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."

Comments

Or just make the diesels hybrids

[skids]

urban driver, stopping-starting in traffic all day, not going very far

Kinda the sweet spot for hybrid-electric drives, no?

Re:Or just make the diesels hybrids

[invictusvoyd]

I think this is the sweet spot for a highly optimized public transport system .

Re:Or just make the diesels hybrids

[luvirini]

Indeed, city centers are specific places where cars and similar vehicles have very little reason to be in if your public transportation works well. Note that that requirement does include the need for easy access "park and ride" for switching between public transit and cars.

Re:Or just make the diesels hybrids

[drinkypoo]

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.

That's because you're an ignorant and/or careless piece of shit who doesn't do maintenance. If you keep the valves adjusted properly (yes, how baroque) and if your ALDA is in proper working order, then that won't happen. You may have needed to clean, adjust and/or replace your ALDA, or simply clean the pressure line from the intake manifold to the ALDA.

The exhaust from my modern gasoline car is barely detectable unless you run a hose from the exhaust pipe up your nose or something.

Just like the cars of the nineties, until the car enters closed loop mode it has to run rich so that it doesn't cause damage. Contrast diesel, which runs lean all the time, and if you inject less fuel you just get less power. Unburned hydrocarbons are the most harmful emission, and gasoline vehicles pass more of them out of the tailpipe than diesels do. But in fact, you are absolutely correct, you simply came to an ass-backwards conclusion based on this fact. The exhaust from your modern gasoline car is barely detectable, but it contains just as much soot as diesel exhaust and that soot is of the most hazardous, barely detectable type — what we call PM2.5, or particles below 2.5 microns in size. These particles are too small to be swept out of your lungs by cilia, so they are the most hazardous type of soot.

But, let me return to the unburned hydrocarbons; while you are wringing your hands over soot, the HCs are actually the most harmful emission. Gasoline vehicles run rich at startup, and they run rich at wide open throttle. Diesels run lean all the time. That's why they produce more NOx than gasoline engines, which is what DEF is for; urea injection solves that problem neatly, and it neither costs very much nor adds dramatic cost to the vehicle as a package, nor does it take up much space in the vehicle. And if you don't believe that gasoline is more volatile than diesel fuel, you can try this one simple trick that will either have you convinced, or dead trying; get two glass jars and half-fill each one with fuel, one diesel and one gasoline. Now, put your head twelve inches over the diesel jar and breathe normally for five minutes. Take notes. Now, repeat the experiment with the gasoline, and if you are still alive and conscious at the end of the five minutes, record your comparative experience and get back to me. Diesel fuel breaks down faster in the soil than gasoline, it's less harmful to get on your hands, it's less harmful to breathe the fumes, it costs less energy to produce, and it produces no more pollution than gasoline. Its crime is having visible soot and fumes which you can smell. We pretend gasoline is harmless because we can't see it, but it is by far the more harmful fuel overall.

Now, what's even more ridiculous than wringing your hands over soot is the fact that we can have 100% carbon-neutral and lower-polluting fuels from non-fossil feedstocks right now if we just put the boot into the oil companies. BP and DuPont's company ButaMax has been abusing the courts to prevent GE Energy Ventures' subsidiary GEVO from selling butanol, a 1:1 replacement for gasoline which can be made by bacteria from literally any organic matter, and which reduces emissions. Likewise, lipids from algae can be used to make green diesel, which is the euphemistic name for the result of fractional column distillation of lipids into diesel fuel. It suffers from none of the drawbacks of trans-esterified biodiesel, like high acidity and ge

Re:Or just make the diesels hybrids

[tomknight]

But too many people forget a large number of journeys need to be made by vans - workmen with tools, deliveries and so on. All something public transport can't really help much with.

Re: Imbicycles

[Christian Smith]

In London, bicycles effectively use about 2MPG of diesel by slowing large numbers of buses and trucks to the position where they are unable to get out of low gear. They are one of the biggest causes of pollution from diesel.

If you got the damn bikes of the road, the diesel vehicles would pollute far less.

Yeah. Damn those bikes. We'll ignore the effect of the pedestrians, lights, junctions, general congestion and all the other factors that contribute to stop/start traffic.

And, as for public transport - sure, take your desktop computer, server or laser printer (or even your weekly supermarket shopping) under your arm on London transport in the rush hour. You can post the video on Youtube afterwards.

You know, the number of times I've taken my desktop computer to work, along with my weekly shopping, makes me glad my town barely has public transport. It would be a daily grind for me to lug all that around.

And I can testify that most of the single occupancy cars blocking the roads have a similarly burdensome commuter load.