Car buyers should have 'long, hard think' about diesel

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wuyanxu said:
I have a DSG in my dirty diesel Skoda Octavia 3 now, it's not as good as people makes them out to be. Biggest problem is when cruising along at 50mph in top gear behind a slow car and decide to slip into a gap in the fast lane. The kickdown needed to drop down 2 gears, taking second(s) rather than the instant downshift it promised.
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Mine will be a euro6 octavia vrs 4x4. A lot less "dirty" than my current 13 year old derv.

Its certainly not perfect, but it's better than a lot of other auto boxes. Steering wheel paddles make life nicer :D
 
The auto box in my car wouldn’t be in 8th at 50mph so kickdown is immediate and so is acceleration. I wouldn’t buy a manual box in our main car again. Auto boxes with sports mode and paddle shift probably do a better job of changing gear than all but the very best drivers.
 
wuyanxu said:
Why do I see so many cars idle in recent hot days? It's all to run their aircon
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No, it`s because S/S is such a hit and miss technology, mine only works about 5% of the time and the Garage says that it causes the most troubles to them.
 
Cobra said:
*If* that is the overriding criteria ( and I've no idea) it falls at the first hurdle certainly for a lot of the newer builds)
As I've mentioned before a lot of the estates around here, for circa the last 10 years have been built with a front door that opens onto a narrow road side pavement,
With parking in bays on the opposite side of the road, or a little way away, "Around the corner"

Even here, this estate ( early 70's) and other local ones ( mid /late 50's) there are several satellites, if you like, with in the estate, a couple of dozen houses built around and facing into a large green, laid back from the road, and no vehicle access. Some have off road parking bays laid back from the road and adjacent, others have on road parking.
Either way the closest parking to the closest house would be 50 yards.

These town planers have no foresight whatsoever ;)
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Not to mention all the Victorian terrace housing.
No chance whatsoever.
 
Gaz J said:
I wouldn’t buy a manual box in our main car again. Auto boxes with sports mode and paddle shift probably do a better job of changing gear than all but the very best drivers.
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I'm the same, perhaps it's an age thing but driving now is more about comfort. Our roads aren't exactly all that good for spirited driving anyway, be it the volume of vehicles or the crap state of the tarmac. I also think auto boxes have come a long way since the past and the negative sigma has still to be overcome.

One thing which I can't find a definitive answer on is should you pop an auto into neutral when at the lights? Some say it can cause additional wear?
 
wuyanxu said:
I can arrive home with 2 miles of range left and not worry, just plug it in. Whereas I begin to panic when my fossil fuel gauge get close to 1/4 because I can't fill up at home and have to plan my route to drive past a petrol station.
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Yesterday I had a 366 mile round trip to make. On Saturday I topped up the tank on the way home from Tesco. 2 miles extra added to the journey for that. Normally I only manage 220 miles to a tank as I my normal driving is a multitude of 8-10 mile trips and I invariably refuel before the fuel light comes on. So at some point on my return trip yesterday I was expecting to make a 5 minute pit stop for fuel. However I managed the whole trip on one tank, fuel light has come on and tells me I have 30 miles fuel left. So at some point I have got to make a 2 mile round trip detour to refuel, but at least I didn't need to try and find a charge point at least a couple of times yesterday, and add whatever amount of time to an 18hr day out.
 
wuyanxu said:
Welcome to 1997.

Hybrids are only good if you insist to have your power come from ICE burning fossil fuel. But with electricity so readily available from renewable sources, using it to power our transport needs seems like a no brainer. Battery tech has moved on a lot from early 2000's, and cheaper than ever: we are seeing mass market 64kWh Kona EV with 200+ps horsepower selling for £29k compared to Kona with 177ps horsepower ICE asking £25k.
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Welcome to 2018
https://www.at.ford.com/en/homepage...mondeo-hybrid-delivers-123mpg-on-eco-run.html
Just shows what you can squeeze out of just one gallon in a fossil fuelled hybrid in a large family car too. Imagine what you can achieve with the other 11-12 gallons of fuel in the tank before needing to refuel.
Do that in an EV. ;)
 
nilagin said:
Welcome to 2018
https://www.at.ford.com/en/homepage...mondeo-hybrid-delivers-123mpg-on-eco-run.html
Just shows what you can squeeze out of just one gallon in a fossil fuelled hybrid in a large family car too. Imagine what you can achieve with the other 11-12 gallons of fuel in the tank before needing to refuel.
Do that in an EV. ;)
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So you want to talk about hypermiling?

Kona EV can do 516 miles on one charge:
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAan04PPH3s

Tesla Model 3 606 miles: https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/29/.../tesla-model-3-hypermilling-driving-record

I can't imagine hypermiling is fun for any manual ST trim car driver. Especially not for 1000+ miles. A very pointless metric, just like the unattainable MPG figures we see on small petrol engines.

nilagin said:
Yesterday I had a 366 mile round trip to make. On Saturday I topped up the tank on the way home from Tesco. 2 miles extra added to the journey for that. Normally I only manage 220 miles to a tank as I my normal driving is a multitude of 8-10 mile trips and I invariably refuel before the fuel light comes on. So at some point on my return trip yesterday I was expecting to make a 5 minute pit stop for fuel. However I managed the whole trip on one tank, fuel light has come on and tells me I have 30 miles fuel left. So at some point I have got to make a 2 mile round trip detour to refuel, but at least I didn't need to try and find a charge point at least a couple of times yesterday, and add whatever amount of time to an 18hr day out.
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With a EV similar to Hyundai Kona (anything with 200+ miles range). You also only need to charge once on your way back, just like your 2 miles detour for petrol station.

In fact, IF EV destination charger is ubiquitous like Norway, you can charge at your destination, then you wouldn't have to ever worry about stopping to refuel during your 190 miles drive to and from your destination. Unfortunately, currently it's a big IF.
 
wuyanxu said:
So you want to talk about hypermiling?

Kona EV can do 516 miles on one charge:
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAan04PPH3s

Tesla Model 3 606 miles: https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/29/.../tesla-model-3-hypermilling-driving-record

I can't imagine hypermiling is fun for any manual ST trim car driver. Especially not for 1000+ miles. A very pointless metric, just like the unattainable MPG figures we see on small petrol engines.


With a EV similar to Hyundai Kona (anything with 200+ miles range). You also only need to charge once on your way back, just like your 2 miles detour for petrol station.

In fact, IF EV destination charger is ubiquitous like Norway, you can charge at your destination, then you wouldn't have to ever worry about stopping to refuel during your 190 miles drive to and from your destination. Unfortunately, currently it's a big IF.
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I started with a full tank, same as an EV starting with a full charge. I didn't need to refuel and still have 30 miles left. An EV, however, would need to have been recharged. How is that the same?
Not sure recharging at Silverstone race circuit is even a possibility. Even if it is, you have to hope other EV drivers, who will also likely need a recharge, haven't already plugged in. Assuming they do the decent thing and return to their cars, interrupting their enjoyment of watching a days racing, I would also have to interrupt my enjoyment of watching the racing, to move my car to a charge point I hope someone else has beat me to whilst I am moving my car. The person with the charged car now has to hunt down a new parking space in a car park with a queue of cars entering. Once my EV is recharged, I need to go and move my car to free up the charge point and find another space, meanwhile I am missing more of the event that I have gone to see.
So a big win for having a fossil fuelled car and not an EV.

I was far from hypermiling yesterday and still achieved just under 38mpg from a 350ps family hatchback. Not bad going in my view. I reckon if I had been hypermiling, it would have been well over 40mpg and I would have had considerably more than just 30 miles left in the tank.
 
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StewartR said:
It kinda depends on the state of the battery before and after the run though, and that's not mentioned in the article.
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Does the charge of the battery at the start really matter? It is like saying what was the charge of an EV at the start.
Even without hypermiling the range on just one gallon and battery charge is still going to be very good and over a tank full of fuel much more flexible than an EV.
 
nilagin said:
Does the charge of the battery at the start really matter? It is like saying what was the charge of an EV at the start.
Even without hypermiling the range on just one gallon and battery charge is still going to be very good and over a tank full of fuel much more flexible than an EV.
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Ford Mondeo hybrid has 1.4kWh hybrid battery. If he started journey with full battery and using normal EV summer driving efficiency of 4miles/kWh (I'm doing over 4.5 these days), he'd have 6 miles of zero emission.

So assuming he had advantage of starting out full and finish empty battery. Instead of 80 miles, he is actually doing 74 miles using the fossil fuel hybrid powertrain. Meaning 113 MPG actual consumption.

But it's still a very inefficient car. It used 2.96l of fuel, which translates to 28.71kWh to hypermile 80 miles. Tesla Model 3 using above hypermiling numbers came out to use 9.9kWh of electricity to do the same 80 miles. Even an EV driven spiritedly in worst conditions (assuming 3 miles/kWh) you'd still only use 26kWh of energy to do 80 miles.
(source: https://greennav.wordpress.com/2008/03/03/how-much-energy-in…-cars/)

Internal combustion engine is very inefficient. Adding a hybrid motor is just a Band-Aid on a cracked damn.
 
wuyanxu said:
Internal combustion engine is very inefficient. Adding a hybrid motor is just a Band-Aid on a cracked damn.
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At least it isn't an inconvenience and not flexible to recharge on a day out.
The ice maybe inefficient but an icec powered car is much more flexible in getting the job done, so on that basis is highly efficient. Only good thing about an EV is plugging a hole in a dam and leaving it there. ;)

They are now looking for other means of cooling EV batteries, currently done with cobalt, most of which comes from the Congo and relies partly on child labour. They will need a lot more as demand rises meaning more sources of cobalt will need to be found, there are some sites already planned but they aren't in such "poor" countries so won't be as cheap meaning costs will rise.
 
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Yes, cobalt prices are rising like crazy, from "$30,000 per ton at the end of 2016 to a current price of $86,750." But why is per-kWh price of battery keep decreasing? Because there's less than 3% cobalt in EV batteries. In one Tesla vehicle, there's only 4.5kg of cobalt, less than 0.25% of the vehicle mass.
https://cleantechnica.com/2018/06/17/teslas-cobalt-usage-to-drop-from-3-today-to-0-elon-commits/

Inconvenience is only caused by the currently lacking public infrastructure. I've been saying this time and time again. Day-to-day, EV makes so much sense if situation happen to suit its ideal use-case.

I mean, how many days in a year do you drive actually 200+ miles?
 
wuyanxu said:
Yes, cobalt prices are rising like crazy, from "$30,000 per ton at the end of 2016 to a current price of $86,750."
Inconvenience is only caused by the currently lacking public infrastructure. I've been saying this time and time again. Day-to-day, EV makes so much sense if situation happen to suit its ideal use-case.

I mean, how many days in a year do you drive actually 200+ miles?
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Even travelling that far just once makes it an inconvenience and not worthwhile. It means I would need a second car just like yourself. As it stands I do similar journeys at least a dozen times a year and as the plan is to ban the sale of new ice and hybrid powered cars by 2040, it is going to matter to a he'll of a lot of people.

Battery life and infrastructure needs to improve massively before an EV becomes worthwhile without having to rely on a second vehicle at some point which happens to be fossil fuelled.
 
crikey is this still running ,saying that so is my 4x4 diesel :naughty: :naughty: :naughty:
 
nilagin said:
Battery life and infrastructure needs to improve massively
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In 22 years, I'm fairly sure it will.

There'll always be public transport as well...
 
talking about hypermiling here is a real world 196 mile round trip from Bolton to Birmingham and back in a 2.2 ltr diesel honda civic

fJYX6d5.jpg


i was so impressed i took a quick photo of the dash :)

not bad for a 10 year car with near as damit 100,000 miles on the clock
 
And I thought I did well in my old Peugeot 307 estate getting about 70mpg on a typical 60-75mph drive to work on the A34.
 
ancient_mariner said:
And I thought I did well in my old Peugeot 307 estate getting about 70mpg on a typical 60-75mph drive to work on the A34.
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i was delivering something to Birmingham as a favour i wanted to use as little fuel as possible
steady 55mph when out of the roadworks slip streaming wagons
god it was boring :(

never seen those type of MPG before or since the reality is usually between 55 - 60mpg on a run

i'm more impressed with the wife's 2 series Xdrive 7 seater bmw that'l do mid 50's fully laden with a roof box on a run which is pretty good when all things are considered

as far as EV vehicles go i'd love one, it would do me for most of the year and for the times i need to do distance i could work something out but the reality is i can't really afford one and can't really replace the wife's car with one we need the 7 seats
 
StewartR said:
Automatic is definitely better for me, not least because it frees up cognitive resources that I think are better directed towards other more valuable and important tasks.
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nilagin said:
Like what? You are still driving a car, you should still be using the same mental awareness when driving, all you have removed is the action of changing gear, which takes very little thought and you are likely to do it without any real recognition as it becomes an "automatic" reaction.
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There's a useful model of driving behaviour [1] which breaks down the task into three different cognitive levels:
  1. Strategic - route planning, etc.
  2. Tactical - perceiving and reacting to the environment, e.g. keeping enough distance to other cars
  3. Operational - steering, accelerating, braking, changing gear, etc.
All three levels can and do operate simultaneously, but you only have a finite amount of cognitive resources available, and if demands on one level are too high then something on another level might give. For example if you're (level 2) paying attention to another car that is near you but driving erratically, you might (level 1) miss your turning. Or conversely, if you're (level 1) worrying about whether you've taken a wrong turning, and what you need to do to get back on the right route, you might (level 2) not be as aware of what's going on around you as you would be if you could give it your full attention. Similarly, if actually (level 3) driving the car, including changing gear, takes too much effort then again your (level 2) awareness of hazards may be reduced.

There have been studies [2] demonstrating that elderly drivers make more errors - including errors with the potential to cause accidents - when driving manual cars than when driving automatic cars. The explanation is that elderly people tend to have experienced declines in both cognitive resources and motor skills, and the attention required to change gear manually affects their ability to do other necessary things such as judge speeds and distances. A classic example of this situation is when you're trying to turn right at a T-junction on a slight upward slope.

I agree with you that for most people, most of the time, changing gear manually isn't a big deal. But there are definitely situations where it contributes to making things slightly less safe. Yes, it's mainly elderly drivers for whom this is an issue, but let's face it, we all want to be elderly some day. (Because the alternative really sucks.)

[1] A critical review of driver behavior models, by John A Michon, 1985 - http://jamichon.nl/jam_writings/1985_criticial_view.pdf

[2] For example, this Swedish / Australian study: http://casr.adelaide.edu.au/rsr/RSR2011/2APaper%20130%20Falkmer.pdf
and this Dutch study: http://www.hfes-europe.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Piersma.pdf
 
StewartR said:
There's a useful model of driving behaviour [1] which breaks down the task into three different cognitive levels:
  1. Strategic - route planning, etc.
  2. Tactical - perceiving and reacting to the environment, e.g. keeping enough distance to other cars
  3. Operational - steering, accelerating, braking, changing gear, etc.
All three levels can and do operate simultaneously, but you only have a finite amount of cognitive resources available, and if demands on one level are too high then something on another level might give. For example if you're (level 2) paying attention to another car that is near you but driving erratically, you might (level 1) miss your turning. Or conversely, if you're (level 1) worrying about whether you've taken a wrong turning, and what you need to do to get back on the right route, you might (level 2) not be as aware of what's going on around you as you would be if you could give it your full attention. Similarly, if actually (level 3) driving the car, including changing gear, takes too much effort then again your (level 2) awareness of hazards may be reduced.

There have been studies [2] demonstrating that elderly drivers make more errors - including errors with the potential to cause accidents - when driving manual cars than when driving automatic cars. The explanation is that elderly people tend to have experienced declines in both cognitive resources and motor skills, and the attention required to change gear manually affects their ability to do other necessary things such as judge speeds and distances. A classic example of this situation is when you're trying to turn right at a T-junction on a slight upward slope.

I agree with you that for most people, most of the time, changing gear manually isn't a big deal. But there are definitely situations where it contributes to making things slightly less safe. Yes, it's mainly elderly drivers for whom this is an issue, but let's face it, we all want to be elderly some day. (Because the alternative really sucks.)

[1] A critical review of driver behavior models, by John A Michon, 1985 - http://jamichon.nl/jam_writings/1985_criticial_view.pdf

[2] For example, this Swedish / Australian study: http://casr.adelaide.edu.au/rsr/RSR2011/2APaper%20130%20Falkmer.pdf
and this Dutch study: http://www.hfes-europe.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Piersma.pdf
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But evidence also suggests that you should keep the brain active to improve brain health in later life. So removing a function that the brain can process quite simply, may not be doing you any favours for later life.
 
At the end of the day, operating a clutch and gear lever in precise coordination, offers you no benefit. Unless you like demonstrating your clever skills. (clap clap) But lets face it, anyone can do that.
Changing gear might benefit some old technology. If that needs a bit of help. But you still only get to your destination. It's even a disadvantage of having gaps in your acceleration.
Perhaps nostalgia is the only reason to keep that function?
 
ianp5a said:
At the end of the day, operating a clutch and gear lever in precise coordination, offers you no benefit. Unless you like demonstrating your clever skills. (clap clap) But lets face it, anyone can do that.
Changing gear might benefit some old technology. If that needs a bit of help. But you still only get to your destination. It's even a disadvantage of having gaps in your acceleration.
Perhaps nostalgia is the only reason to keep that function?
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Typical response from someone who takes no pleasure from driving. Gap in acceleration is minimal, even race cars still rely on the driver selecting the gears.
 
nilagin said:
Typical response from someone who takes no pleasure from driving. Gap in acceleration is minimal, even race cars still rely on the driver selecting the gears.
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Driving? One doesn't need to change gears to drive.
And they don't keep manual gears in racing for "driving pleasure". It's because their technology is not past that stage yet. You can be sure they'll drop it as soon as they can, to eliminate the gaps. Minimal or not.
 
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This argument about manual vs auto what a load of crap. Most modern high performance cars have fancy auto boxes as standard. I would love to afford an auto so I can dither along the road with less interaction .
 
Mr Bump said:
This argument about manual vs auto what a load of crap. Most modern high performance cars have fancy auto boxes as standard. I would love to afford an auto so I can dither along the road with less interaction .
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Just for clarity, I wasn't referring to auto gearboxes.
 
ianp5a said:
Just for clarity, I wasn't referring to auto gearboxes.
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no worries, its more people like boy racer @nilagin just pushing there so call values on lesser beings that don't live up to his high standards, were such a disappointment to him.
 
ianp5a said:
Driving? One doesn't need to change gears to drive.
And they don't keep manual gears in racing for "driving pleasure". It's because their technology is not past that stage yet. You can be sure they'll drop it as soon as they can, to eliminate the gaps. Minimal or not.
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Being able to select your own gear adds to driving experience and pleasure.
Racing cars don't have manual gearboxes for pleasure it is about being in the correct gear for the situation you are in at any particular time.
If by technology not past that stage yet, you are referring to EV race cars, you are wrong Formula E has been around 3-4yrs at least.
 
nilagin said:
Being able to select your own gear adds to driving experience and pleasure.
Racing cars don't have manual gearboxes for pleasure it is about being in the correct gear for the situation you are in at any particular time.
If by technology not past that stage yet, you are referring to EV race cars, you are wrong Formula E has been around 3-4yrs at least.
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I'm wrong about what? It was you that brought up the subject of race cars. Where you referred to race cars still having "driver selecting the gears". That doesn't sound like Formula E to me. But hey ho.
 
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ianp5a said:
I'm wrong about what? It was you that brought up the subject of race cars. Where you referred to race cars still having "driver selecting the gears". That doesn't sound like Formula E to me. But hey ho.
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The majority of high end race championships use ice cars with manual selection boxes. You said the technology isn't there yet to improve on that. What technology have you envisaged that would improve on it, if you weren't referring to EV's which have no gears par se?
 
nilagin said:
The majority of high end race championships use ice cars with manual selection boxes. You said the technology isn't there yet to improve on that. What technology have you envisaged that would improve on it, if you weren't referring to EV's which have no gears par se?
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I didn't say there was no better technology. But if some are using manual gearboxes, then they are clearly not using EVs.
I see you are using the smoke and mirror approach to arguing. But hey ho.
 
ianp5a said:
I didn't say there was no better technology. But if some are using manual gearboxes, then they are clearly not using EVs.
I see you are using the smoke and mirror approach to arguing. But hey ho.
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No smoke and mirrors on my part. Just trying to make some sense out of what you are alluding to.
 
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