, the use phase of a vehicle has the biggest share of its lifecycle impacts, more so if you do higher annual mileages.

The wife does around 18k PA mostly motorway. We bought a Volvo V50 Drive last year which has a 1.6 diesel. It was 5 years old but had only done 12k miles mostly as a run around. 99g/km apparently so £0 duty. On paper it was meant to get 70+ MPG but we get nowhere close to that lucky its we get low 50's according to the trip computer. If Volvo can quote such optomistic MPG stats I dont have much faith in their emissions readings being true either. Still, a nice, safe and very comfortable car and still pretty cheap to own, so we'll keep it till it dies given it was less than £10k.

Intersting thread, I'm currently looking for a new car, have an Ocatvia estate 07 plate 2.0tdi, few bits going wrong on it, computer tells me between 48-53 mpg tax is 150 per annum. I do around 12000 miles a year on A road round Cumbria or motorways, with some short journey into local town. I'm looking at similar leon estate either 1.4 tsi or 2.0tdi

The 1.4 claims 57 mpg

the 2.0 tdi claims 68

Performance wise the rest of the figures are very similar. Price wise very similar (hard to precise with 2nd hand cars as I can't find two exact spec and same mileage) But a diesel with 40k miles on is around £900 less than a petrol with 28K on it.

I intend to run car into ground and am tempted to go petrol, but wonder what the real world figures on mpg will look like on the petrol v's possible VED increases on the diesel over next 10 year.

I personally think this is affordable for us, and has a bigger environmental impact than buying a new ‘wonder vehicle’.

That's an argument against changing your car prematurely but cars still need changing.  Ok so market forces still dictate the prices which dictate economy of repair (wrongly in my view).

On paper it was meant to get 70+ MPG

No, it wasn't.  Those numbers do not in any way indicate what you are going to get from a car.  It even says that in the small print.  The numbers are simply what it returned during a test.

If Volvo can quote such optomistic MPG stats

Again, you are not understanding.  They did a set test, that's what the results were.  They aren't claiming anyone will get that.  The numbers are there to allow you to compare cars, not as an indicator of what you'll get.

That’s an argument against changing your car prematurely but cars still need changing.

Fair point - but the car industry is using the current 'diesel is bad' climate as a way of persuading many to change to something 'better' for the environment (again...). Folk then use that as an excuse / weight to the argument for shiny newness, that is not needed.

Perhaps we need the Danish or Singaporean 'you only get taxed on a new car' system...?