Diesel drivers being lined up to take the hit.

[Dryce]

Interesting. I'm still hearing "the government made me buy diesel", but that's something I don't buy.

While I don't like the simplistic "the government made me buy diesel" it is something that I do buy to some extent in terms of government culpability - they basically set the initial conditions that caused the market to skew. The public then stampeded towards diesels and the manufacturers responded. The vicious circle complete - further reinforced by some of the positive attributes of modern diesel engines.

Wait for them to focus even more on electric cars - skew the market again - and then we'll discover some unexpected inconvenient truth about those as we end up with a larger population of them with more resources being consumed and more issues with disposal and recycling.

 

[Doodle]

It would appear it's quite possibly the fault of government, but not for the reasons popularly cited.

The significantly lower NOx emission levels of trucks and buses are most likely a result of differences in regulation, according to the study. Official testing requirements of light-duty vehicles remain limited to laboratory measurements of carefully prepared prototype vehicles.

“In contrast, for measurement of NOx emissions from trucks and buses, mobile testing devices became mandatory in 2013. As a consequence, randomly selected vehicles can be tested under real-world driving conditions"

Who made the regulations?

 

[Dryce]

Who made the regulations?

Regulations for businesses do tend to be more involved and cumbersome than those you'd enforce on the general public.

But also in the case of HGVs you have vehicles that are an order of magnitude heavier than the average diesel car and possibly something like an order of magnitude more mileage as well. So targeting them with more enforcement is also more logical from the point of view of effectiveness of any regulation.

 

[Doodle]

I'm not sure I quite understand where you're heading?

They are indeed, but in this limited sphere of reference they do not directly affect the public, or HGV-buying businesses, as they are end customers of the manufacturer, who bears the responsibility of meeting the required standard.

Whilst the practicalities of applying measurement equipment certainly favour the HGV, it's far from difficult to do the same to test examples of light vehicles. It is only the regulations that say that never need leave the confines of the lab.

 

[190]

How about the motoring press sharing some of the blame. For the last 15 years or more the magazines have been full of diesel car road tests almost to the exclusion of petrol versions. Were they just reflecting the wishes of their readers or were they also skewing the market.

 

[Londonscottish]

How about the motoring press
. Were they just reflecting the wishes of their readers or were they also skewing the market.

They were reflecting advertising revenues. Which were associated with sales. Of diesels. Encouraged by govt policy. And the general public's desire to have something which a squillion to the gallon. On the school run. In a city.

 

[David404]

How about the motoring press sharing some of the blame. For the last 15 years or more the magazines have been full of diesel car road tests almost to the exclusion of petrol versions. Were they just reflecting the wishes of their readers or were they also skewing the market.

Its probably a bit of all of the above. But I still maintain that the starting point was government decisions around tax structuring that were specifically designed to shift us from petrol to diesel due to environmental concerns.

If you're buying a new car you can probably choose petrol or diesel and it not make much difference to your up front capital spend. Buying second hand now, especially in E Class territory and your choices are exceedingly limited as my search on the MB web site demonstrates.

"MB list 1146 used E Class cars. Only 33 of which are petrol and of those 19 were E63s and 8 E43s... So out of 1146 E class cars available nationwide on the MB web site just 0.5% could be considered sensible family cars."

As I've said before on several occasions I'm not saying we shouldn't seek to reduce emissions and long term we may (there are arguments for and against) well need to shift back to petrol but I don't think it unreasonable to expect the government to produce a medium to long term road map (5 - 10 years) and phase changes in so we can factor this into our buying decisions. I think this would be entirely possible and that at the same time we could significantly reduce pollution and not simply dump a massive loss onto the diesel driver. Its entirely possible that the government are more interested in simply taking more tax of us and effective pollution reduction is secondary.

 

[David404]

Wait for them to focus even more on electric cars - skew the market again - and then we'll discover some unexpected inconvenient truth about those as we end up with a larger population of them with more resources being consumed and more issues with disposal and recycling.

True, they don't factor in the cost of making the batteries and generating the electricity used to re-charge the battery.

There are no completely right solutions ALL the options offer a different balance of what pollutants/waste is generated, where and when. Making the car in the first place requires significant material and energy, there is a need to optimise the lifecycle of the cars produced. The solutions will have to balance many factors out to minimise health and environmental damage over the lifetime of the car, factory to scrap/re-cycling yard.

 

[Dryce]

The solutions will have to balance many factors out to minimise health and environmental damage over the lifetime of the car, factory to scrap/re-cycling yard.

Cars are heavier. That means they consume more resources simply because they consist of more 'stuff'. And they consume more fuel because of this extra weight.

I think an escalating per-kilo tax should be used rather than CO2 or other emissions based banding.

Aim to persuade the manufacturers to innovate a sub 1000kg Focus sized car and for the public to go for these. Leave the issues of whether it is electric, diesel, petrol, lpg, hydrogen or whatever alone - just get the market to reduce sizes. That means less resources consumed, less to recycle, and less to haul around along with passengers and luggage.

Manufacturers will respond and compete to meet this sort of challenge - I think maybe 5 to 10 years to go through model life cycles and the vehicles on our roads would be transformed.

 

[Yugguy]

I like that idea, especially as cars seem to get inexorably bigger with every generation.

 

[David404]

Interesting and rather balanced piece on the BBC site today.

How bad is air pollution in the UK? - BBC News

Its perhaps also worth noting the tax rate on Derv. My last fill up cost 1.299 per litre (I use Shell Nitro+ for which pay a premium over supermarket fuels)

The Vat at 20% amounts to 21.65p
Fuel duty is a fixed rate of 57.59p per litre

So a bit of school boy maths (OK I used Excel) reveals that the 'pump cost' of diesel breaks down as

50.3p + tax 79.6p (158%) bringing us back to the pump cost of 1.299p

I think we pay more than enough tax on petrol and diesel.

 

[Bonecho]

I had the choice in October 2015 and went for petrol. Even back then there was strong hints that petrol was the way to go and to help reinforce that view taxation always helps people to make choices the government wants.

It remains to be seen if trade in values will be affected in the near future.

 

[Alf Barnet]

I had the choice in October 2015 and went for petrol. Even back then there was strong hints that petrol was the way to go and to help reinforce that view taxation always helps people to make choices the government wants.

It remains to be seen if trade in values will be affected in the near future.

Same here (E250) I work on the edge of the LEZ and keep my cars a while, so I ordered Petrol. It's obvious which way the winds blowing. Plus I've never had a dirty hand touching an unleaded pump.