France Wants To Get Rid of Diesel Fuel

mrspoonsi sends this Reuters report: France wants to gradually phase out the use of diesel fuel for private passenger transport and will put in place a system to identify the most polluting vehicles, Prime Minister Manuel Valls said on Friday. Next year, the government will launch a car identification system that will rank vehicles by the amount of pollution they emit, Valls said in a speech. This will make it possible for local authorities to limit city access for the dirtiest cars. "In France, we have long favoured the diesel engine. This was a mistake, and we will progressively undo that, intelligently and pragmatically," Valls said. About 80 percent of French motorists drive diesel-powered cars. Valls said taxation would have to orient citizens towards more ecological choices, notably the 2015 state budget measures to reduce the tax advantage of diesel fuel versus gas.

Comments

Why

[Anonymous Coward]

is diesel such a bad fuel? I thought low sulfur diesel in modern vehicles was pretty OK with great gas mileage?

Re: Why

[smittyoneeach]

We have two TDI diesel manual transmission cars.
The cost per mile is relatively awesome, compared to a gas car.
Because if they don't manipulate the market and tax systems to eliminate diesels, electric cars will remain an expensive curiosity.

Re: Why

[Anonymous Coward]

If you factor in the energy required to make the battery and the typical generation of electricity using coal, a modern Diesel-powered car is on par with an electric car in terms of CO2 exhaust.

And you can get a modern one, used for something like 6000 dollars or euros.

Dont use an American Diesel though, they have a history of making shite Diesel engines. I hear Ford has proper ones recently, though.

Re: Why

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you have ANY scientific paper for your allegations to reference ?

Certainly ALL type of smoke has been massively reduced by modern technology measures (AdBlue, advanced injection, filters,etc) - the only question is whether the "rest" is still an issue or not for human health.

You are spreading FUD here.

Re: Why

[drinkypoo]

The issue is the particulate filters that are nowadays standards seem to be worse for your health: particles are so thin you can't see them anymore (hence no more belch smoke) but they're also so thin they can now enter your bloodstream more easily.

The issue is that there were always fine particulates, and they can't be trivially filtered out. But perhaps you missed it when we discussed here that gasoline engines produce as much soot as diesels, and it is all of the exceptionally-fine kind. Now that the big stuff is being filtered out of the diesel exhaust, all we have left is a relatively small amount of that PM2.5.

Ideally we'd do away with the ICEs entirely and eliminate all that crap, get down to worrying about how to eliminate it from the tires. But what's really pathetic is that we've had the technology at least since the 1800s to solve all of these problems. It's called electrified rail. With modern levels of traffic, it is worthwhile to have people in packets smaller than train cars, however, yet with the distances which must be covered the vehicles must have their own power storage. Current battery and self-driving vehicle technology permits just this particular use case. We have every piece we need to replace cars entirely with PRT save for the will, starting in the densest city centers and moving outwards in stages related primarily to the availabilty of parking.

AHEM. Back on topic. "invisible smoke doesn't mean it's better" is exactly why diesel is better than gasoline. And yet, soot isn't even the worst emission that cars produce! It's unburned hydrocarbons, also known as raw fuel. And by their nature, diesels which are running properly run lean all the time, that's just how they operate. That means they're burning their fuel. It also means they produce more NOx, but that's why diesels now have catalysts.

The reasons...

[guruevi]

1) Diesel enjoys great tax breaks all over Europe. If you gas up with diesel, the government receives a smaller share than with Gasoline. Diesel cars are a LOT cheaper to own and operate in Europe. From my experience with the EU, this may be mandated and thus may not be able to be fixed by individual states.
2) Gasoline cars are harder to repair at home and break down more often and sooner. Fixing a diesel, especially the older ones, is easier but that is a lot less profitable to either business or government.
3) Many people in Europe skip the Diesel taxes all together by (illegally) driving on "red" home fuel diesel or avoid the markup by having their own tanks of 'white' diesel at home. Truckers sometimes have a switch installed that allows them to temporarily switch from 'red' to a reserve of 'white' for check points.
4) You can make a diesel car (especially the old 70/80's VW, Mercedes, Jeep and other 'tanks') run on several kinds of oil including old filtered frying oil, skipping taxes and duties all together.