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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."
Ahhhh, desperately trying to denigrate diesel in favour of petrol in the face of a rapidly falling oil price. Good luck with that.
If you got the damn bikes of the road, the diesel vehicles would pollute far less.
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.
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Works well and is cost-effective. If my other half and I go into London from where we live in the suburbs, it's invariably cheaper to drive and pay out the nose for parking than it is to get the train. Not a few pence cheaper - around double the cost. And we're not far from London at all; we're in the commuter belt.
-- "...I'm a bad guy because I, well, I sing some rock-and-roll songs." M. Manson
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.
You can keep the cities and its "too many rats in a cage" syndrome. The fewer people one has to deal with, the lower the stress level.
Now, that's just silly. You usually don't buy a new PC and printer any more frequently than it is justifiable to rent a car for the occasion, if you can't just simply have it delivered to your doorstep.
We already have! It was a solved problem ages ago. When my parents were young, every respectable grocery store had some kid to do errands for them, including making deliveries to people who couldn't get to the store themselves. And if you care to take a more hands on approach, or maybe feet on, as it were - have you ever heard of a bicycle trolley? Methinks much of your protests stems from a comfortability standpoint, not from what's actually possible.
Come on, you two haven't called each other poopy-heads yet!
You just have to read between the lines... pretty sure I did the equivalent in my closing paragraph. People who won't maintain their OM61x when all it takes is a little berryman's and some funky wrenches (and feelers) are half the reason why people think that diesels are stinky. Those jackholes who modify their trucks to overfuel so that they can "roll coal" are the other half. When it's running, my 1992 F250 7.3 with a turbo kit can ONLY make that kind of smoke if it's cold and if I stick my foot in it from a stop, and it doesn't even have any kind of smoke compensation hardware! I can get an aneroid compensator, but it's some $200 and not really necessary except on significantly modified vehicles with notably more than original fueling levels. My pump is just turned up slightly, to match the turbocharger. If you add more fuel, you just add more heat, and that can lead to melting the fancy forged aluminum pistons. I've had EGTs of 1100*F sustained while pulling a grade, and the pistons are supposed to melt around 1300...
If you don't maintain anything, or if you excessively modify anything, it will have poor emissions. You know who really needs a smack upside the head after those coal rollers? The kids who put a $20 "performance chip" in their rice burner. Those trick the PCM into thinking that there is more intake air, so they increase fuel and maybe timing. The end result is usually that it sounds a little better because you're overfueling, it runs a little hotter, it makes little if no more power, and the people behind them have to suck a lot of unburned gasoline which as already discussed is the worst thing that comes out of a tailpipe.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"