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London's Deputy Mayor On Ditching Diesel
dkatana writes: During an interview in Barcelona last week, at the Smart Cities Congress, London's Deputy Mayor Matthew Pencharz said that he doesn't believe diesel cars belong in cities. He said, "I don't believe that for the urban setting, for light vehicles, diesel is the right thing," He added, "I don't think it is the right thing if you are an urban driver, stopping-starting in traffic all day, not going very far, not zipping along at 50 mph on the motorway. [I think] diesel is not the right technology." He also blamed the European Commission for being too lenient with emission standards and conformity factors. "The conformity factors the Commission [has recently approved] are not as good as we would like, clearly, because we are going to have the same problem again," he said. "The VW scandal has focused attention on a problem we hardly knew about, and it has raised to the top the public policy of failure of dieselization across the European Union, and the UK too, combined with the spectacular failure of the Euro engine standards," he said. "[The scandal] has focused our minds on the fact that we need to accelerate the way out of diesel."
Diesel engines take shitton of time to warm up because they are efficient. And during the warm up they emit shitton of PM. Then the efficiency of an engine doesn't mean it is clean. While it's true for CO2 it is NOT for NOx. It's actually a trade off: either you're efficient and have low mpg but produce lots of NOx, or you run LESS efficient but produce less NOx and more CO2. Gasoline engine doesn't have this problem because they're not running at an over lean mixture (lambda>>1).
What does that mean, kind of like trains. You mean steam locomotives? Here's a hint - steam locomotives weren't powered by steam, they were powered by coal. Kinda like saying I'm driving a piston-driven car.
You have to understand that it is a politician speaking. they open their mouth and out comes random sounds that make good sound bites but often have no bearing on real facts.
That being said, he is half correct in that diesel vehicles should not really be driving in most city centers, the other half is that petrol vehicles should not either.
The distances in such are so short that fully electric or plug in hybrids that will mostly run on electricity in such places are a much better solution.
Further really in tightly built places like London public transportation should be built to cover most travel needs.
That's because diesels don't produce Carbon Monoxide, the famous odorless, colourless poison that can build up in confined spaces. But diesels do produce high levels of nitrogen oxides and soot particulates, which while smog-causing do not immediately kill a person unless there is enough of them that they displace all the oxygen.
Diesel emissions can be cleaned up though, and we already have the technology to to it: Urea. This allows the engine to be run very lean, burning the fuel as completely as possible and cutting down on soot and unburned hydrocarbon emissions, but producing large amounts of NOx which the urea then takes care of, turning it back into nitrogen gas and water vapour. And it's a proven technology, all new diesel pickups and tractor trailers this side of the Atlantic have it now, and it's not a huge hassle; a friend recently purchased a Dodge Ram 1500 EcoDiesel (3.0L V6) and he has to refill the urea tank every 10,000 km, or about every second oil change. It really cleans the thing up, I could stand behind the thing and deeply breathe in the exhaust with only a slightly sweet chemical hint to tell me it wasn't straight air.
In the UK anyway.
And diesel IS a filthy fuel. Even most new cars don't meet the limits set outside the test lab and once the car is 2nd or 3rd hand and isn't being maintained properly or if its a van thats been thrashed all its life it'll start belching black shit out of its exhaust on acceleration (which is barely tested in the MOT). I see these vehicles every day on the road.
You're either a troll or you have never experienced the pollution from diesel vehicles in a city centre - walking beside certain roads is intolerable thanks to the choking emissions of diesel busses, cars and taxis. Hybrids or, better yet, electric vehicles are ideal but a reasonably modern, catalysed petrol car is a dream compared to even the latest diesels.
You ARE a troll supreme. I had one of those Mercedes and it was a dirty bastard. It would just about suffocate anyone behind me at a red light. The exhaust from my modern gasoline car is barely detectable unless you run a hose from the exhaust pipe up your nose or something.