Diesel owners screwed by the gov?

[stooz]

So as a diesel owner, the recent announcements they want us to stop buying them, and suggestions of a scrappage value being paid out, does this not make my car devalued?

I had every intention of keeping it for many more years. It does more to the gallon than its replacement petrol car, it pulls more weight. Its a nice big car..
But now im worried it will be priced off the market (and it's too young to pick up a scrappage subsidy I suspect)

I'm ok at the moment, until they decide taxation on diesel purchase price pushes me off the road in running costs. That will only stamp on value of the car yet again.


Or do I sell now and avoid the impending devaulation?

My biggest annoyance is it won't get a single truck off the road, or slow a single train of which churn out far more pollution than my car will ever do.
Are they backing up their rants by investing in petrol trains (HS2 - diesel I should imagine!) Will Trucks be told to be electric. hardly...

[todthedog]

I think it has been on the cards for a while. I ran around in an old pug van for 15 years in France on moving to Sweden went for a small cheap petrol car. The tax on diesel cars being horrible.
Agree with your sentiments on lorries.

[staffordian]

So as a diesel owner, the recent announcements they want us to stop buying them, and suggestions of a scrappage value being paid out, does this not make my car devalued?

I had every intention of keeping it for many more years. It does more to the gallon than its replacement petrol car, it pulls more weight. Its a nice big car..
But now im worried it will be priced off the market (and it's too young to pick up a scrappage subsidy I suspect)

I'm ok at the moment, until they decide taxation on diesel purchase price pushes me off the road in running costs. That will only stamp on value of the car yet again.


Or do I sell now and avoid the impending devaulation?

My biggest annoyance is it won't get a single truck off the road, or slow a single train of which churn out far more pollution than my car will ever do.
Are they backing up their rants by investing in petrol trains (HS2 - diesel I should imagine!) Will Trucks be told to be electric. hardly...

Trains, even diesels, produce far less pollution per person per mile than cars, and HS2 trains will be electric, not diesel or petrol.

As for keeping a diesel car long term, my view is that if I found my present car did all that I wanted, I'd stick with it.

Even if road tax and fuel tax on diesel are clobbered, I suspect taken as a whole, the increases would still be dwarfed by depreciation. So keeping current vehicle long term avoids the depreciation hit (except on paper).

[BT63]

One of our cars is a modern diesel and the recent anti-diesel shift had me wondering what might happen.

I think Euro-3 and Euro-4 diesels will be most likely to be encouraged to be scrapped. They were built in approximately the years 2000-09.
I'm hearing talk of a £3500 scrappage allowance and that would probably be equal or more than the value of most of the EU-3 and EU-4 cars apart from the last year or two of EU-4, but by the time a scrappage scheme is in full swing even those '08 and '09 cars won't be worth much more than the rumoured allowance.

Will the government raise VED for diesels, including tinkering with existing tax bands (which they will be leaving unchanged when the flat-rate of £140 arrives for cars registered from 01st April)?

If the government decide to tinker with existing VED, how high (realistically) might they put diesel VED? Surely they won't put all diesels to the top tier of £500. Would they?

And what about fuel duty? If they raise that the truckers and couriers will be squealing, especially with the Pound being weak post-Brexit vote which has pushed up fuel prices.

What about 'pollution' charges, where all diesels (or maybe just the EU-3 and EU-4 to encourage scrapping) wanting to go into congested areas must pay a congestion charge type of fee.

Or outright bands from city centres? I'm hearing that several major European cities are planning total bans for diesel cars.

The thing is, the newfound darling known as turbocharged direct injection petrol, while it may produce 5-10% less CO2 than older designs of petrol engine, it apparently produces relatively high levels of NOx and soot compared to older fuel injection designs.

[TopOnePercent]

If the government decide to tinker with existing VED, how high (realistically) might they put diesel VED? Surely they won't put all diesels to the top tier of £500. Would they?

And what about fuel duty? If they raise that the truckers and couriers will be squealing, especially with the Pound being weak post-Brexit vote which has pushed up fuel prices.

What about 'pollution' charges, where all diesels (or maybe just the EU-3 and EU-4 to encourage scrapping) wanting to go into congested areas must pay a congestion charge type of fee.

Or outright bands from city centres? I'm hearing that several major European cities are planning total bans for diesel cars.

I think they could put it a lot higher than £500, and they'd need to in order to have any effect. Remember, this time around the aim isn't revenue raising, it's actually to stop diesel drivers from driving them.

Fuel duty could be raised if the road tax on trucks were to be cut by sufficient amounts, or other business costs displaced.

I think London is already well into the planning stage for charging additional tariffs for diesel vehicles, and it isn't hard to see other cities following suit. What happens to residual values then is anyones guess, but we could see a lot of people desert the devils fuel quickly, if they lie and/or work in a city, which could render older cars quickly worthless.

Before we get to outright bans, I can readily see things like reduced motorway speed limits for diesels, as this can be policed via the existing ANPR network.

[BT63]

If the government decide to tinker with existing VED, how high (realistically) might they put diesel VED? Surely they won't put all diesels to the top tier of £500. Would they?

And what about fuel duty? If they raise that the truckers and couriers will be squealing, especially with the Pound being weak post-Brexit vote which has pushed up fuel prices.

What about 'pollution' charges, where all diesels (or maybe just the EU-3 and EU-4 to encourage scrapping) wanting to go into congested areas must pay a congestion charge type of fee.

Or outright bands from city centres? I'm hearing that several major European cities are planning total bans for diesel cars.

I think they could put it a lot higher than £500, and they'd need to in order to have any effect. Remember, this time around the aim isn't revenue raising, it's actually to stop diesel drivers from driving them.

Fuel duty could be raised if the road tax on trucks were to be cut by sufficient amounts, or other business costs displaced.

I think London is already well into the planning stage for charging additional tariffs for diesel vehicles, and it isn't hard to see other cities following suit. What happens to residual values then is anyones guess, but we could see a lot of people desert the devils fuel quickly, if they lie and/or work in a city, which could render older cars quickly worthless.

Before we get to outright bans, I can readily see things like reduced motorway speed limits for diesels, as this can be policed via the existing ANPR network.

I think the government need to tread carefully because with so many diesel cars on the road that's a lot of owners who might change their voting preference if the current government costs them thousands in depreciation on their cars, or thousands more on running costs.
I think a large proportion of diesel-owning households would struggle to cope with sudden significant change, especially if it involves both significantly increased running costs combined with significant depreciation.

To avoid a 'shock' to the general public and a backlash from voters, I think any diesel deterrent measures will need to be introduced gradually, especially as it was past government which encouraged people to switch to diesel.

Past policy generally involved making diesel more attractive rather than making petrol less attractive. Diesel road tax reduced and fuel tax was lowered. Petrol didn't see any large sudden change.

[BT63]

An EU-4 bus or lorry (2005-2010) is allowed to emit 14x more NOx than a car.
An EU-5 bus or lorry (2010-2015) is allowed to emit 11x more NOx than a car.

A lorry or bus is running for several hours or more per day. An average diesel car maybe a couple of hours per day.

So in the course of a day, an average lorry or bus will, in total, emit probably 50x more NOx than an average diesel car.

I feel everyone is chasing the mouse in the room, while ignoring the elephant.

I therefore expect any anti-diesel-car policy to have no noticeable affect.

[TopOnePercent]

I therefore expect any anti-diesel-car policy to have no noticeable affect.

I agree completely, but I don't think little things like facts have ever influenced motoring policy or law since at least the early 90's.

[TopOnePercent]

I think a large proportion of diesel-owning households would struggle to cope with sudden significant change, especially if it involves both significantly increased running costs combined with significant depreciation.

To avoid a 'shock' to the general public and a backlash from voters, I think any diesel deterrent measures will need to be introduced gradually, especially as it was past government which encouraged people to switch to diesel.

I sort of agree with you on this, but the snag is they need to have an immediate effect, rather than one in 10 years from now.

I think some sort of "super tax" on new diesels would have minimal impact on voters - people about to buy new cars haven't sniffed depreciation yet, and have money to burn, because said depreciation is about to bite down hard.

I would expect they'll pick some arbitrary number - say 10 years old - and have at anything older than that with levies & charges, claiming to be dealing with the worst polluters.

One thing they could do is tweak the MOT to check for the presence and functioning of the DPF though. I reckon about half the diesels I see on the road have theirs gutted. It's obvious when they boot it, and should be easily checkable at MOT time: "Billy, drive this outside and boot it down the road while I watch the exhaust". This would be uneconomical to fix in many older diesels, and deep down the owners knew they shouldn't have removed them, so many would be scrapped rather than fixed, and without a legitimate gripe to target at the government.

[swill453]

One thing they could do is tweak the MOT to check for the presence and functioning of the DPF though. I reckon about half the diesels I see on the road have theirs gutted. It's obvious when they boot it, and should be easily checkable at MOT time: "Billy, drive this outside and boot it down the road while I watch the exhaust". This would be uneconomical to fix in many older diesels, and deep down the owners knew they shouldn't have removed them, so many would be scrapped rather than fixed, and without a legitimate gripe to target at the government.

As a sweeping statement, the above is wrong.

I had a Mondeo diesel for years, and despite being well serviced and certainly its DPF being all present and correct, it still emitted a cloud of black smoke if you booted it up the slightest incline.

I suspect many/most of the Fords you see are similar.

Scott.

[Generali]

Why should the government, i.e. our fellow taxpayers, be responsible for the lies of VW etc?

AFAICS the process from here should be:

Government resets the law & taxes as a result of current knowledge
Some people win and some lose
The losers sue VW et al to compensate them for their losses

What else would be correct in a liberal democracy?

[TopOnePercent]

One thing they could do is tweak the MOT to check for the presence and functioning of the DPF though. I reckon about half the diesels I see on the road have theirs gutted. It's obvious when they boot it, and should be easily checkable at MOT time: "Billy, drive this outside and boot it down the road while I watch the exhaust". This would be uneconomical to fix in many older diesels, and deep down the owners knew they shouldn't have removed them, so many would be scrapped rather than fixed, and without a legitimate gripe to target at the government.

As a sweeping statement, the above is wrong.

I had a Mondeo diesel for years, and despite being well serviced and certainly its DPF being all present and correct, it still emitted a cloud of black smoke if you booted it up the slightest incline.

I suspect many/most of the Fords you see are similar.

Scott.

It certainly wasn't "correct" if you can't distinguish between a diesel with a dpf and one without based on the soot expelled form the exhaust, for that is its purpose, and it removes 85%+ of the soot.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel_particulate_filter

On a modern car there should be zero or very very close to zero soot emitted if the dpf is present and working. The thick black clouds of old mean that it isn't present or that it isn't working, and nothing else.

[swill453]

It certainly wasn't "correct" if you can't distinguish between a diesel with a dpf and one without based on the soot expelled form the exhaust, for that is its purpose, and it removes 85%+ of the soot.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel_particulate_filter

On a modern car there should be zero or very very close to zero soot emitted if the dpf is present and working. The thick black clouds of old mean that it isn't present or that it isn't working, and nothing else.

Notwithstanding your obvious conviction, my opinion stands.

I believe the Ford engine is prone to gumming up of some part of the exit manifold, that a present and functioning DPF can't negate.

No nefarious practices necessary.

Scott.

[TopOnePercent]

It certainly wasn't "correct" if you can't distinguish between a diesel with a dpf and one without based on the soot expelled form the exhaust, for that is its purpose, and it removes 85%+ of the soot.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel_particulate_filter

On a modern car there should be zero or very very close to zero soot emitted if the dpf is present and working. The thick black clouds of old mean that it isn't present or that it isn't working, and nothing else.

Notwithstanding your obvious conviction, my opinion stands.

I believe the Ford engine is prone to gumming up of some part of the exit manifold, that a present and functioning DPF can't negate.

No nefarious practices necessary.

Scott.

The DPF is downstream of the exhaust manifold so would remove any soot escaping from it.

[swill453]

The DPF is downstream of the exhaust manifold so would remove any soot escaping from it.

Again, I'm just pointing out that your sweeping statement that it's "obvious" that a DPF has been "gutted" by observing the emissions from the exhaust, is simply wrong.

Scott.

[TopOnePercent]

The DPF is downstream of the exhaust manifold so would remove any soot escaping from it.

Again, I'm just pointing out that your sweeping statement that it's "obvious" that a DPF has been "gutted" by observing the emissions from the exhaust, is simply wrong.

Scott.

Ok, whatever.

[jfgw]

The Wikipedia article on DPFs suggests that they may have no positive health impact:

The additional cost burden of DPF filters [sic] is primarily passed to consumers with possibly the only benefit being quieter trucks. Any reduction in overall soot by mass, aka diesel particulate matter (DPM), may be negated by the mostly-ignored fact that DPM from DPFs is extremely fine, finer than the DPM that is released from pre-DPF diesel engines.[citation needed] The finer DPM is estimated to have more surface area and penetrate lung tissue more easily than larger particles.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel_particulate_filter .

Julian F. G. W.

[Nemo]

Guardian article on this subject:

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2017/ ... ons-values

[Clariman]

I have this problem/conundrum too. I have a 3.5 year old Diesel that I would intend running for a few more years, but am wondering whether to get shot sooner - and I was one of those who first got into diesels when we were told they were better for the environment than petrol!

[Satsuma]

I have an 04 Diesel that serves my needs perfectly.
I know its full history, it's low mileage, great condition, pretty fuel efficient and I got it for a song in the first place.

If I can get £3500 scrappage for it, then I might consider replacing, but tbh, car buying is such a chore for me* I probably won't bother.

(* Until the day I can afford whatever car I want, then I'll always be buying to a budget/second-hand and the purchase experience is just awful)