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

Re:Or just make the diesels hybrids

[drinkypoo]

Amen! Gasoline cars are fucking horrible to be around, their HCs are far more volatile and they ALL release a BUNCH of unburned HCs when cold. Diesel fuel is less volatile, and they run lean all the time, that's part of their design. That's why they make NOx, but it's also why they produce less emissions overall per mile traveled. Gasoline vehicles emit just as much soot as diesels, it just happens to be the finer and more dangerous kind. If diesel fuel is bad to be around, then gasoline is worse. If they're banning diesels from cities, they should ban gassers first.

I would argue that the ideal transportation system for cities would be elevated (monorail? monorail!) PRT. It frees up the streets for pedestrians and bicycles, and it does literally all the positive things that cars do (including enabling individuals to travel without having to wait for lots of other people to want to go the same way) without causing any of the problems that cars cause. Take out all of the cars, replace them with PRT, call it a day.