Honda confirms Swindon car plant closure

[Chippy_Tea]

I cannot answer that Clint but what really annoys me being a diesel car owner is the double standards I bought a diesel because I was doing a lot of miles at the time it has a DPF so it is only £30 tax and supposedly at the time cleaner than petrol now its considered dirty a d will be worth next to nothing we're I to try to sell it yet trucks which do less than a fifth of the MPG my car does are hardly ever mentioned when the subject of dirty diesels is discussed.

 

[Gunge]

Is it the UK or EU leading the emissions thing thus affecting diesel sales which is probably a major factor in this? Or is it something else?

They should bloody well leave them alone. The smell of nitrogen dioxides intermingled with smog is, to me, like honeysuckle to a bee.

 

[Clint]

It's a con....

 

[pottsworth]

Is it the UK or EU leading the emissions thing thus affecting diesel sales which is probably a major factor in this? Or is it something else?

The regulations (ie the new wltp cycle and eu6 emission limits, plus crash standards and others) are set by the unece group, in which the eu nations effectively have a casting vote, however any car sold must meet these standards (gasoline or diesel).

The “demonisation” of diesel is very much on the shoulders of individual gouvernements, none of whom actually have any semblance of understanding about combustion chemistry. Mazda have recently productionised one of the automotive holy grails - a compression ignition gasoline engine (ie a petrol engine that works like a Diesel engine without spark plugs). This engine will be great for CO2 / fuel economy, but very poor for hydrocarbon particulates - one of the main pollutants that had lead to the demonisation of diesel.

In a Diesel engine, the best way to lower CO2 (as regulators have been pushing automotive OEMs to do for years) is to run them lean (with an excess of oxygen) which gives a really nice clean aggressive burn. Unfortunately this also gives very high in cylinder temperatures, which leads to much higher NOx. You resolve this by putting filters (DPFs) in the exhaust, which increase back pressure and reduce fuel economy.

I worked for JLR until 6 months ago, and I’m certainly glad I got out when I did.

I now work for another automotive OEM who make 5.2l V12s that are likely to be fully legal to drive into inner cities when small, relatively modern diesels get banned.

Who’d be an automotive engineer...

 

[Chippy_Tea]

I thought Adblue was going to be the saviour of the diesel engine.

 

[pottsworth]

I thought Adblue was going to be the saviour of the diesel engine.

Interesting they use an Audi engine in that video. We benchmarked a q5 a few years ago, and couldn’t work out how they met the rules with an adblue tank half the size of ours - turns out you only need a tiny tank if you turn the system off when the car isn’t in a test lab!!

Adblue combined with a lean nox trap (top half of that system) does comfortably reduce the emissions of a Diesel engine to well below the level of any older engines, be they diesel or gasoline. Unfortunately the gouverent has given in to the panic brigade with the “all diesel = bad” scare mongering, without actually bothering to understand how engines fundamentally work.

 

[Chippy_Tea]

Will they hit the truck and bus companies as I said earlier they do a fifth or less of the mpg an ordinary car does why are the government hitting the skint car drivers and not the big companies.

 

[pottsworth]

Will they hit the truck and bus companies as I said earlier they do a fifth or less of the mpg an ordinary car does why are the government hitting the skint car drivers and not the big companies.

Because that’s just what gouvernemnts do (see also Vodafone, Amazon and apple tax cases).