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…?

“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.”

when many ovens are 13amp and plug into a household socket? anything over 16amps at my gaff causes lights to dim thanks to the transformer supplying the rural area being undersized

which meant an electric berlingo would take 10 hours to charge and give me 80 miles range and cost 3 times as much as the alternative berlingo.

not surprising i didnt take them up on their offer.

You’ve got a problem with your house electrics that has nothing to do with the local transformer, Trailrat. I suggest you call an electrician in the interests of the safety of you and yours, you have some cables that are too thin or a dodgy connector somewhere, and they’ll potentially be getting hot. There really isn’t a transformer on the grid that would suffer a drop in output enough to dim lights with just one 16A appliance in just one house being being added to load.

Care to post the Berlingo quotes in numbers, sure electric cars cost more but three times the price? For same spec, new? The price I’ve found is £22 000 on th eroad including battery.

http://business.citroen.co.uk/electric-vehicles/citroen-electric-vehicles/citroen-berlingo-electric/

I too dismissed the NiCad 106, the Berlingo and even first generation Zoé due to a lack of range and charge points. The Zoé 40 in 2018 is another matter, it does most of what I do on home charge and now there’s a good network of 22kVA (100A) chargers in SW France (and much of Europe) it does what I want for a cost only marginally higher than petrol. If I did more kms it would be cheaper but I don’t intend to drive around in circles to prove it.

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…).

Germany has the scrappage scheme again. Hand in your old polluting diesel or petrol and receive 2k€.

My old man’s 2012 2.2lt d Civic returns 58mpg. That’s 3mpg more than my 1995 Seat Ibiza 1.9d.

You know more that scottish and southern energy now i take it, it was their lot that told me what the issue was when asked about getting my 60amp mains fuse uprated when they changed me from an overhead line to an underground line.

Equally no im not comparing a new berlingo with a new electric berlingo. But its a fair comparison because not everyone has bags on money to throw about on new cars, how ever at the time electric berlingo was brand new to market so i would have had no choice but to pay full new price….but ive never bought a brand new car and am unlikely to unless my hand is forced by such a way.

So i spent 1/3rd of the price on an availible diesel berlingo that s 3 years old and had 5500 on the clock. A comparable berlingo was not availible to anyone at the time why id want to spent 3 times as much for a vehicle with an 80mile range that takes 10hours to charge at my house is beyond me.

they just need to make a zoe of a decent size and itll be grand.

Yup, Trailrat, I reckon I know more than the people at Scottish and Southern energy if they told you that your lights dimming on switching on anything over 16A was due to the transformer not coping. The smallest UK pole mounted transformers are 50kVA ( over 200A) and if your supply comes from a ground mounted transformer the smallest is 100kVA (over 200A). You might get dimming if all the houses connected to the transformer switch on the oven at the same time but just one 16A appliance at any time other than peak local demand wouldn’t result in dimming. Check out all the info on the Defra site like I just have.

If you already have a 60A main fuse then that’s four times what you need for a 3.2kVA home charge point and twice what you need for 7kVA charger which will half charge a Zoé in three hours. I have a 60A main fuse, it’s all that’s needed.

Your problem is more likely to be wires of inadequate section somewhere along the line, a bad connection or some other defect. Your energy supplier is fobbing you off with fairy tales.

Well i do only tend to weld with the lights on at 6-8pm on a week night  in winter mainly because lights are not needed a 2pm on a sunday- fair to say thats peak demand.

The official line was too many houses atached to too small a transformer . Its pole mounted  tiny and i can see it from my window , folks locally been refused feed in solar installs because of poor infrastructure to our area as well to be fair id believe any combination of your expertly gleened from the internet 10 minutes ago opinions as well knowing how frequently we lose power due to the routing of the lines cross country from quite a distance away

– doesnt like when the plasma cutter and the  compressor fire up at the same time- which is rare to be fair . ( my electrician fitted a dedicated breaker and heavy gauge cable suited to the load using an mk comando 16 amp socket for the welder /plasma and compressor when the house was rewired)

So the most likely problem is the cable to your house from the transformer. Even if there are too many houses connected that wouldn’t be a problem most of the time, and there would be lights dimming every time there was an advertising break in a popular TV show or when people get up and make breakfast. I used to sit and watch electricity demand in a Welsh hydro power station so I knew when they were going to generate, there was a seasonal demand variation of a factor of four and a daily range of more than that. If you can get light dimming at low demand times it’s definitely not the sum of local demand on the transformer causing your problems, it’s the cable to your house or something else.

How many houses are served by the transformer, can you divine that as well?

Who’s using electric heating?

What are this weeks lottery numbers?

You STW dieselheads gonna gang up on me?

This thread is full of the spurious anti-electric car arguments. Can’t charge it at home but can use a wleder is one of the weakest after “three times the price”. People generally charge their cars overnight on off-peak electricity so the “not enough power from the trnasformer” argument really is scraping the barrel

Trailrat always rubbishes electric cars and TCE/TSI petrol engines, always has, always will. There’s no objectivity in it, just dogma. Any spurious excuse to rubbish.

Now check out the excess deaths from diesel air pollution, listen to the noise of a modern city, check out the mass migrations that are being provoked by climatic change, the increase in extreme weather events. I drove around the north circular road last week. What a stinking filthy noisy hell hole – replace those cars with electrics and you’ll increase the qualtity of life of those unfortunate enough to live along it enormously, and delay central London going under the waves by a few years too.

#scrapyourfilthystinkingdiesel.

“Three times the price” is not a weak argument. I cannot currently afford an electric car even though I really want one.

When we change the Prius it will likely be to electric, but that will have to wait until we can afford it.

Edukator, I don’t always agree with everything you say. . BUT,

diesel does stink.

now i do work in the bus industry (as a driver) so PERHAPS, I’m a bit more sensitive to it due to excess exposure, however,

i rode my ebike home from work last year, it 31 miles or so, all of it apart from a 0.8 mile stretch is a bus route, the overwhelming memory i have of the journey is the smell of diesel, some from buses, but lots from ancient 4x4s with suspiciously sooty exhausts, (almost as if they were using red diesel) i have a diesel car, its a 2010 model, no dpf, and it doesn’t stink anything like that, and barely any visible reek either.

As far as im concerned the sooner we get all diesels running adblue and dpf the better, but even that is a stopgap, we have to move to something cleaner.

i don’t believe that petrol is actually that much better either.

But he went on to explain he was comparint a threee year old ICE with a new electric, Molgrips.

FFS, check out the prices of new and used diesel and electric Berlingos yourself on autotrader or elswhere before swallowing his nonsense. New diesel and electric Berlingos ar expensive and not so far apart in price and three-year-old diesel and electric Berlingos are cheap and not so far apart in price. The choice of a Berlingo is in itself odd selecting a porrly performing electric car when there an increasing number of models with ranges somewhat greater than 80 miles from a variety of manufacturers. Add plug-in hybrids to the mix and there really is no excuse for promoting oil burners apart from grutuitously poisoning your fellow citizens for the pleasure of it.

This thread is either trolling or the promotion of filthy cars for reasons unknown. Did people learn nothing from dieselgate?

Edukator, how many people is TR killing in rural Aberdeenshire? How many people choke on his Berlingo on his commute to Angola? How many bikes could he fit in a Zoe? (no tow bars remember)

He rubbishes them because they don’t work for his circumstances. When are you going to come around to the fact that they are NOT a one size fits all solution?

Unlike yourself I’ve studied this further than just finding a nice high place to perch and preach, it’s actually a massively complex problem that this country havent’t even begun to address. We can’t even guarantee power generation for the next decade at TODAYS demand levels never mind the addition of car charging. Our entire grid system is designed around an outdated concept and is no longer fit for purpose, unfortunately those in (political) charge are woefully ignorant of this and continue to push ignorant vote winning agendas that are, one day going to leave us in the shit.* That aside, it’s simply not sustainable to put all your eggs in one basket, I’ve said this time and time again and yet you still preach electric as if there is no other alternative. One of the best being STOP PEOPLE DRIVING CARS. I guarantee you even if all those folk switched to electric tomorrow they would still be dying from stress related illnesses or what have you, meanwhile people will be dying elsewhere from mine effluent and whatever else.

And yes, Molgrips, cost is a key factor. Matt is also correct when he says there’s an amount of fashion and marketing going on. FFS look at this place, full of folk buying the latest and greatest because this new standard is “better”, this is no different.

*I know this from work, for obvious reasons I’ll spare details but Scotland was very nearly without power for a period of several days last year. All of it.

The fact i even went and enqired about electric cars and 1.2 tce engines before making an informed choice based on my requirements means im totally blinkered im sure.

As i said i choose to make my enviromental gains in not using the damned thing, 4000 miles last year but hiring on occasion is not an option , i may not get the aveage electricsupply  electric or  more than 1meg internet but i only need to walk 20 minutes for a twice an hour bus service to town for when im not cycling on the purposely restored old railway line that passes the end of the road

But what i did do was explore the options rather than adopt your my opinion is the opinion your wrong approach

you honestly telling me you would buy a car of which the only way to obtain it at the time was to buy new (for 4000 miles a year)  for 22 grand that does 80 miles when a used model was availible for 1/3rd of that ?.

Did people learn nothing from dieselgate?

Did you?

Guarantee the next scandal is around the corner and it’ll be electric. Either pollution from “recycling plants” in China, mining in **** knows where or just being “lied to” about the technology.

Electric cars have their own problems. This is not news. If you think it is you are stupid. If you knew anything about diesels you would know they weren’t perfect either. Nobody has said they are.

Setting asside price ,Show me one single berlingo multispace electric thats 3 years old.

Edukator I wasn’t saying that a domestic supply would be unable to charge a vehicle just that if everybody suddenly decided to switch to electric vehicles the supply network/ grid would struggle to cope. It struggles to cope at Christmas when people put the kettle on during the ad break for X factor. Never mind everybody fast charging their car overnight every night for work the next day.

Do you have any information on the carbon footprint of a new electric vehicle including the lease hiring of the battery compared to keeping an older combustion engined car on the road?

As much as I’d love to go green, a same model year i8 is much more expensive, less practical and less useful for the work I do than the 330d I’m currently being offered. The middle ground is a 320i Msport

There’s no more argument than that when “circumstances” are considered. Until it’s cheaper, easier and more practical to own an appropriate electric car they won’t become the mainstay of the UK, and with infrastructure as it s, that’s going to be long time coming until someone comes up with ultra long range battery tech in a lifestyle estate/SUV format.

Mrs K’s Car though will be an electric or hybrid shopping/school cart.

Karnali we have a Fabia 1.2 Tsi on a mixed cycle of urban A road and motorway the average is 38-40 mpg. You won’t get anywhere near 57 mpg.

I’m deliberately not going to start arguing points here, but I agree totally with the “cut the demand” point. Don’t see it happening though, too many vested interests sadly.

But one question: Is electric vehicle technology changing in the direction of reducing charging times? Could we see it greatly reduced in the near future (sorry, that’s two)? Never mind the what I should be doing, that is the big issue for us, all we really use the car for is (9hr+) trips to Scotland which are done in one shot. And any avoidance of motorway service stations is a necessity for sanity…..

Kryton why are you not looking at a 330e?

Are they a premium price second hand? Cheeky if they are as the government subsidised early ones by £5k

When an electric equivalent car of the petrol or diesel model is noticeably cheaper then you will see a lot of people buying them.  As it is they are typically more expensive even with the discount.  Any savings in running the car are taken away from the purchase price and the money aspect is important to a lot of people.

Almost afraid of posting on this thread now! I bought a 64 plate Golf Bluemotion estate 12 months ago, and despite the trip computers 66mpg-ish long term over-estimate get around a true 58-62 mpg from it, doing around 20K/pa of mostly motorway driving. The other options were one of the newer “efficient” petrols, or hybrid electic – second hand (which is how most people buy cars in the real world), nothing else made sense than an efficient diesel for my circumstances. One of my concerns with an electric vehicle is what effect strapping a mountain bike to the roof – as most of us do – would do to the range? Any experience on that from someone who actually has an electric car?

As it is they are typically more expensive even with the discount.

Not as company vehicles, they work out significantly cheaper.  330e £340 pm 330d would have been about £480pm

Most drivers are not in company vehicles….

Ok, some statistics (and maybe lies…)

I am right – SMMT believe that ‘new car = more environmental benefits’ – https://www.smmt.co.uk/industry-topics/sustainability/average-vehicle-age/

Also our use of cars is shrinking – but is still shockingly short journeyed. I wonder if our car buying (and valuing of) is lagging behind our car use changes?

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/632913/nts-infographic-2016.pdf

Kryton why are you not looking at a 330e?

In my my range of current dealers I haven’t found a sub £20k model, do they even do a Touring version?

do they even do a Touring version?

No – unfortunately, or an xDrive version.

I’m seriously considering replacing my written off motor with the exact same, as the electric options aren’t that appealing at the moment – and I know a good part of that are my biases, but hey ho.

New developments:

https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/industry/new-bosch-diesel-tech-%E2%80%98fix%E2%80%99-nox-problem