If you believe the rumours it seems that diesels’ days appear to be numbered. Lots of grim forecasts predict a massive hike in VED and fuel costs, banishment from town centres and scrappage scheme incentives to get people to give them up.

It would seem horribly unfair if the government were to increase tax on existing vehicles, cars they sold to people on their green credentials and encouraged them to buy with lower VED. And since diesel fuel is already taxed at 58p per litre how much can they realistically add on to it before haulage companies bring things to a halt?

It would seem to me at least that the only fair way would be to lower VED and fuel tax on petrol cars. But I guess HMRC aren’t worried about fair.

What does the hive mind think, and would you buy a new one?

What rumours?

I bought a Skoda Fabia Scout 1.6 diesel about 18 months ago.

In hindsight, I would buy the petrol version now.

I like the drive ability of the diesel, but for my changed usage the extra cost of the diesel fuel and premium for the Diesel engine just isn’t worth it.

The VED is £20 per year, I believe that as long as I own the car this won’t change.

Have considered changing the car to a diesel, however, having spent the thick end of £14k on the new car I should probably keep it.

Can’t see too many people choosing a diesel in the future, unless they are driving at least 20,000 miles a year.

Do prefer to drive a diesel for any longer journeys though, round town and shorter journeys I prefer the petrol engine.

Ought to sell it now before the diesel becomes unpopular and the values drop considerably.

I can only hope they do – I’ve just spent a couple of months persuading my other half that petrol makes more sense for her 10mile commute and with lower purchase price and fuel price it will make up for the lower mpg… just as she placed the order diesel and petrol prices levelled off together (in fact the local filling station had diesel 1p cheaper for a day!) – I’m now hoping this is a short term thing caused by the russian affair and normality will be restored!

Since our ‘Leaders’ have roughly no interest at all in our health and well-being, I expect very little to happen. Maybe a little pissing around at the edges of tax boundaries, but nothing that might actually make a difference.

It would seem horribly unfair

congestion charge
fuel duty ladder
way above inflation increases in existing tax bands
etc.

all apply/applied to existing cars

I’d expect more of the same for existing cars, new registrations will be where any massive hike in tax would happen.

Oh, wait…

extra cost of the diesel fuel

What extra cost? I have a petrol car and a diesel, I don’t find one has better ‘drive ability’ than the other. One is more fun but thats because its a small car with a 2 litre engine.

extra cost of the diesel fuel

What extra cost?

Unless you were born in the 90’s and never bought petrol until last month Diesel has pretty much always been ~10% more expensive than petrol. It’ll go back again too.

[edit, it’s too early in the morning, I meant born in the 2000’s! which is a scary thought!]

I found it difficult to find a petrol, small estate car recently. So many seemed to be diesel, most with daft low miles on them, or uber complex turbo and a supercharger from VW group. We preferred the Fabia Estate, and looked for 1.4 flavour – could not get a (half) decent one, so ended up with the Seat ST.

Diesel has it’s place – big miles, big vehicles. But it is more polluting and not appropriate for so many people’s needs. Frustratingly we had an ‘eco’ drive that focused purely on mpg – and a tax system that supported it.

We need to look again at how we support more public transport, bikes, electric bikes, electric mopeds, small cars, petrol and electric etc, and stop being purely about mpg and £20 tax.

I say that as a diesel car owner.

We need to look again at how we support more public transport, bikes, electric bikes, electric mopeds, small cars, petrol and electric etc, and stop being purely about mpg and £20 tax.

Whilst NOx, SOx, pm10 etc are an issue, there have been huge gains made on those in the last 20 years, many orders of magnitude in some cases, yet mpg (and it’s inverse correlation with CO2) has only improved by about 20%, if that? And most of those gains have been in selling people smaller engines (very few 2.0 petrol engines on the market anymore, whereas not so long ago you could buy a 2.5 V6 Mondeo, it’s now a 2.0 diesel or 1.6 turbo petrol).

Just bought a 12 year old VW Diesel. It does an actual 52mpg on a run and costs £145 to tax. I looked at several petrol cars of that age but the road tax was more and the fuel consumption considerably less.
As what must be an Old Fart, I think that diesel is cheaper than petrol and there are 10 French Francs to the Pound. This may not have been the case recently but now diesel has fallen below petrol on most forecourts.
As to what is kinder to the environment, I am dubious about the claims for clean electric as most of our power comes from coal and gas. SeeElectrical Production

If you thrash a Euro 6 diesel engine it doesn’t meet emissions requirements. *feigns surprise*

Same thing happens with a dinky petrol engine, which even when driven by my vicar-like right foot struggles to make 30 mpg.

Some manufacturers have demonstrated that they can still meet the targets at motorway speeds so it’s theoretically possible; the government’s weight should fall on the others who are merely fudging the test.

Diesel cars are still out selling petrol mainly due to company cars which is still the main market for the UK. The tax regime for company cars hasn’t really changed and looking at the lease car market the best deals are available of diesel cars by a long a margin so they are expecting higher returns on these vehicles too. This shows no real movement in the diesel market with both new and second hand cars commanding a higher premium over their petrol equivalent.
You will and do see higher emission controls on diesel engines and I would expect MOT’s to get much tougher to get the older more polluting vehicles off the roads. This along with smaller capacity diesel engines will be the future of the mid size and above cars.
The smaller car market is already changing to turbo petrol engines delivering equivalent MPG’s to their diesel alternatives which again is reflected by the new models available and what lease companies are offering deals on.
The diesel engine is a long way from being obsolete in the car market and there is no real world alternative in the haulage industry.

@Flaperon makes a good point – real world emissions and mpg just do not meet manufacturer claims, based on the lab tests. Some proper ‘real world’ tests over 10k when they launch a new car is what is needed.

I would also like to know the running costs (financial and environmental, especially with how many complex parts they ‘eat’) of low miles modern diesels compared to simple petrol.

It not just the haulage industry. You can’t really run medium sized of bigger van on peterol without going along the yank route of huge engines that will cost so much to run

You will and do see higher emission controls on diesel engines and I would expect MOT’s to get much tougher to get the older more polluting vehicles off the roads.

I doubt it, it would kill off the classic car. Car’s for the most part are disposable goods, they get to 20 years old and fall apart, there’s not a huge need to legislate older ones the road as the number of older ones is tiny. Even when discussing bangernomics these days it’s all DPF’s, EGR’s etc, not old PD diesel’s.

We’ll make much bigger gains by reducing car usage than by improving their efficiency. Even with big weekend trips I would/do save more CO2 by commuting than I would swapping to a 70mpg diesel.

Unless you were born in the 90’s and never bought petrol until last month Diesel has pretty much always been ~10% more expensive than petrol. It’ll go back again too.

Yes I know that but the difference in putting a full tank in is minimal anyway, maybe £3 max, hardly a game changer is it?

Who knows, it’s ‘usually’ a gradual thing – and in the UK a huge percentage of new cars are bought as company cars – at the moment a few mpgs here, or a few pence per litre there won’t make much difference – anyway most people seem to have caught on to the fact that small engine petrol cars are best for city driving and diesel cars for anything else – well if MPG is your concern anyway, but when it comes to Company Cars BIK is big deal breaker and diesel is better – most people looking at a company car list see a tiny engine petrol version which couldn’t pull a greased stick out of a dogs arse and theoretically could do 40mpg, or a 2.0 diesel with 140, 170, even 180bhp and tug’s worth of torque and will do 50mph – if they change the tax rules than people with move with them – I wouldn’t mind a petrol for a change, but it would have to be a turbo charged one, after a decade of diesel driving I find petrols harsh and flat, you’ve got to tear the arse out of them to get moving.

I’ve recently bought two new cars and one a big diesel (2.5ltr) and one a petrol (1.8ltr) Prices round our way (both London and Hampshire) have seen diesel costs drop below petrol and by 1-3ppl.
Honestly for me I’m not bothered, I choose a car for its use not really for it’s fuel efficiency or type.

HTH

Yes I know that but the difference in putting a full tank in is minimal anyway, maybe £3 max, hardly a game changer is it?

10% in my car is £6-£7, in a big estate or 4×4 it’ll be >£10. Until Fiat developed the computer controlled common rail system in the 90’s (and until it caught on 10-15 years later) that 10% margin was a significant part of the difference between a petrol and diesels MPG.

Car’s for the most part are disposable goods, they get to 20 years old and fall apart,

Average scrappage age is 13 years apparently.

“how we support more public transport, bikes, electric bikes, electric mopeds, small cars, petrol and electric etc, and stop being purely about mpg”

THIS x 100.

It has to be a co-ordinated network though . no point sticking on extra trains if theres no buses from the station to the industrial estates where folks work. people will not use them.

where i used to live – everyone inthe growing village wanted to use the train to travel to work. The one train that went to the city and the one train that returned at night – they were not even 8hrs appart. GREAT PLANNING.

Scotrails attitude was – we might review it at the next time table setting session. i believe now 4 years later there are more trains stop there…. but i just moved – it was less hassle.

ton miles for your average car/l fuel is rediculous – 4 seats , massive boot. Carrys 1 person and their lunch about 6 miles. a moped would do the same thing but that would require a massive culture shift –

“Average scrappage age is 13 years apparently.”

Ignorance and boredom causes that mostly – folks dont realise a cars actual worth because its so easy to buy another cheaply – which in turn means that new car prices are too cheap…..

As what must be an Old Fart, I think that diesel is cheaper than petrol and there are 10 French Francs to the Pound.

Oh yes, and LPs cost £3.99.

Car’s for the most part are disposable goods, they get to 20 years old and fall apart,

Average scrappage age is 13 years apparently.

I’ve only owned two from new, one was scrapped at 7 (185k miles) and the other at 12 (120k miles) as both were well beyond economical repair.

The VED is £20 per year, I believe that as long as I own the car this won’t change.

Is this right? We have a car with the same engine (1.6 Skoda TDI) that was bought partly because the road tax was cheap and the economy was enormous compared to the petrol. Our plan was to run it until it was dead but the thought of the tax going up lots in the future is unsettling.

“The VED is £20 per year, I believe that as long as I own the car this won’t change.”

Believe away . Doesnt mean it will happen.

It does sound unlikely that they’d give people a break just because they already own the car, bought based on the knowledge at the time…

The (preferable) future:

Average scrappage age is 13 years apparently.

But that’s a mix of cars that were beyond cost effective maintenance, and those that were crashed, it’s a moot point though, the central point was that car’s don’t last indefinitely, so older car’s aren’t really an issue.

Is this right? We have a car with the same engine (1.6 Skoda TDI) that was bought partly because the road tax was cheap and the economy was enormous compared to the petrol. Our plan was to run it until it was dead but the thought of the tax going up lots in the future is unsettling.

Well my 1.6 petrol from ’06 (i.e. tax was based on engine size not CO2/economy) has been creeping up by £5-£10 each year. But in reality £200 a year is a drop in the ocean of car running costs (otherwise I’d sell it and buy a similar car in the newer tax brackets). Personally I’d like to see it abolished and replaced with road pricing. People might not flinch at their commute costing £5 in petrol as that’s effectively a sunk cost to them since they filled up last week (and insurance, MOT, VED, depreciation, servicing etc are sunk costs), but if you got up in the morning and the choice was a £2 bus or £5 car journey into the town center?

Very real debate suggesting they will be banned from Paris, similar moves possible in London/UK. We already have the “low emissions zone” which means hefty charges for older vans.

My sense is there are too many diesel cars to ban them from city centres. I get stiffed £500 for VED for my car so I can see a time when diesels get charged a similar amount. I’m a bit lost as to why they where ever encouraged as pollution is clear for all to see. (FYI I drove a diesel for 120k over 7 years great car/engine but not particularly environmentally friendly)

We’ll make much bigger gains by reducing car usage than by improving their efficiency. Even with big weekend trips I would/do save more CO2 by commuting than I would swapping to a 70mpg diesel.

We’ve looked into using public transport instead of a car a few times now. I lost the love of driving a long time ago and now look at the time sat on the roads as a waste of my time when I could be doing something else. Thought using public transport would be the answer but public transport was always more expensive and for an 8 mile journey would take nearly 2 hours which I might as well walk if I had that amount of time available. Would love to cycle to work but no showers or even a proper sink makes it impossible when I sweat like a pig at the best of times. This leaves us with only one option which is to continue to use the car. I expect this is similar to most peoples experience outside of London. I don’t expect it to change anytime soon whilst the governments concentrate on getting fast connections between the North and South yet we have such poor public transport that you can’t get to the outskirts of your own city in the time it takes you to travel from Leeds to London.

The upcoming changes to VED won’t affect older cars.

New diesels are needing ever more complicated stuff to meet emissions regs. When it was all about CO2 they were fine, then particulates were the target and DPFs were needed – now lots of current and upcoming models will need the faff of Adblue to be compliant.

Exclusion zones in cities will be main thing but that will only be London for now and it’s quite a few years away.

craigxxl
we have such poor public transport that you can’t get to the outskirts of your own city in the time it takes you to travel from Leeds to London.

This is why I’d welcome any sort of ban of cars from Belfast city centre. It’s at bursting point as it is. When I used to commute through it I would spend 40-50 minutes in the car each way to cover 10 miles or I could cycle and get there in 18-25 minutes. I’m guessing most large towns and cities are similar.

It’d be no skin off my nose, whenever I do go into town to shop or whatever I park 1-2 miles away from the city centre shops anyway despite having two toddlers, double buggy and all the tat that comes with that.

But I can’t see any serious, meaningful efforts to curb or ban any cars in the near future, you only have to watch the way people park in Tesco to get an idea of their psychology….they’ll spend 5 mins hunting for a space nearest the door then execute a 9 point turn to squeeze themselves into a bay so they don’t have to walk 100 yards.

As to what is kinder to the environment, I am dubious about the claims for clean electric as most of our power comes from coal and gas. SeeElectrical Production

Spurious argument though.

Even if you are producing the elec in a dirty manner, you’ve removed a few layers of inefficiency.

With fossil fuel in the car you still have all the dirty production and refining of the material, dirty distribution*, and you then reduce the efficiency even more by burning it locally, and polluting locally

With Electric you still have the dirty production, but distribution is cleaner*, end use at the vehicle is more efficient, and the local pollution is lower/null.

Couple that with the fact that over time Elec generation is getting cleaner and can potentially be done in the future VERY cleanly its an improving situation. Production of the fossil fuels we burn can’t get cleaner in the same way, and can’t get much more efficient, and burning fossil fuels locally in an engine is never going to get to the same efficiency levels.

In a move to electric vehicles the *only* place you need to focus on emissions and big improvements in efficiency is at generation (and battery production), where are with fossil fuels it’s through the entire chain, and the same gains just aren’t there to be made.

* This part always makes me chuckle, we burn massive amounts of fuel just transporting fuel around, both in production, national distribution, and then carting reserves of it around in our vehicles to burn later.

Elec has minimal transport cost in distribution and a fully charged battery weighs no more than an empty one, so you’re not doing any extra work moving around your fuel reserve.

Not sure where you’re all based buy by me in the Midlands Diesel is now 4-5p per litre cheaper than Petrol now.

for the time being due to euro being on its arse i believe.

Spurious argument though.

Well yours is.

Even if you are producing the elec in a dirty manner, you’ve removed a few layers of inefficiency.

Well, the generation might be more efficient than an IC engine, but……….

With fossil fuel in the car you still have all the dirty production and refining of the material, dirty distribution*, and you then reduce the efficiency even more by burning it locally, and polluting locally

With Electric you still have the dirty production, but distribution is cleaner*, end use at the vehicle is more efficient, and the local pollution is lower/null.

You lose about 8% in electrical transmission. And you lose a lot I charging/discharging (20-30%).

Couple that with the fact that over time Elec generation is getting cleaner and can potentially be done in the future VERY cleanly its an improving situation. Production of the fossil fuels we burn can’t get cleaner in the same way.

Yes they can, there are projects underway to re-inject the CO2 produced into the gas reservoirs the fuel comes from.

In a move to electric vehicles the *only* place you need to focus on emissions and big improvements in efficiency is at generation (and battery production), where are with fossil fuels it’s through the entire chain, and the same gains just aren’t there to be made.

* This part always makes me chuckle, we burn massive amounts of fuel just transporting fuel around, both in production, national distribution, and then carting reserves of it around in our vehicles to burn later. as above, I don’t have a figure to hand, but I doubt a tanker burns >8% of it’s cargo.

Elec has minimal transport cost in distribution and a fully charged battery weighs no more than an empty one, so you’re not doing any extra work moving around your fuel reserve.

So what you’re actually doing is carrying round a 550kg empty fuel tank (rather than a 50kg full one).

Electric may be better in the long term, but in the short term it’s a con.

Yes they can, there are projects underway to re-inject the CO2 produced into the gas reservoirs the fuel comes from.

These are mainly projects where CO2 is injected to enhance oil recovery. The last I heard of the north sea rig where they were injecting co2 to get rid of the stuff the project had been halted.

Well, the generation might be more efficient than an IC engine, but……….

Energy production is more efficient at plant than it is in an ICE.

eg: natural gas in a power plant is about ~60% efficient, coal is worse ~45%,

But an ICE using petrol is ~25-35% efficient,

The vast majority of the energy is lost as heat in both cases, but it’s always going to be easier to capture waste heat in plant than a car engine, and this can be put to further use for generation or community heating etc. Increasing overall efficiency of the system.

Even an electric car using the dirtiest of generated electricity trumps ICE in both efficiency and emissions in the entire chain.

And electricity generation can get both more efficient and more renewable, and at power plant scales the gains are big and central, as all vehicles running off that elec suddenly are more efficient, if/when we get to the stage that most vehicles are electric then it means small gains at generation are realised by every vehicle on the road. Improvements in ICE tech are smaller, and not central, they certainly don’t act retrospectively like above.

You lose about 8% in electrical transmission

Not into nitpickng, but I thought it was more like 6%?
How much is lost overall in transport and distribution of the fossil fuels? Genuine question as I don’t have figures, nor can I find anything reliable to quote. There’s also assumptions in there about where the generation occurs and how it is delivered.

Yes they can, there are projects underway to re-inject the CO2 produced into the gas reservoirs the fuel comes from

All very admirable and I support projects like that, but it cannot get to the same efficiency overall, it can get better, but it can’t get far enough IMO.

as above, I don’t have a figure to hand, but I doubt a tanker burns >8% of it’s cargo.

No, but you are still using fuel to move fuel, and then move an empty tanker back and with the vast amounts we move around it all adds up. Local generation, renewable generation, and the fact you don’t have to physically move the fuel around can only be a positive?

The point I was making is that it’s a bit of an odd concept isn’t it, using fuel to move fuel? In an ideal world you’d generate Elec as close as possible to point of consumption and minimise any losses you can.

So what you’re actually doing is carrying round a 550kg empty fuel tank (rather than a 50kg full one).

Indeed, perhaps not the best example on my part!

Electric may be better in the long term, but in the short term it’s a con

Exactly my point, but we won’t get there in the long term without starting on the path to getting there.

Long term clean(er) generated electric power is the only viable solution both from an efficiency and emissions POV.