Diesel & petrol alternatives? Your thoughts please
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Which suggests the development of EVs has dome way to go before they can be considered practical by many people.
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We will be driving to the NE quite frequently when our son and family move there this Autumn. As I've said several times on this thread we have an EV with a range extender and it is quite capable of long distance journeys with fast/rapid charging probably taking 20 mins at the most. It's most unlikely that anyone will run a battery into the ground any more than they will run their diesel/petrol down to the last drop so most EV charging is part charging, a top up. What we have noticed in the last year is that there are increasing numbers of EV owners and we can see that provision for charging will have to be increased rapidly to keep up with the need otherwise at busy times people will be kept waiting for charging.
I have put links on this thread to Ecotricity who run the motorway service chargers, the details about different types of charging can be found on there.
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The problem with Tesla cars is the wheelbarrow load of money required to purchase them and antics of the person running the show. Seems that every time he opens his mouth something goes wrong.
For me I will rely on my diesel, until my dying day, as I know that it does the job required and I could afford it when I bought it.
Until an all electric vehicle does the job then I will not consider changing my car.
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Little also seems to made of the environmental impact of EV's in their manufacture and, in due course, the recycling of old batteries which seem to rely on materials that are themselves quite rare.
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I was interested to see the adverts on tv for the new Audi e-tron - a quattro indeed. On further investigation and a starting price of £71K, it seems it has a max range of 248 miles: "The e-tron goes the distance too, with a range of 248 miles* on a single charge under stringent test conditions"
In real world terms you'd be lucky to get 200 miles imho, put a caravan on the back, reducing it further to 100 miles (if it is possible?) meaning a trip to Newquay, Cornwall from North Shropshire would take approximately 9 hours instead of the current 6 hours allowing for 3 charges en route.
Whilst I applaud the merits of owning such a vehicle, plus the green credentials which are important the world over, at such an eye-watering price, I'm sticking with my current vehicle for now.
Producing all these battery powered vehicles will surely have an environmental effect in future years, maybe not quite as difficult as disposing of nuclear waste, but there has to be some downside, somewhere?
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Until we get EV s that are capable of towing a couple of tonnes at least 300 miles on a single charge, AND cost very little more than a diesel version of the same vehicle, they are merely a pipe dream or a rich mans toy.
The powers that be will force us out of our towcars and Motorhomes with stricter emission controls in the MOT, until only very expensive electric cars and their well heeled owners can afford to run a vehicle at all.
Rural communities who usually run 10 year old vehicles or older. Either that or Tractors....anyone ever made an electric Tractor or Combine Harvester I wonder?
And of course hardly any Public transport because of austerity.
I can see masses of folk having to drive their vehicles with or without an MOT simply to get about.
Hopefully i will be pushing up the daises by then.
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The comments on this article are a more realistic scenario.
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The batteries on our EV are guaranteed for eight years, they are modular and I think the developments are heading towards replacing modular units etc rather than the typical "one big " battery found on conventional motors. Our batteries take up the space in the sub-frame like a flat pack of dominoes, a totally different engineering concept. I've said before our car is 95% recyclable and it isn't made from conventional materials either, so yet another different concept. We have a carbon fibre body and an aluminium chassis (BMW i3.)
Before purchasing the EV we ran a cheap Citroen C3 Picasso (petrol) so we made a leap of faith in this purchase which we hope to hang on to for as long as possible.
The developments in EV design are growing apace and we've seen a big increase in EV ownership over the year since we bought ours. I think there are now five in our 500 pop. village so that's one per hundred locally, I don't think it will be long before we see more.
No doubt other developments will come along, the hydrogen fuel cell seems to be more of a possibility.
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'Prophets of doom', 'thumping on about' ! Pretty loaded and biased comments there in my opinion! Surely, any move away from fossil fuel, partially or fully, is just another acknowledgement that we can't continue, for what ever reason, like we currently are!
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Admittedly I have not read all the posts on this thread however I have been to Beijing on business trips where hybrids and all electrics are common place in use from scooters, delivery carts upto top end motor cars to create the clean city image. Now this sounds ideal however they all need a source of electricity which means mass expansion of power stations and in this case fossil fuel which contributes to chronic and often deadly air pollution levels.
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I have been towing for many years. My last three cars were diesel, and last July I changed to yet another diesel - this one has a Euro 6 engine. It has a catalytic converter, a DPF and an Ad Blue tank.
The catalytic converter turns 3 harmful gases into harmless ones: carbon monoxide into carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxides into nitrogen and oxygen, and hydrocarbons into carbon dioxide and water.
The DPF collects particle solids and burns them off into less harmful ash.
The Ad Blue is metered into the exhaust system to break down the mono-nitrogen oxides into harmless nitrogen and oxygen.
Diesel engines also produce less CO2 than petrol engines, so are less threatening to global warming.
Environmentalists seem not to appreciate these improvements, neither does the government take any trouble to set the record straight. What happened to the early concerns about the removal of lead from petrol and it being replaced by benzene? Benzene is a known substance for having cancer causing properties. That fact seems to have faded into history, but how relevant is it?
So is the "dirty diesel" accusation simply a myth that is pushing owners away from the benefits of a frugal diesel engine and into the realms of more gas-guzzling petrol alternatives?
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Look at the news today and all the problems are of people meddling in things ,and blame every thing on diesel ,s. Look at this cost to jaguar Landrover,and to the ordinary person trying to run a car I think in a few years caravan ing and motor home use will get out of the reach of the ordinary people who love this hobby or way of life.
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But the problem is the makers cheated. They underdosed the Adblue so it has a limited effect. I have seen reports that there are trucks that produce less NOx than cars. So great in theory in the real world maybe not
https://driving.ca/auto-news/news/explainer-how-cars-can-cheat-with-their-diesel-adblue-additives
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The 'cheating' by the makers to get better emission figures is old news and things have moved on. AD Blue, correctly metered, does work. In the past, there were dirty engines, diesel and petrol, emitting vast amounts of poisonous gases and we were all familiar with the blue smoke from exhausts.
The pressure on manufacturers was a good thing and the result of technology to directly improve the situation has brought great improvements. The real problem is that the environmental 'purists' want action beyond the bounds of practicality and economic common sense, and some areas of government are frightened of ballot box repercussions so that the issue is becoming political rather than a balanced approach and reliance on ongoing technical advances.
For guidance, just look at the French Crit'Air ratings. After hydrogen and electric powered vehicles at the top end, there are five categories (1 t0 5) for vehicles with 1 being the best. Euro5 and Euro6 petrol engines are in cat.1, and Euro5 and Euro6 Diesel engines are in cat.2. If you consider the vast number of older vehicles which will eventually be scrapped and replaced by new and/or used vehicles with Euro5 and Euro6 engines, plus the almost certain further improvements in the Internal Combustion Engine, things aren't looking so bad for either petrol or diesel. Additionally, sensible approach to this will provide time for the necessary infrastructure to be put in place to accommodate an en masse of electric vehicles on our roads, and also a less damaging effect on the economy by plants and people becoming rapidly redundant in the petroleum industries. A sudden clamour now for electric vehicles, and if that demand was successfully met by manufacturers, would very likely bring chaos by electric vehicles running out of power with insufficient charging points or locations to install them.
For the leisure industry - those who tow caravans, boats and horse boxes - has anyone yet considered the possible effects by the eventual demise of diesel and petrol engined powered vehicles?
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Your first paragraph has some mis information. Blue(ish) smoke from a vehicles exhaust system is a result of the engine burning oil which is contaminating the combustion process. 3 main causes being worn piston rings or bores, valve guides or valve stem seals or a worn turbo. Blue = worn engine or other fault.
Incorrect combustion /poor combustion will create Black or Grey smoke depending on what the root cause is. White-ish is basically just steam from any moisture present.
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Perhaps a return to horse power should be considered. Twin axial caravans would probably require two, and fart collection bags would assist with cooking fuel.
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The 'cheating' by the makers to get better emission figures is old news and things have moved on. AD Blue, correctly metered, does work.
So you are saying that all the vechicles on road now, that previously had declared emissions that bore no relationship to the actual real world emission levels are all now fixed? AdBlue all that is now dosed in sufficient volumes to produce the claimed values? Just because it’s old news doesn’t make it untrue.
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That's probably down to the hot air generated on this site.
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Boff - Our son's Passat was within the group of vehicles which fell foul of the law, and I do know that his car was recalled for "rectification". The cheating you refer to is old news, and has nothing to do with later developments. Ad Blue has nothing to do with actual emission levels - it simply converts poisonous gases into harmless ones.
I only mentioned Ad Blue because that is one of the most recent technological improvements in the quest for still cleaner diesels. Ad Blue was not introduced to repair the damage caused by the cheating behaviour, and was not around (as far as I know) when our son's Passat was built.
We are all aware that worn-out/badly maintained engines will always produce harmful exhaust gases, which is why the MoT test was tightened to apply stricter control on emissions.
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Cheating is not that old news Fiat Chrysler were fine $800 million last week. VW were the ones that were caught cheating and they have admitted it. But unfortunately if you look at testing results VW engines in real world conditions don’t seem to any worse tHan any other make. Draw your own conclusions!
SCR catalyst (AdBlue) do have the potential to reduce harmful emissions by turning NOx into Nitrogen and water. As the atmosphere is 80% Nitrogen this isn’t going to harm anything. I wouldn’t describe that process as nothing to do with reducing emissions, doesn’t reduce CO2 problem is on a lot of passenger cars the systems were manipulated to reduce AdBlue consumption. Leading to the rediculous situation were your Passat could be more polluting than the 38tonne truck sitting next to you at the traffic lights.
The real problem is buyers have lost faith in the makers, therefore people aren’t buying Diesel engined vechicles that might have perfectly acceptable emission levels.
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As far as I can see electric cars with a towing capacity will not be a problem as science increases their range and power. Tessla already have one that can tow, although with a fairly short range, but this will improve. What needs to be overcome is the refueling problem.
As I understand it a motorway services petrol station can refuel 270 cars an hour. Given that to get a decent range when towing we will need a lot longer stay than to fill a fuel tank, the only solution would seem to be literally dozens of plug in points at what cost. Similar criteria would apply to petrol stations and the room needed to get a car and caravan in might be prohibitive. Time will tell though.
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Where mass use of EV's is concerned, the immediate problem is one of demand (charging points) and time span to achieve the recharge - points which Wildwood has clearly recognised. Technological improvements may reduce this problem, but nobody yet knowns how far that improvement will progress. The extra weight of a caravan in tow, and the resultant severe reduction in range between charges, currently leaves a question mark in towing caravans. Once in continental Europe, towing distances between charging points would probably be much greater, and all caravaners do not prefer extensive reliance on the Peage. Preplanning, particularly in rural France, to be aware of where charging points are located will become an essential practice if being stranded is to be avoided. And what happens when being faced with the dreaded 'route barre'? Where a prudent diesel/petrol owner will have sufficient fuel to deal with the diversion, it could be a totally different matter for an EV.
Will the heavier motorhomes - 3.5t plus - convert to EV? We have driven our camper van and motorhome for miles through the Pyrenees, and always refilled at the last large town because we never saw a fuel station at all.
I did look at the Mitsubishi PHEV, but discounted it on other owners stating that, when towing, battery power soon ran out and it then ran solely on petrol.
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The RAC gives a fairly balanced view of the present situation regarding electric/hybrid vehicles and towing. What we miss most of all with our EV is a tow bar for ordinary trailers so it looks like this consideration is still a long way off.
RAC LINK
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I have had diesel cars for years, and I will continue to do so. Why do people listen to governments and believe everything they say? Another conveinient truth. Say they will ban petrol and diesel cars by 2040, then declare diesel as the new satan fuel a few weeks after diesel was cheaper than petrol in decades, and years after saying diesel was best as it was cheaper and you got more MPG, then upped the diesel prices not long after. Well done.
I hate driving my Daughter's petrol car, it has less power than our hoover and needs to be revved to make it go anywhere quicker than walking pace. I would hate to try and tow anything other than a small camping trailer with it.
Keep using diesels, they have so much enviromental stuff on them now, that they are cleaner than ever, and towing is much better with a big diesel than with a big petrol. It is all a new exercise in making money, or rather, tax. Now they will put up diesel prices.
As for eletric cars, great, if you live in a city and don't have children, or dogs or tow a caravan. Otherwise, completely pointless. And where will the electric come from? We barely have enough of it now. Wind farms? Great, ruin the countryside, or the sea side for what is not an environmental way of producing electric. Don't forget, those huge turbines have to be built using vast energy resources, then taken out to sea on huge ships that burn thousands of litres of oil an hour.
Electric cars themselves are not carbon footprint free. They have to be built, components shipped around the world, sometimes dozens of time in the case of batteries. Then the cars are put together in some far flung part of the World then shipped here. Electric isn't the mecca that everyone thinks it is, but believe what governments tell you because they seem to have all the answers, until 20 years time, then they will have been wrong...Again.
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My wife, who isn't that interested in cars so long as they get her from A to B in moderate comfort, made a comment the other evening that made me think a bit. She said, "If they can ever make an electric car that is capable of towing a caravan, would it be suitable for a holiday in France? Many caravan sites in France have a very limited power supply to each pitch, 6 amp being the most common but some as low as 2 amps". (I didn't think she took much notice of mundane things like that other than when the microwave trips the power out!). She may well have a good point. I don't know how advanced, if at all, France is in the conversion race to electric cars.
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France is ahead of us in adopting EVs here's a LINK which gives you a general picture.
Regarding a previous post there is a cost to all types of car building both to the economy and the environment. Our EV was built in Germany and the carbon fibre used in it's build came from the USA. We buy our electricity to run it from sustainable power eg wind, solar, hydro-electric. Fossil fuels will not last generations and need to be reserved for more essential services. This is why many countries are trying to preserve their stocks.
Some of you may have seen a programme about the River Dart the other day, Totnes now gets some of it's power from a turbine project on the Dart. If they can do it on the Dart let's hope we see further investment on even bigger rivers.
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