Diesel & petrol alternatives? Your thoughts please
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Hi fellow caravanners
I have towed for the last 3 years with a 2L Diesel Octavia Estate. I need to change the car and I am keen to consider a petrol engine. I have been looking at the tow car awards and I am aware that KIA do a petrol injection engine as does SEAT.
I would like to hear from anyone who tows with a petrol engine, if you can let me know your thoughts on pro's and con's Iwould really appreciate it.
Thanks folks
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All petrol engined cars are fuel injected these days ..... 🤔 You can tow with a petrol engined car, but they don't tend to have the torque of a diesel & what torque they do have tends to be at higher revs. I've towed in the past with petrol but ... they were 3.0 ... which aren't generally available these days in mainstream cars.
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Food for thought, are we heading in the right direction.
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/lithium-batteries-environment-impact
https://www.nsenergybusiness.com/features/lithium-ion-battery-environmental-impact/
https://www.raconteur.net/business-innovation/cobalt-mining-human-rights
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This could potentially change the way we live, it could make the future today👍🏻
PS-stick with it past the waffle🙄
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I take my hat off to Mike McMahon for his letter in this month's magazine, suggesting that car manufacturers should develop an industry standard battery for electric cars so that instead of wasting time waiting for your battery to recharge you could simply exchange it for a fully charged one in minutes. The sceptic within me fears the industry may never agree on the grounds of cost/design/connections etc., but what a brilliant idea if they did. Mike - I salute you!
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The problem with that ide is the misconception that an electric car battery looks like a normal car battery. In our EV much of the floor space is taken up with what looks like a flat pack of dominoes (cellular batteries.)
If you look at YouTube BMW i3 production, the construction and layouts can be seen as they are being assembled on the factory floor.
The concept of battery removal and re-charging is similar to that on something like a milk float but not on a car at present. If the car batteries weren't cellular a single battery would be huge and heavy.
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The trouble with that idea is that you'd have no idea how good your replacement battery was. It might be a brand new battery, fully charged and capable of giving something like the quoted range or it might be a battery on its last legs and even fully charged will just about get you across town. I see this at work when swapping batteries on a fork truck ... some fully charged batteries last & other don't
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I do wonder how long it will be before the government decides that 'actually, electric vehicles are not the way forward after all, you, the gullible public, all ought to go down the hydrogen fuel cell route instead'. Petrol stations would just become hydrogen stations with a fill up taking just a few minutes, not several hours.
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I wouldn't call us gullible when we decided to buy an EV, we're starting to break even with it as the running costs are so low. The hydrogen development sounds like a good possibility and that again will depend on some willing to take the plunge. It's a bit like going back to the days of the first automobiles.
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Looking forward to a Genuine 'Towcar of the Year' contest with AFFORDABLE EV towcars (not Hybrids..as the Government doesn't like those either) in EVERY class using Caravans NOT weighted luggage trailers. 1500-1600kg caravans being the hardest fought sector. ! come on Car makers...or we'll be hanging on to our Diesels long past 2035 !
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Missed the edit time..
so, this thread was started in September 2017......how much 'towing progress' has been done since then ? not much.
Oh yes, Government moved the goalposts (again) from 2040 to 2035. 15 years from now, I expect my cars/ motorhomes to last at LEAST 15 years. So not that far away. Vehicle manufacturers better get going.
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I went old school with my 1995 Renault Traffic based Elddis Eclipse.
A 1995cc petrol engine resides under the bonnet and in 15 years when the only vehicles to be sold will be electric (not sure how you would travel 450 miles for work as I was doing a few years back though) she will be eligible for Historic tax and MOT ie free to run apart from insurance and petrol...…….sorted!
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The views or jury on Hydrogen is still out however I suspect it will be limited to buses and commercial vehicles only. I am however surprised there isn’t more development in synthetic fuels or fuel sources (VW are one of the few) and never understood why oil or petrol from coal has been abandoned given it is actually a very clean fuel after refining. Germany used it successfully in WW2 as did South Africa in the apartheid era. Nevertheless I am considering a used plug-in diesel hybrid as a step towards possible full EV when they are practical and affordable tow cars. The Govt and Councils are using the current situation to ‘back door’ more anti car legislation and in particular make driving into cities in ICE cars costly at best, outright banned at worst. I have seen a draft strategy for the council for which I work and the anti diesel anti petrol ill informed rhetoric is worrying. So with a hybrid I will be able to park free and charge free too, at least for a while and the diesel means it will Still tow long distance too.
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Are you aware of this,
"Brake dust produces more of the most harmful kind of air pollution than vehicle exhausts, a new study finds. Researchers have found that the metal-particle dust created by scraping the brake pads accounts for a fifth of tiny particulate pollution on the roads."
As our old science master taught us the petrol/diesel engine turns heat into movement then brakes turn movement into heat
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Realistically, fully-electric cars in their current form (rechargeable) are impractical for most purposes, unless you are disabled and need to travel locally.
By in their present form I mean - the concept of a rechargeable car is wrong, - the impact of having to install the infrastructure to charge them in the required places is just too horrendous to contemplate - after all, you don't have fuel lines going to your home, place of work, or where you park on a day out do you?
However a system where you swop-out the battery for a fully charged one would be a different matter entirely ...
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However a system where you swop-out the battery for a fully charged one would be a different matter entirely ...
which is the case when your fork truck battery is flat ... go and get another. However, at work for example, there are various batteries that have presumably had their day because it will show 100% to start with & then very quickly only 20/30%, but then it recovers some after you've left it a while. Sod's Law would say that you would end up with an ageing battery when you swapped it.
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We've been trying (unsuccessfully) to replace our car and out of interest looked at hybrids. The impression I get is that their kerbweight is significantly higher but as the gross train weight is similar to the diesel version it results in a smaller braked trailer weight.
We're currently tied into Peugeot finance so we've been looking at the 508SW.
The 2L diesel automatic model has kerbweight of 1540 kg and braked trailer weight of 1800 kg.
The hybrid model (1.5L petrol) has a kerbweight of 1745 kg but braked trailer weight of 1340 kg.
Hybrid technology feels that it's the worst of both worlds so perhaps the point is academic.
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We have just purchased a Kuga 2 ltr diesel Ecoblue MHEV this does not plug into mains the 48 volt battery is charged when braking etc, the electric motor I believe just assists when you pull away. Alas we have not had chance to tow with it yet and the way things are going I don't think the caravan will going any where this year
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We have and tow with a PHEV, the PHEV is fitted with an energy flow meter.
You will be surprised how energy is recovered when slowing down and breaking, you also be very surprised how much energy is required to accelerated from a standing start or accelerating up to speed.
You will feel the benefit pulling away from junctions and roundabouts especially with your caravan in tow.
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I'm in a quandary! I currently have a 3 year old Ford Kuga ST Line X diesel 2.0 190 bhp auto. Before I had the Kuga I always had petrol cars the last one being a Subaru Forester 2.5 turbo petrol with terrible mpg when towing and £500 road tax so reluctantly went over to the darkside and bought my first diesel and it's been great for towing plus everyday use.
But now I'm looking to replace the Kuga and considering another Kuga or a Volvo XC40. The XC40 with the D4 (2.0 Diesel) was 2020 towcar of year but Volvo have discontinued the diesel engines and you cannot order one now (unless already built and in stock and they are like hens teeth).
My van is 1482kg. I only do about 6000 miles p.a. in total. So I'm wondering if I should go back to a petrol engine or stick with diesel for the next 3/4 years. Welcome any thoughts on this.
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Some of you will have had a taste of how fuel costs have been minimal during lockdown. Plus lovely clean air. After over three years with our EV it's been even more noticeable
