So unless I’m missing something, the BBC reports that up to 40,000 people a year are dying early because of (old) diesel car emissions and absolutely nothing is happening about it.

A quick fix would be to give six month’s warning and ban non-Euro 6 cars from city centres during the day. Is it really going to cause that much of a headache? 18 months to ban diesel busses. Two years and diesel HGVs kicked out.

– Double the duty on fuel.
– Per mile charging on cars via GPS to discourage short journeys.
– Make the M6 toll free for car sharing.
– Make bikes VAT-exempt.
– Remove the button that stupid people push to disable their car’s start/stop system.
– Congestion charging in every major town / city with proceeds going to cycling infrastructure and electric busses (happy to subsidise electric taxis).

I’ll grant you, in the short term it’s going to upset a few people.

There’d be a riot!

I still don’t understand why there is a button to disable the stop/start system. Isn’t that just a little bizarre? Under what circumstances would anyone disable stop/start, other than fear of change????

Rachel

But the successive governments have encourage diesel car usage via taxation, unless it’s part of a non Euro 6 scrapage scheme it will penalise those who can’t afford to change cars.

Taxes would go up as there’s an extra 40000 people per year to use schools, doctors, roads, police, fire, rubbish collections ………

A quick fix would be to give six month’s warning and ban non-Euro 6 cars from city centres during the day. Is it really going to cause that much of a headache?

it will if you get stabbed, burgled or your house catches fire. Or even if you’re just hoping for a parcel to be delivered.

Because sapiens have never made rational decisions to protect their long term survival / happiness as a species.

If you’re going to ban all non-Euro6 vehicles, you may as well just ban all vehicles (except perhaps leccy vehicles).

Disabling stop/start prevents excessive wear to the engine. Makes a lot of sense when you come to lights and know from the seq

A quick fix would be to give six month’s warning and ban non-Euro 6 cars from city centres during the day. Is it really going to cause that much of a headache?

Well personally it would cause a problem as I’d have to sell the car I use for work. It mostly gets used on motorways but I sometimes end up in city or town centres even though I try to avoid it.

So basically I’d need a new one. As would a hell of a lot of people. Second hand petrol cars would go through the roof, and people’s diesels would be worth naff all. So a lot of people would need to find a good chunk of money quite quickly.

Then all the other business travellers who are leasing cars – they’d need new ones, which would cause a hell of a headache for all the leasers who would need to find a crapload of new cars from somewhere.

Disabling stop/start prevents excessive wear to the engine. Makes a lot of sense when you come to lights and know from the seq

I bet it’s insignificant.

Disabling stop/start prevents excessive wear to the engine

Got any figures for that? I suspect the car manufacturers have thought of this already.

my new diesel car has AdBlue – I think it makes a real difference to the emissions, at least the blurb suggests it does.

A quick fix would be to give six month’s warning and ban non-Euro 6 cars

Given that Euro 6 diesels are 2-3 times worse than they are supposed to be, I suggest we get rid of those too.

Maybe I should change the Passat for a petrol one before this kicks in. A quick search seems to suggest that the 2.0 non turbo is cheap but dreadful on mpg; the 3.2 V6 is only slightly worse and there are quite a few around 🙂

Issue is it’s a classic situation where whatever we do, it ends up being more expensive for those who are poorer.

Imagine living paycheck to paycheck on £18k a year or whatever, if your car breaks down you’re already off to the payday lenders. And now some dudes in Westminster who earn 6 times your salary are telling you you need to buy a new car.

I don’t know what the answer is, and I’d love to see diesel off our roads yesterday, but I know just banning them outright isn’t going to work.

Under what circumstances would anyone disable stop/start, other than fear of change????

Ours is permanently disabled on the works car.
It’s an ambulance response car though which may have something to do with it 😆

Perhaps if we thought about how many unnecessary journeys we make round town, we could possibly reduce these.
Smaller, lighter, more aerodynamic cars would help with fuel efficiency.
If we paid attention to how we drove (ie: no flying away from traffic lights when there’s another set in 200 yards)
That would save fuel.
And choose cars that will last a long time, it takes a lot of energy to make a new car.
Being really green, however, wouldn’t be very good for the government, imagine how much tax they would lose if everyone bought a new car with the intention of keeping it going as long as possible.
Btw, im not having a dig at anyone.

Ours is permanently disabled on the works car.
It’s an ambulance response car though which may have something to do with it

Why ?

Ours is permanently disabled on the works car.
It’s an ambulance response car though which may have something to do with it

Funny that mine isn’t disabled.

Doesn’t stop/start disable itself in cold temperature?

It can do if the battery is low.

Or maybe, and stay with me, because this is pretty radical, rather than making slight changes to the cars we use, we could use the cars less?

Crazy idea. Nah, we’ll just wait for everybody to buy electric cars, that’ll solve all our problems (except the danger from motor vehicles that stops people from walking and cycling, the air pollution caused by damaging the road surface, brake pads and tyres, the congestion, the parking problems, the obesity/inactivity crisis)

the 3.2 V6

Wasn’t there something in the papers the other day about high pressure petrol turbo engines (ecoboost etc) being really bad for NOx too. A big lazy V6 might not be that bad an idea.

What ever happened to running diesel cars on cooking oil? Why can’t we do that?

1) Enough people did it to push up prices of veg oil to the same as diesel
2) Used oil is now snapped up by industrial bio producers who refine it to put it in pump diesel (5%). Chippies used to have to pay to dispose of it, now they get paid for it.
3) It still produces the nasty NOx.

Wasn’t there something in the papers the other day about high pressure petrol turbo engines (ecoboost etc) being really bad for NOx too. A big lazy V6 might not be that bad an idea.

Keep talking…. 😉

It still produces the nasty NOx.

Ah fair enough then.

🙄

The starter motor is sized/specified to the number of times it’s going to be used. So those in stop/start cars are upgraded. Better bearings/bushings, more torque, better electrics. Or any combination of the above. Many of the current and next gen ones are permanently engaged, so no pesky pinion to wear out either, the very early versions *sometimes* used stock starter motors.
Engines only suffer measurable wear during cold starts, or buy being stopped and then started when extremely hot, exactly when stop/start doesn’t actually happen. They have target temperatures (oil/coolant/ambient/exhaust depending what the car is actually measuring)

The buttons are there because customers think they know best.
They’ll be deleted pretty much globally within the next couple of years. Already gone in Japan and a couple of other markets.

More likely that someones mucked up something on the electrics.

I don’t think so. The response cars are like that as are the newer ambulances that have it fitted.

I’m guessing that it’s been disabled due to power management issues with the auxiliary batteries etc.

Contrary to popular belief, car designers aren’t total idiots. As evidenced by the fact cars are more reliable than they were 30 years ago.

I’m starting to get really affected by car emissions on my walk to work. I don’t think older cars are the problem particularly, and I certainly don’t trust modern ones (have we forgotten those conniving Germans, VW already?).

I certainly don’t trust modern ones

You don’t need to trust them, you need proper figures. I think these are being compiled as we speak.

Well personally it would cause a problem as I’d have to sell the car I use for work. It mostly gets used on motorways but I sometimes end up in city or town centres even though I try to avoid it.

Park and ride?

Well like I say, I try and avoid it. Most big cities I take the train/bike. But I’m contractually obliged to have a car (or I lose £280/mo take home) and if they tell me to go somewhere at a particular time I have to go, and that may mean the car. Or if they tell me to go somewhere where the train takes much longer.

Keep talking….

BRITAIN’S most popular cars, the Ford Fiesta and Focus, have a dirty secret — the pollution emissions on some models are four times higher than shown in the laboratory-based tests under which they were approved for road use.

The Sunday Times has obtained data from on-the-road tests on three new Fords, all powered by the car maker’s prize-winning 1-litre EcoBoost petrol engine, showing they averaged 0.24 grams of nitrogen oxides (NOx) per kilometre.

This is four times the 0.06 grams maximum allowed in the European emission standards test
http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/news/uk_news/Environment/article1568490.ece?shareToken=734934571505f1d748213e6f507f05c6

Apparently the 3.2 V6 gives about 24mg/km: http://www.nextgreencar.com/view-car/18745/vw-touareg-3.2-v6-240ps–petrol-automatic-6-speed/

0.24g = 240mg, so is that a tenth of the NOx from the V6?!

You mean VW were not the only ones?

In other news. Bears do shit in the woods.

The buttons are there because customers think they know best.

Surely they make it easy for the MOT tester to keep the engine running. Far easier than, say, hooking up a computer/test rig to the car ECU and doing the job that way.

Everyone’s really into the cost of replacing diesel cars for the people who choose to drive them, but my lungs are irreplaceable and I don’t get to not breathe.

Scrappage schemes are a fine way of making their victims pay for polluters’ life choices.

Everyone’s really into the cost of replacing diesel cars for the people who choose to drive them, but my lungs are irreplaceable and I don’t get to not breathe.

I’d love a new car. Buy me one?

Its not exactly a ‘cars cause pollution and death’ shocker though is it?

Lots of yoghurt knitting hippies have been going on about it for ages so if there are some losers its not like they weren’t told and they should take it up with the manufacturers. TBH I’m surprised there arent more people suing councils for failing to keep the air clean.

That said, sweeping actions are not the British way and given Landrovers profile as the Jewels in the UK manufacturing crown we are unlikely to do anything drastic.

Nudgenomics reducing the dominance of cars and making other options more attractive would be my suggestion.