Diesel Emissions.

[PastorsDayOff]

As a fully converted dieselhesd when it comes to cars (with a working DPF) I find all this, of course, highly annoying, and potentially expensive. 

That said, I am seriously watching the advancement of motor and battery technology, looking to the day when we can ditch the old technologies for something better.

My hope would be that by the time the green lobby get their claws into the boating world, that technologies will be such that going electric becomes a convenient option.

For me however, the practical technologies are not so far away. Having a sail boat makes me less reliant upon an engine. A small 500cc Volvo is all I have at the moment.

But I have been watching a number of YouTube blogs of people with much larger sailboats, removing the engines, and replacing them with electric motors. Not needing to use them so much, they have found that solar alone has been enough to keep the batteries topped up. Free wind, free electricity, no emissions.

Guess what I will be doing when my engine needs replacing?

[grendel]

maybe the day will come when the sail can be one large solar panel.

[ZimbiIV]

Consider this, now a 40year old is exempt from the MOT, emissions are not a problem for those most likely to pollute the air.

I agree not many 40 year old cars around but I would say they are the biggest polluters per mile used.

paul

PS I don't think the BSS exempts 40 year old boats.

[grendel]

I understand that mostly the reasoning was because 40 year old vehicles dont have brakes that come up to the modern MOT standard (old drum brakes), rather than pollution. however since most insurers wont insure a car that doesnt have an MOT then most owners will continue to have the vehicle tested for safety annually.

It does not however mean that you wont be stopped and tested for safety, much in the same way that recovery vehicles and showmans vehicles dont require an MOT, they can be stopped and safety checked at any time, and if found unsafe can be prohibited from further progress.

[finny]

I have to laugh sometimes ..........we have a fleet of new trucks (  euro cat 6 ) use three times more adblue than the older version same fuel economy - more or less but the interesting part is when they choke up they throw themselves into limp mode untill you re-gen them - which involves parking up for just over an hour switch on the re-gen mode the sit there with the engine revving its nuts off whilst spitting adblue and diesel into the box of tricks attached to the exhaust system  generating enough heat to burn off the soot then chuck it out there anyway ............oh really how is that saving the planet 

perhaps we are being conned again me thinks 

finny    

[stumpy]

To misquote Marlon Brando "They'll take my mighty throbbing BMC when they prise it from my cold,dead hand "

[oldgregg]

I have to laugh sometimes ..........we have a fleet of new trucks (  euro cat 6 ) use three times more adblue than the older version same fuel economy - more or less but the interesting part is when they choke up they throw themselves into limp mode untill you re-gen them - which involves parking up for just over an hour switch on the re-gen mode the sit there with the engine revving its nuts off whilst spitting adblue and diesel into the box of tricks attached to the exhaust system  generating enough heat to burn off the soot then chuck it out there anyway ............oh really how is that saving the planet 

perhaps we are being conned again me thinks 

finny    

Emissions control systems on diesel vehicles are an absolute joke (in my opinion).

 

All they really achieve is to make diesel cars much less reliable than petrol - Unless regularly driven long distances at a decent speed.

 

Perhaps that's the aim, though. I don't think any car manufacturer actually wants to sell them any more, and modern small-displacement turbo petrol engines have low emissions.

 

And that's what it's all about - Manufacturers are fined by the EU if the average CO emissions of the vehicles they sell are above a certain level.

 

This is where manufacturers like Toyota have been very clever with their (extremely reliable) hybrid system, which has market appeal at last and drives their average CO emissions nice and low. And it's protected by so many patents that no other manufacturer can come even close to copying it. VW's workaround for hybrids is laughable in comparison.

 

Others like Ford have had to go to all sorts of lengths to avoid the fines... I'm told they actually stopped making 2 litre diesels for a period of time in order to avoid the fines for that period. Customers were told some old pony by the dealers and nobody was any the wiser...

 

Sent from the Norfolk Broads Network mobile app

 

 

 

[Paul]

There is an awful lot of utter codswallop being spouted in the petrol / diesel / hybrid debate, both by Governments and Manufacturers both determined to protect their own best interests. It's hardly surprising that people have no idea what the real truth is, in fact most "experts" don't either. 

Diesel engines produce carcinogenic particulates, we have known that for years, twenty years at least. Well before the UK government decided to promote diesel as the preferred fuel for road cars by changing the VED bands in their favour in 2005. So, we should all drive petrol cars to avoid these particulates, right? Wrong, petrol engines also produce carcinogenic particulates with the most modern direct injection engines being the worst offenders, some worse than equivalent diesels. In fact a recent study in Switzerland suggested it was more important to fit particulate filters to direct injection petrol engines than to diesel.

[Simon]

15 hours ago, ZimbiIV said:

Consider this, now a 40year old is exempt from the MOT, emissions are not a problem for those most likely to pollute the air.

I agree not many 40 year old cars around but I would say they are the biggest polluters per mile used.

paul

PS I don't think the BSS exempts 40 year old boats.

As an owner of a 48 year old car I think we could all agree per mile the older cars are not fuel efficient.  I do think scrapping an mot test is madness and still will always take mine for a check annually even though I do a lot less than 1k miles.

But if I go for a a day out for the day I might do 80 miles total, and use 4 gallon of petrol if I drive spirited.

Lets take the same day out in a old ish boat, single diesel. I know we wouldn't cover 80 miles but say 5 hours cruising total. Whole the fuel consumption be that much different. 

Both trips are for pleasure, both hobbies keep many companies and people in jobs and bring in revenue for the govt.

Here's my old chugger.

[grendel]

Simon, if your car is only doing 1000 miles a year, its hardly a great polluter if you split it down to daily pollution, I know mine runs clean from the emissions test of the last MOT, but it still probably pollutes more in the 33,000 miles I do a year in it than yours does in the same year, that said its the people who just drive short trips in their car that are the worst polluters as the car never gets properly warmed up to keep the engine clean, whether petrol or diesel, those people would benefit from electric vehicles, I have yet to find a reasonably priced electric vehicle that could do my 124 mile daily commute on one charge (unless I could persuade work to fit a charging point in the car park). (added to that the electricity network at home would probably not support a fast charger for an electric vehicle, we only have 64A cutouts and the mains cable is not really big enough to support the 14 houses it feeds as it is).

[Guest]

11 hours ago, finny said:

I have to laugh sometimes ..........we have a fleet of new trucks (  euro cat 6 ) use three times more adblue than the older version same fuel economy - more or less but the interesting part is when they choke up they throw themselves into limp mode untill you re-gen them - which involves parking up for just over an hour switch on the re-gen mode the sit there with the engine revving its nuts off whilst spitting adblue and diesel into the box of tricks attached to the exhaust system  generating enough heat to burn off the soot then chuck it out there anyway ............oh really how is that saving the planet 

perhaps we are being conned again me thinks 

finny    

Euro 6 would only be effective in "saving the planet" if all vehicles in the world complied, not just those built in the last few years in Europe or other countries like USA that have similar requirements. What about the vehicles in the rest of the world?

IMHO it would be better for the planet if we could get all vehicles (the millions in third world countries with no emission compliance) on Euro 4. The technology is much simpler.

[Guest]

On 17/05/2018 at 00:08, LondonRascal said:

The thing is marine engines (especially in small river craft) are just car and van engines at their heart the base engines on which they are built are many years old - it is why we are only now beginning to see common rail diesel engines entering the smaller marine engine market, yet these have been the mainstay of cars and vans for several years now.

I think change will come. It always does, one day.  We are aware that shipping moves many thousands of containers in one bulk carrier and they get along a fair rate of knots as they cross the worlds seas. They also pump out masses of emissions and while it is all well and good to say for the tonnage they carry per mile verses the emissions they produce for that it is not that bad, it is still bad what comes out their funnel's and there is no getting away from that. A lot of this is because heavy oil is burnt when in open seaways because it is cheaper.

Despite this, there are now murmurings about how things could be improved so if that is just beginning to be talked about for shipping I could see recreational boating finding itself being looked at for emissions one day too. I short don;t rule it out. 

I doubt anything too drastic will suddenly happen, you may get the Broads Authority want to adjust Tolls to take account of engine type, age and horsepower and calculate some crude emissions scale based on such and charge accordingly. But the bigger issue I can see is as country after country line up to ban diesel cars, and sales of such are falling through the floor, where would the base engines come from that the likes of Beta Marine and Nanni marinise?

I could see that being the bigger issue where they get harder to source and cost more whereby the likes of Toyota might eventually set an end date for the manufacture of diesel engines and then Ford, GM and so on follow suit. I am sure the Chinese would only be too happy to step in with the tooling to produce these older bases but would the buyers of Beta, Nanni, Vetus etc be so keen to buy what they may see as a cheaper 'clone' of a once reputable engine manufacture?

On a closed river system that the Broads is, I could see one day a proper infrastructure of electric charging points - in the meantime I think what will happen sooner than any of that is the resurgence of small, perhaps even turbo charged, clean burning petrol engines on boats. Morden fuel injected engines don't suffer quite the same woes in damp environments, are very quiet, offer a good amount of power for their size and weight leaving only the big elephant in the room to contend with: Highly flammable fuel in large amounts on boats.

 

Problem here is that whilst electricity is "a clean" energy, but how was it generated? I still think that about 50% of the electricity in the UK is generated by burning fossil fuel (gas or coal) so that simply moves the nasty emissions somewhere else.  

[grendel]

finally I see a use for all those new solar farms springing up, they could be placed in a field adjacent to the mooring to power the electricity posts - the only problem - most people will want to use the posts at night, so a reliable power bank would be required that could store the megawatts generated to the day for release at night. while we do have high capacity power banks available, I dont know that any are considered reliable enough yet.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_energy_storage

[Guest]

13 minutes ago, grendel said:

finally I see a use for all those new solar farms springing up, they could be placed in a field adjacent to the mooring to power the electricity posts - the only problem - most people will want to use the posts at night, so a reliable power bank would be required that could store the megawatts generated to the day for release at night. while we do have high capacity power banks available, I dont know that any are considered reliable enough yet.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_energy_storage

Indeed, I believe a rough "rule of thumb" is about 1Kw of electricity per square meter of solar panel, so say a 5 boat mooring with each using 5Kw per day would need 25sqm of panel plus storage batteries   

[ZimbiIV]

Of course the preferred why of producing electricity is solar, wind and tide but that will not provide enough to power all cars etc.

So is leaving a toxic combination for the future generations to solve (atomic) a better choice?

Pollution won't kill the planet, just us!

paul

[Guest]

2 minutes ago, ZimbiIV said:

Of course the preferred why of producing electricity is solar, wind and tide but that will not provide enough to power all cars etc.

So is leaving a toxic combination for the future generations to solve (atomic) a better choice?

Pollution won't kill the planet, just us!

paul

My point is that we are not really saving the planet by using electric cars etc., just a feel good factor. Reality is that we are simply creating the nasty emissions in someone else's yard.  

[TheQ]

A minor point on the 40 year MOT exemption, although they say its 40 years, it's at the end of the 40th year you can drive without an MOT. so the car is actually 41. Same applies for not paying road tax. My Landrover is 1984, so a while to wait..

[Guest]

14 minutes ago, TheQ said:

A minor point on the 40 year MOT exemption, although they say its 40 years, it's at the end of the 40th year you can drive without an MOT. so the car is actually 41. Same applies for not paying road tax. My Landrover is 1984, so a while to wait..

Not sure that is correct Q

From the government website,

"When the rules change on 20 May 2018, vehicles won’t need an MOT from the 40th anniversary of when they were registered"

Example

If a car was first registered on 31 May 1978, it won’t need an MOT from 31 May 2018.

Or am I misreading things 

[TheQ]

On a landrover forum I go on a couple of people have gone to the post office to fill in the relevant forms and been told to pay up for their road tax, come back next year for the free tax..

[grendel]

2 hours ago, Philosophical said:

Indeed, I believe a rough "rule of thumb" is about 1Kw of electricity per square meter of solar panel, so say a 5 boat mooring with each using 5Kw per day would need 25sqm of panel plus storage batteries   

I think 50sqm would be better, as during the day the boats would possibly be consuming the whole 5kW, thus nothing going into storage for use in the hours of darkness. the storage would have to be sufficient to allow that 5kW over say 12 hours, so 60kWh, thats about 3 tesla powerwall panels of storage capacity, for a 5 berth mooring. as they will be generating their own energy, they may be able to price it to recover the installation costs, at £5500 per powerwall, thats £16500, plus the costs of the solar panels and installation.

[finny]

The implications longterm on the leasure industry alone are huge and putting boating to one side I can see a massive impact also not in a good way towards the industry as a whole .going to need a big motor and plenty of batteries to pull a caravan

Finny

[diesel falcon]

4 hours ago, Simon said:

As an owner of a 48 year old car I think we could all agree per mile the older cars are not fuel efficient.  I do think scrapping an mot test is madness and still will always take mine for a check annually even though I do a lot less than 1k miles.

But if I go for a a day out for the day I might do 80 miles total, and use 4 gallon of petrol if I drive spirited.

Lets take the same day out in a old ish boat, single diesel. I know we wouldn't cover 80 miles but say 5 hours cruising total. Whole the fuel consumption be that much different. 

Both trips are for pleasure, both hobbies keep many companies and people in jobs and bring in revenue for the govt.

Here's my old chugger.

Ditto!?

[SPEEDTRIPLE]

Acouple of years back, the guy that regularly MOTs my DEISEL car said deisel was so bad that in London, everything below knee level was pure carbon monoxide from seisels, and he was apparently quoting a government statistic. I never knew rats, dogs, and cats breathed co, as probably 99% of them are below knee height?. Government must be extremely desperate with no plausable excuse if they come up with blatant stupidity like that?.

[quo vadis]

1 hour ago, diesel falcon said:

Ditto!?

But Simons probobly works Denzil 

[JanetAnne]

23 hours ago, ZimbiIV said:

Consider this, now a 40year old is exempt from the MOT, emissions are not a problem for those most likely to pollute the air.

I agree not many 40 year old cars around but I would say they are the biggest polluters per mile used.

Tut tut 

My 53 year old car manages to get me the 160 miles from home to Oulton Broad on 5 gallons of unleaded. That's exactly the same amount as my euro5 six speed Mondeo. 

My 53 year old car has upgraded brakes etc to cope with modern traffic conditions as well

If we are serious about pollution I would suggest we all stop buying new cars right now. The environmental impact of building new cars and recycling the ones they replace far far outweighs the actual pollution of driving them.

My 53 year old car has enough parts in the garage to run it for the next 50 years. Those parts would have been thrown away, their environmental impact had already been spent in their manufacture, tooling costs etc and so using them up is zero cost to the planet. 

Now, regarding the MOT. After various studies and consultations the underlying decisions were based on two main factors. Firstly accident data showed that out of  5% of accidents involving cars over 40 years old less than 2% of that 5% were attributed to mechanical failure of the 40 year old car. This compared to a much higher percentage of newer vehicles.

Secondly, as our MOT testers get younger (!) and these cars get older, there has been concerns that the ability to understand the systems used and therefore the knowledge to test these cars safely is being lost. There was also data analysed from the previous few years MOT failures on cars over 40  years old to establish possible areas of concern and this data showed the first time pass rate for these vehicles to be considerably above modern vehicles. 

In summary, that TR6 managing 20mpg is still more fuel efficient than a new Mustang and I don't see any complaints against the thousands of them in the road today.

Edited May 18, 2018 by JanetAnne
forgot the picture!