Slashdot Mirror
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."
urban driver, stopping-starting in traffic all day, not going very far
Kinda the sweet spot for hybrid-electric drives, no?
Someone had to do it.
IIRC diesel engines are extremely efficient when idle. So much so, that unlike with gas engines, it doesn't make sense to shut them down if they are going to be idling for a few minutes.
It would be even nicer if we could just run them on farts and rainbows. After all, that's about as likely to work as suggesting water should be used as a fuel source.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
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.
What's SI?
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.
Ahhhh, desperately trying to denigrate diesel in favour of petrol in the face of a rapidly falling oil price. Good luck with that.
unfortunately the next thing will be the 24x7 NHS. The only 'fact' the politicians have is that more people die at weekends. They don't really know why but the solution will be to put more doctors on shift at weekends and dilute the weekday service. I guess its too much trouble to do evidence-based goverment.
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.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
Gasoline engines are prohibited at a lot of industrial sites not because of the exhaust but because the fuel itself - unlike diesel - its highly volatile and highly flammable. So not only can it poison in a confined space, its also highly likely to cause an explosion if there's a spark.
"Diesel produce larger particles which are easier to filter."
Wrong. As well as large soot particles it produces particles 2.5 um in size which are almost impossible to filter and need to be burned away.
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.
So your argument is rubbish. ALL modern locomotives have electric traction motors whether powered by an onboard diesel engine or from overhead wires. Ok, in some cases thats due to it being simpler and more reliable than having a mechanical drivetrain from the engine to the wheels, but the point is those electric motors can start an X thousand ton train so they won't have much problem with a 30 ton truck.
No, it's to with the fact that diesel engines emit a much higher level of particulates which is having a negative impact on health in very high density urban areas like Paris and London.
Rational thought is the only true freedom
Why the fuck are you traveling with your desktop and printer on the train?
Because you want them to use public transportation, and they just bought a new PC and printer.
As for shopping, go to the store around the corner.
The last time I lived in a city, I had a good paying job compared to the median, so I was easily able to live in a part of town where I could literally walk to anything I wanted in ten minutes or less — restaurants, movie theater, various shopping outlets, and work. The first time I lived in a city, I was barely making it. The only things in my neighborhood were two bars, a library (that was nice anyway) and a liquor store. There was no store around the corner for large items. And even if there was, how would I get them home if they were larger than I could carry?
Basically because diesel cars suck you are complaining about bikes?
Actually, they're complaining about bicyclists, not bicycles. Bicycles aren't inherently harmful technology. Bicyclists who don't follow traffic laws, however, are inherently harmful to fuel mileage.
If you replaced all those diesels in the city with bikes there would be even less pollution.
Yes, but you would still have to come up with a method for people to move large packages around if you eliminated all the cars.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Not really. Most rockets these days use solid fuels, kerosene/LOx, hydrazine or other fuels. H2/O2 isn't the most common rocket fuel by a long way.
No, it's to with the fact that diesel engines emit a much higher level of particulates which is having a negative impact on health in very high density urban areas like Paris and London.
No, no they do not, and if you cannot keep up with the news (which we discussed here on slashdot!) then you should not make declarative statements. Gasoline engines produce more PM2.5 than diesels, and that's the stuff that cilia can't sweep out of your lungs and thus what's really harmful.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
It just depends on how large the tank is. Airliners can fly to australia on a single tank despite being the most fuel guzzling vehicles on the planet after large ships.
It would be even nicer if we could just run them on farts and rainbows. After all, that's about as likely to work as suggesting water should be used as a fuel source.
You actually CAN use water as a partial fuel in your diesels... in a way. When the engine is very hot you can inject water mist into the intake. This not only cools the combustion chamber, but as a natural result of the same process it makes power as the water becomes steam and its volume increases. Large-displacement diesels can allegedly make as much as 100HP additional when wide-open and under heavy load, but 50HP is a better estimate for a typical diesel V8. Water injection systems are fairly common on the heavier end of the light truck spectrum. You can use them with gasoline engines as well, but water injection works best with high cylinder temperatures.
Unfortunately it really only works when the engine is under a lot of load, so if we wanted to make this a typical part of substantial improvements in stock vehicles, we'd have to design them to run closer to the limits all the time, which tends to reduce longevity. That's why we got all these gigantic, low-revving diesels in the states to begin with. My 1982 Mercedes 300SD (OM617.951) "redlines" at 4700! It gets literally as much horsepower output from 3 liters as Americans got out of 6.9! And the torque is not so much lower as you might expect.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Yes, but you would still have to come up with a method for people to move large packages around if you eliminated all the cars.
Given that wikipedia shows a London-specific freight tricycle, that should not be much of a problem.
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
Petrol is heavily, heavily subsidised in the UK. It is simply a more expensive fuel to refine and more of it needs to be transported when compared with diesel. More petrol gets used, hence more of it is transported. Simple.
There are many explanations for petrol being less expensive than diesel on the UK. None add up. As the oil price falls that puts ever greater pressure on the fuel that is most costly to produce. No surprise that in the UK a lot of disdain has been thrown diesel's way, along with the notion that the pumps could run dry. Laughable.
As for diesel being a filthy fuel, I'm afraid petrol is as well. More so than many realise. Modern petrol engines pump out a great deal more NOx than before due to trying, vainly, to keep up with diesel's efficiency. Also, less diesel per volume needs to be transported which is a factor most don't even consider. Petrol is dead. The next stage beyond diesel are all electric vehicles. Hybrids are hideously expensive to build and maintain.
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.
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.
Given that wikipedia shows a London-specific freight tricycle, that should not be much of a problem.
That will work in London, but it won't in San Francisco or Seattle. Well, naturally, it will in parts. Point is, bicycles are not a complete solution. You will need some kind of vehicle. I note that your link shows a power-assist tricycle for moving stuff bigger than a microwave oven. That's just back to vehicles. My preference would be to install PRT, and have cars which can carry freight. You still need a to-the-door solution, though. Maybe customers could rent a motorized pallet, and send it back to the store on another cargo car.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Yes, but you would still have to come up with a method for people to move large packages around if you eliminated all the cars.
You'd still have cabs and delivery vans in London.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Well, you decided it was a good idea to treat Bikers as non pedestrians ages ago, before standard bike frames was even introduced.
Now you have to live with that.
It didn't have to be like that at all.
A modern oxygen sensor needs few seconds to put an ECM into a closed loop mode.
Perhaps parent is just a disgruntled Diesel owner.
Yes, but you would still have to come up with a method for people to move large packages around if you eliminated all the cars.
Cut the large packages into smaller packages and distribute them among multiple cyclists! Job done!
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
The problem with diesel engines is that to make them just as clean as gasoline engines, they require a combination of diesel particulate filters and a selective catalytic reduction (SCR) system to make it easier to remove NOx gases--the combination of the two is NOT cheap, as anyone notes from a US-legal Mercedes-Benz or BMW turbodiesel car. And how well will those systems stand up to the type of demanding usage on a taxicab with its heavy stop and go driving.
I wonder why London Mayor Boris Johnson didn't announce a plan as far back as 2010 to phase out the use of diesel engines on London taxicabs and buses in favor of using compressed natural gas (CNG). Here in the USA, many cities are now mandating buses and taxicabs switch to CNG, and in Asia, CNG have been used for buses and taxicabs for many years.
The VW scandal has focused attention on a problem we hardly knew about,
Because, prior to the VW news breaking, nobody was looking for some source of excessive NOx emissions that couldn't be accounted for.
Have gnu, will travel.
So, despite that "particulate emissions from petrol cars are so low that they are not routinely measured" and can "emit 25 to 400 times more mass of particulate black carbon and associated organic matter ("soot") per kilometer" the fact that petrol cars may release twice as much particulate means that they've suddenly caught up?
Pull the other one, it's got bells on. Twice "barely measureable" makes "less barely measureable" and even in the worst case that means that diesel emits 12 to 200 times more. That's "a much higher level" by my reckoning. No-one's saying petrol is saintly.
With the most modern DPFs this would probably not be an issue - or at least not as much an issue as it is now - but we don't live in an ideal world. And the current state of play is that diesel is implicated in having (if not proven to have) measurable health effects in dense urban environments which is a specific use-case. Anecdotally, the rise of diesel is making buildings grimier than they have been since the smogs of London and Paris were beaten into submission. London cannot control car policy nationwide so it has to broad brush like this but the real solution would be refusing to grant MoT approval for diesels without adequate DPFs.
That's not the point I was responding to, though. I was pointing out that it's not some vast conspiracy, it has to do with the either perceived or real health impacts of lots of diesel in a small area.
Rational thought is the only true freedom
Whether or not it's true is irrelevant (although it is true by any rational measurement. That petrol is worse than thought does not make it worse than diesel). It's politicians so we expect them to be using 10 year old research to justify decisions that make their constituents happy. It does not require some worldwide conspiracy.
Rational thought is the only true freedom
... assuming that if the bicycles weren't there that their riders would just disappear, rather than switch to cars.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Problem is, he's only one of a number of politicians in a position to push through bans on driving diesel cars in cities.
The city near me is considering this too. I need to write to them and let them know that if my efficient relatively clean diesel gets banned then I can only afford a very old petrol engined car, and since a second car needs to have practical value I'll go for a 4x4. Lets see them argue a 12 year old 4 litre SUV is better for the environment than my existing vehicle..
diesel was reclassified as Category 1 carcinogen which means definitely causing cancer
Shit. I'd better stop frying my sausages in it.
So, despite that "particulate emissions from petrol cars are so low that they are not routinely measured" and can "emit 25 to 400 times more mass of particulate black carbon and associated organic matter ("soot") per kilometer" the fact that petrol cars may release twice as much particulate means that they've suddenly caught up?
Your ideas are based on outdated conclusions which do not take into effect the linked study.
Anecdotally, the rise of diesel is making buildings grimier than they have been since the smogs of London and Paris were beaten into submission.
That's nothing compared to what gasoline engines are doing to your lungs.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Raise the tax on it simple. About the same as a pack of smokes should do.
Perhaps the EU has trouble moving because there is a very strong diesel lobby in France. The rare cases where french politicians raise their voices at EU level seems to be when french lobbies pressure them.
Because you want them to use public transportation, and they just bought a new PC and printer.
Can't they get them delivered? (Yes I realise delivery drivers will need a car/van, but we're not talking complete elimnation of vehicles here, just mass reduction of private use in the city)
So he's complaining because London traffic doesn't move, much. No kidding, it's world famous. All he has to do is set up the city better. Starting with overpasses like Washington DC has with route 395, and other highways that move at 50 MPH, until it's saturated, there's an accident. Next is setting up the lights so they're smart. Then traffic can all wiz by.
Of course, this isn't what they want. They want people to use public transportation. Subway, train, busses. We're all just freight to haul around.
Period.
Transit means lower emissions per person, less wasted road space for parking and use.
Electric cars have half the maintenance of other cars, and reduce emissions to nil.
End all tax subsidies and tax exemptions for anything else.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
The linked study explicitly says that potentially petrol cars "must have been" emitting twice as much particulate as previously measured/estimated. As you seem to have forgotten it
Once thought to be minor players, gasoline-burning engines could put out twice as much black carbon as was previously measured, according to new field methods
I pulled the previously measured estimated numbers, doubled them, and they're still far behind the measured diesel ones. Double the gas ones again and they're still behind based on the current measurements although now it's close. How is this difficult to understand?
That's nothing compared to what gasoline engines are doing to your lungs.
That is not a conclusion that you can take from the study you linked. That petrol is worse than previously thought does not make diesel better. By their measurements diesel is still signficantly worse!
Rational thought is the only true freedom