How toxic is your cars exhaust?

[Red C220]

Interesting article about a guy who undertook real world comparison tests between a 23 year old petrol Golf and a 9 year old Skoda Diesel in comparison to new vehicle emissions.

How toxic is your car exhaust? - BBC News

 

[Yugguy]

yeah, just read this and was going to post it. Fascinating stuff, but what it highlights really is how bad internal combustion engines are in cities.

I remember running round Regent's Park in the early 2000s and it was bad enough then. Glad I got out of it.

 

[Londonscottish]

Nice to read that those nice shiny new Quashqai's in the traffic jam outside my front door in the morning are putting out 18 times more NOx than the published suggest.

 

[Londonscottish]

yeah, just read this and was going to post it. Fascinating stuff, but what it highlights really is how bad internal combustion engines are in cities.

I remember running round Regent's Park in the early 2000s and it was bad enough then. Glad I got out of it.

I moved to London in 88 and the combination of pre-cat petrols and stinky old diesels was horrible on the main roads.

Then for a period most private cars were petrols with cats and the whole place smelt and looked better.

We seem to have swung back with the diesel private cars on short trips.....

 

[merc85]

Not as bad as all those Jet planes though

 

[Bluegnomes]

Yes very good article and particularly interesting with regard to real life car testing. We are now all petrol in the household so maybe we're spending more at the pumps but we're probably cleaner for the environment sin in some ways.

 

[Yugguy]

Not as bad as all those Jet planes though

It's a fair point that jets and shipping cause more overall pollution but it's localised pollution that's the problem here. Smog-filled cities.

 

[GeeJayW]

?......... We are now all petrol in the household so maybe we're spending more at the pumps but we're probably cleaner for the environment sin in some ways.

Not necessarily. Though probably more safe from a political viewpoint... for now. Unless you live near Oxford, in which case the future of NZEV (non-zero emissions vehicles) is a bit fuzzy.

 

[David404]

Was also about to post the link. Results aside it shows just how stupid and dumb the UK Gov and EU have been. Its been common knowledge that the economy (MPG) and emissions test is rubbish for years and yet they persist in making policy on the basis of such bad data and fully in the knowledge that the data is bad.

I drive a diesel, finances dictate that I currently don't have resources to change for around 3 years, when I do change I would actually like to make a more environmentally friendly choice. My question to the UK Gov and EU is simple "how the f*** am I supposed to make a decision when the data you mandate is shit and tells me nothing about the real world?

 

[GeeJayW]

Was also about to post the link. Results aside it shows just how stupid and dumb the UK Gov and EU have been. Its been common knowledge that the economy (MPG) and emissions test is rubbish for years and yet they persist in making policy on the basis of such bad data and fully in the knowledge that the data is bad.

I drive a diesel, finances dictate that I currently don't have resources to change for around 3 years, when I do change I would actually like to make a more environmentally friendly choice. My question to the UK Gov and EU is simple "how the f*** am I supposed to make a decision when the data you mandate is shit and tells me nothing about the real world?

If you want an environmentally friendly car, choose a small car with a small gasoline engine. If you want a politically friendly car, pop down to Halfords I understand they have an offer on crystal balls.

 

[Thrash]

I was considering a Golf GTE but with only a 30 mile pure electric range (at the max) and economy similar to a diesel in hybrid mode, it didn't make much sense. I figured I'd save the headache of charging and the like and just go for a diesel.

With such a big push for diesel engines a few years and the amount of R&D pushed into developing new and cleaner diesel engines it seems like petrol engines got left behind. I wonder where they would've been now if it was the other way round.
Small turbo (petrol and diesel) engines are all well and good for driving about town but as soon as you're trying to keep up on the motorway the engine is working too hard.

 

[190]

A very thorough test but I wished they'd compared cars of the same age instead of a 2009 diesel and a 1994 petrol.

 

[Bluegnomes]

Well I guess that our next run about will be a EV - the new Leaf looks very good - but I'd agree that the move away from diesel is been a knee jerk reaction which leaves us consumers at a loss to predict where this will all go next.

Btw the "environmentally friendly" bit above was slightly tongue in cheek. We have a 2.0t, a 2.4NA and two 3.0TT cars so I'm not exactly saving the planet. However that all probably pales into nothing compared to the 150-200k miles I fly most years.

 

[Doodle]

I was considering a Golf GTE but with only a 30 mile pure electric range (at the max) and economy similar to a diesel in hybrid mode, it didn't make much sense.

Chap in our office has one. Realistic EV range is sub 20, more like mid-high teens.

 

[David404]

My brother is in process of picking his next company car. The criteria 'it must be a hybrid for tax purposes'. Everybody else at his Co is doing the same to save on the tax. Company are having charging points fitted in Co car parks and my brother is having a point fitted at home, his colleagues want to know why he's bothering to charge it at all! Conclusion many Co car drivers will have the hybrid for the tax saving but wont run car on electric, having reduced the tax bill the objective is achieved...

 

[Doodle]

That would also be the reason for the somewhat unexpected popularity of the Mitsubishi Taxlander.

 

[Deleted member 65149]

Not as bad as all those Jet planes though

But I don’t get too many jet planes passing within a few feet of my house and pumping out NOx for my two-year old daughter to ingest.

 

[MikeInWimbledon]

Being very old, I can't get too excited by the emissions saga. I worked in the 70's and 80's when the air in the Financial City and the West End was routinely yellow, and when some individual cars and Commercials issued issued enormous clouds of smoke. Yet somehow we lived.

In the early 90's I owned a brand new Jaguar Sovereign and a Mk2 1966 Jaguar. My MoT tested at the time took great relish in telling me that the older car produced thirty times to "pollution" of the newer car (and this is one manufactured 27 years ago).

Yes, we have a problem that needs continual improvement, and yes the government messed up on this, but London air is still fresher than it's been for 150 years, once you look at the industrial and vehicle pollution.

 

[Ted]

Didn't Saab advertise that the exhaust gases that came out of their cars was cleaner than the air that went in in a dirty city, some time in the nineties?

Edit: yes - found this.- Business-Managed Environment - Green Consumerism - Problems - Misleading Green Claims

 

[bpsorrel]

Nice to see the MB 250d is pretty good according to the article!

I feel really smug now, what with my hybrid as well! LOL!