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Volkswagen diesels


weslangdon
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We don't have tesla mate. Your leaf only does what 160 miles? Useless for many people.

What do you mean you don't have tesla?

Probably about 90 miles. Many people? No doubt it. I used to commute 120miles a day. I managed it in the leaf no problem. I only commute 40 miles now. 20 miles there and then back. Charge up at the charging point. It's great. I'm not going to argue about it tbh as most people haven't driven one so it's just useless debating it.

Those wind farms in Scotland were built with British subsidies, so don't get too smug. Wind power is unreliable anyway. If you disconnected England from Scotland and tried to power yourselves from Wind you would end up with blackouts.

LOL!

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ok they are seriously expensive, but what supercar isn't? Having seen several in the flesh, I want one :-)

Back to topic, vw has screwed up big time here, and the politicians will make hay. Unfortunately it may cause the early demise of diesels, and petrols can't hack it. What else can give 450Nm of torque and 200bhp, and still deliver over 40mpg?

Joe

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It's the fuel economy for me. The ability to achieve 70mpg or more while that Mercedes, yes it goes faster, yes it's luxury, but it only does 30mpg and if you're lucky it gets you there 5 minutes quicker on my commute.

The government could smash diesel and make plenty because I'm yet to see a petrol car consistently give those higher mpg figures.

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It's the fuel economy for me. The ability to achieve 70mpg or more while that Mercedes, yes it goes faster, yes it's luxury, but it only does 30mpg and if you're lucky it gets you there 5 minutes quicker on my commute.

The government could smash diesel and make plenty because I'm yet to see a petrol car consistently give those higher mpg figures.

That's my point why diesels suck. Our generation of diesels where fairly simple and put in small cars. Then they jacked up the power and fuel consumption took a nose dive. Also DMF, DPF, turbo and clutch failure are very very common and very costly where as the 1.9 tdi and sdi's didn't suffer too much.

You can get crazy high powered hybrids and get 40+mpg in a car that won't blow injectors or dpfs. Infinity q hybrid and the lexus gs450h. If your looking at the high mpgs then a civic 1.6 dtec will get you those sort of figure but can you not see that diesel's are on the decline and petrol engines are the one getting all the tech. Look at modern bmw and mercedes petrols. Powerful and they still get 40+mpg.

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California is already using Hydrogen power for road cars, as soon as someone finds a cheap enough way of getting Hydrogen to the consumer that will be the main source of power and the electric car will be second, we may even end up with hydrogen hybrids at some point. either way our government should be investing more in these technologies rather than subsidising wind/ solar farms if we want to be truly green.

As with batteries being so expensive we are currently funding research into using mushrooms as a cheap replacement of lithium-ion battery cells as at least they realised there the costs need to come down for future use.

Diesel and petrol will both be gone when this all happens, dare i say nearly all hydrocarbon use as we know it will be irrelevant. Won't be for a while though.

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Battery proves are dropping yearly.

Plus battery tech is more reliable than thought. Mk2 Prius''s from 1999 still going. Leafs with 100k miles only losing 10% of their range. Plus batteries can be re purposed. Say you got a leaf. 24kwh battery. Say you lose 50%. Stick it in your house and use it there. It can charge at night and depending on your house size still last you days.

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One of the other considerations that has to be taken into account is the basic design of the modern day engine, the whole configuration is out dated. There are "Engine" designs out there that are far superior than the common style of engines in everyday vehicles. Manufacturers won't adopt these designs though as it means that their entire production lines need to be changed - a multi million pound effort.

As for efficiency within modern diesels, whilst on my final year at uni we had access to a "Hydra" engine test cell. We were using the test cell to develop ultra efficient Diesel engines for a project Ricardo were taking part in. The most efficient we got the engine was a predicted 176 kilometers to a litre of fuel - this was basing the engine on a 1.2 3 cylinder unit with the resistances and losses being based on a small city car (In our case it was an UP). It wasn't the most powerful of engines but it kept with modern small engine outputs, iirc 67bhp.

Realistically modern diesels are dying out in everyday vehicles, I won't argue with that but as long as diesel continues to be a by product of refining petrol then I don't suddenly see diesels disappearing.

The biggest problem with electric cars is the mining of the lithium needed for the battery's. A study was done by a uni in the states and they concluded that a pruis was more harmful to the environment than a H1 hummer, purely because of how damaging lithium mining is.

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Over what lifetime though. That's the point.

Diesels won't die but legislation and govermebf restrictions will kill them. I can bet you in the next 20 years they will ban all pollution emitting vehicles in London. Well the centre anyways.

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The pruis study was over a ten year life time - what a modern vehicle is designed to last.

I definitely agree with governments killing them off. Look at Paris, they're passing legislation that will stop all diesels entering the city, a ridiculous move considering 90% of all French cars are diesels!

As for the uk I believe that the government will just keep increasing tax on higher emmission vehicles. Fundamentally that's where the system is flawed, the whole system is designed to bring money in with the side impact being a lower amount of vehicles that give off the high amount of emissions.

Electric cars are flawed in battery technology, combustion engines are flawed by material technology. It's a situation where the costs on the environment need to be weighed up, lithium mining is horrendous and a hugely energy consuming process whereas refining and burning fossil fuels is less energy consuming but give off the emissions everyone is worried about. Where do you draw the line on what's worst?

One of my last lectures in advance engine development was on all electric vehicles and how they'd fit into the UK's infrastructure, I'll see if I can dig out the notes I made on it as there was some great facts in there iirc!

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Ok so your point Dblock, a pruis will last 109k? So that's 3.4 pruis' to one hummer, how on earth does that make sense when weighing up the environmental impact they have?!

What's your profession? Do you have any background knowledge within modern automotive engine design? Or just a degree in finding uncertified news articles and not scientific journal papers?

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Professinal bullcrap detector. Read the link it's all explained there. I don't think you rally understand anything then if you didn't understand that.

A hummer gets 4mpg and a Mondeo 35mpg. Both cars are only given 1 gallon of fuel. They are both burning the same amount or fuel therefore hummer = Mondeo. That's your logic.

You brought up this whole Prius is worse than hummer. I got you a link showing it was from the the daily mail and proving it was false. Don't cry about it.

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Your ignorance is astounding.

A few things to note about that article.

1. It was written by a journalist, designed to be an entertaining and semi informative read to the every day punter. Therefore has no certification by actual engineers or professionals within current engine design.

2. It points out clear flaws in the study CNW carried out, there are also other establishments that have done life cycle studies of hybrid vehicles.

3. It was written in 2007 and, as a result, is based on vehicles of that age.

Here's a great little read, it might educate you on the life cycle and environmental impact of the conventional and hybrid vehicle.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1530-9290.2012.00532.x/full

Note how that's a certified and accredited study performed by a professional. There's loads more if you want some more.

I'll ask again, what's your profession? Keen keyboard warrior?

At the end of the day, I knew engaging in a "conversation" with you was pointless.

The point I was making is that in today's day and age were stuck between a rock and a hard place with engine design and outputs. We simply lack the abilities within technology to create the "ultimate" Eco mode of transport, every system has its flaws be it higher output emissions or a higher environmental cost in production.

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diesels were designed to run on vegetable oil by the inventor so there's lots of other sources out there for bio diesel

That is true of older diesels. Anything with high pressure injectors pd and up will fail on veg oil or not top grade bio diesel.

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