Diesel On The Decline?

[Booldawg]

Looking at getting a new (to us anyway!) car next year.

We've always had diesels for the last 10 years or so, but are diesels the economical sensible and environmentally sound car they were always considered to be?

Would you go diesel or petrol?

[retrocop]

I would go for diesel every time. They are economical with fuel and cleaner than a load of petrol units.

[EDDIE51]

Diesel 100% , I will never go back to petrol.

[DTCwordfan]

Depends on your mileage and frequency......if low and short trips, then petrol.

Diesel cars are highly efficient and as NOx technology improves through additive development, and ultra-low and zero Sulpher diesel comes in, diesel becomes more attractive as a diesel engine is much more efficient and one of the most efficient out there, period.

[TWR]

This is my 2nd Diesel car & myself swear by them, they have been given bad reports in the past for been smelly /dirty, them days have gone, they hold their price, no damp starting, recon Prices & servicing good but depends where you good, the car's reliability falls on the owner, if you want good service you pay, if you want a dirty smelly car fuel wise, false economy, to keep the fuel in prime condition, I use Wynn's Injector every 3rd 4th fill.

[DTCwordfan]

on zero S fuels, look at Shell's SMDS process, (Middle Distillate Synthesis) as in Malaysia, the source fuel Natural Gas - and a second benefit being very high quality linear chain molecules for base oil, the core to high quality lubricants - in fact with 0%, diesel-fuelled engines need a little sulphur added in the lub to help provide lubricity.

[DTCwordfan]

Just buy a good diesel brand with ultra-diesel and equiv, where the centistoke is higher and the detergency levels are boosted, TWR, its cheaper....a bottle of Winns is what - about 13 to 15 quid for 300ml.....

[DTCwordfan]

sorry 5 to 6 quid - but that's 18 a litre....

[Booldawg]

a lot of support for diesel! thanks all.

[sunny-dave]

Diesels are killing our children with their vile particulate emissions - filters 'my a*se' - they are a fig leaf for a filthy great running sore of pollution.

At long last they are going to get tough with the filthy polluting smoke that many (most?) diesels produce as they get older - especially if they are inadequately maintained/serviced.

MoT tests are getting tougher for diesels (especially concentrating on particulate emissions) - this will increase servicing costs as diesel owners will have to pay for regular cleaning/replacement of particulate filters and associated parts/consumables. This is especially true if they do most of their miles at low speed around town & the filters never get into the prolonged high temperatures required for the 'self cleaning' to work.

I wouldn't touch a diesel with a very long pointy stick - it could get very expensive to get a diesel through the MoT test in years to come, I hope ...


(diesels are a pet hate of mine, in case no-one had noticed) ;+)

[TWR]

You love them Sunny, be honest.

[bhg481]

Well I run a 2.4 litre diesel, doing about 16,000 miles a year at around 40mpg. That's about 1800 litres of diesel a year.
Before that I had a 2.5 litre petrol, doing the same mileage at 25 mpg. Thats about 2900 litres of petrol a year.
Petrol is usually about 5% cheaper than diesel, say £1.05 for petrol and £1.10 per litre respectively.
Annual fuel bill for diesel is £1980 and petrol is £3045, a difference of £1065.
No contest.

[DTCwordfan]

Both NOx and Particulates have come barrelling down, dave, and centistoke has gone up (here in European refining). I will concede that the vehicles need to be well maintained and that should come down to the MoT or Euro equivalent. In fact many of the new vehicles breath out cleaner air than they take in because of the age of the fleet on the road.

This graph shows progress on both NOx and PM levels over the past 30 years, https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c5/Euronorms_Diesel.png

[alavahalf]

Diesels used to have a reputation as dirty oil burners. The thing is they were so well built they lasted for years .. way beyond what the petrol equivalent could ever do. Then, operators could get away with not servicing them as the emmision test was virtually non existent... you cant do that now !
When I worked at Gardners as an apprentice, we often had lorries come in for an overhaul with well over a million miles on them. They went back out to possibly cover another !
Diesel al the way for me !

[Hopkirk]

Dirty smelly things, and I take major issue with Retrocop's assertion that they are cleaner than petrol. They win on the CO2 emissions, but little else.

I can envisage a time in the future when diesels are banned in city centres.
I hate them.

(Oh, and I drive diesels every day at work)

[Hopkirk]

Sorry, it looks like I was wrong.

Diesels don't give out less CO2 than petrol.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-33254803

[DTCwordfan]

Not quite true.... scroll down to the table.....

http://www.air-quality.org.uk/26.php

[Hopkirk]

From the BBC article I linked to:


In practice, however, laboratory measurements of CO2 emissions from diesel and petrol engines are the same, according to Martin Adams at the European Environment Agency (EEA)

[DTCwordfan]

close Hopkirk - but CO levels are very different.....

[DTCwordfan]

and HC ones too...

[ToraToraTora]

historically I would never touch diesel anyway. Of late though I am put off even more. They will be banned from towns going forward so people will stop buying. In turn the manufacturers will stop making them. Used prices will plummet and diesel engines will go back to the purview of trucks and farm vehicles. Get petrol