bitkahuna

iTrader: (20)

more... proving once again, govt knows best. so what exactly does that mean france is going to do? most likely they won't reduce tax on gas, they'll increase tax in diesel.

on a related note, a friend has a brand new mb sprinter camper with diesel (huge $ over 100K), and the urea system broke almost immediately, and it was in the shop for over a month waiting for a replacement system to arrive and be installed. friend wasn't happy even with the glk loaner.

spwolf

yep, exactly... they are increasing diesel tax, not reducing the petrol one :-)

It is same for most countries, even here diesel is 8% cheaper due to less taxes, where low sulphur diesel is supposed to be more expensive than petrol.

Thing is that for years, they have looked only at CO2 and particulates... now they are realizing that thats not everything they need to look at.

In the end, you have Paris shutting down all traffic due to unbreathable air, so thats definitely a wake up call for everyone that something needs to be done.

spwolf

thanks for the actual numbers, i did not see previous reply few months back.

Obviously EuroVI diesels still produce a lot of NOx, just less than before, as you posted already. There is no filtration system known to man that can eliminate all of pollution from diesel engine.

Prius does 6 mg/km vs Passat with Urea system... so thats 1 Passats for 15.6 Prius.
Not to mention particulates, that are again, much lower than before but at the same time they are not measurable in Prius.

This might not be a big problem in small city or country side, but in large European cities, you have 10 million people driving car in small area, so pollution does matter a lot. Replacing even a small portion of these with EVs, Plugins or even just hybrids, will help quality of life there significantly.


EuroVI does not significantly change anything... NOx emissions are half of what they were in EuroIV engines 10 years ago. Best part of EuroVI is that DPF trap has to be able to store large amount of particulates (i think 4000km worth), so you wont have DPF purging particulates in the cities as much as today.

bitkahuna

iTrader: (20)

fyi, where i live in florida, reg gas is now about $2.65 a gallon and diesel is about $3.49 or 30% more. that's why buying a diesel here doesn't make much sense.

think you mean 15.6 prius for 1 passat.

europe seems to have really screwed itself with its 'planning'. all those decades of govt and consumer incentives and tax punishment to pump out more and more diesels and now "ruh roh".

spwolf

yep, my mistake... so right now for 1 best diesel with urea system (very uncommon today in Europe), you can have 15 Prii with technology that is pretty old by now (at least 6 years old, but really a lot more). Thats without accounting for particulates. Now imagine plugins that can do 40-80 miles, how great they would be for these cities - because they would not pollute in the cities at all, they would be in EV mode in the city and pollute Prius-like numbers on highways outside the city.

Thing with diesels is that many countries pushed them to develop their car industry to be more competitive - this is why Germany, that is very reliant on diesels, isnt pushing the same rules as France. In Germany when it comes to eco-awards, they are really not talking too much about NOx - even though Germany as a country, is very ecological minded, and they have reached over 50% production from renewable sources during some days in 2014, which is crazy good... but still, they dont want to harm VW/MB/BMW with strong emission rules and push of EVs when they are not ready yet.

Blackraven

Would it be a violation of human rights and quality-of-life if we told these Parisians:
???

Maybe we can look at urban planning principles and see if something can be found:
-Why do you need to bring a car into inner city Paris?
-Would you consider using the Paris Metro or RER train service?
-Have you considered moving to other parts of France that are away from Paris (e.g. Toulouse, Avignon, Nice, Lombardy, etc.)

France is a big country geographically........although Paris has a more compact layout compared to say cities in Texas or California. Hence the density profile is higher.

Still with that said: I wouldn't want a TOTAL DIESEL BAN.

Instead, they should restrict vehicles based on age (aka the Singapore style method where antique cars there can only be driven on Sundays).

Persuade more Parisian car-owners to dump their 20 year-old rust buckets and just purchase brand new cars instead (like a Peugeot 508 or Citroen DS5 Diesel Hybrid).

bitkahuna

iTrader: (20)

have you been to paris in recent years? i didn't see any rust buckets.

Sulu

The problem is not that Parisians are driving dirty old rustbuckets; the problem is that even the new cars they are driving are not clean enough to prevent a massive pollution problem. For many years, the Western Europeans were much more concerned about carbon dioxide emissions than nitrous oxide and particulate emissions; Diesel engines produce low carbon dioxide emissions but high nitrous oxide and particulate emissions. Only now are they starting to concern themselves about nitrous oxide and particulate emissions but it may be too little too late.

The solution will not be easy. It is easy to say that all personal vehicular traffic be banned from central Paris, as it has been from central Bern, the capital of Switzerland; but Bern is a much smaller city in a smaller country than Paris, France.

Paris is not only a national capital but also an international capital so there are a lot of national and international government offices there, as well as business, cultural and educational institutions. The solution will not be to tell the French to move far away from Paris; they have to be there. They may have to start instituting reductions of vehicular traffic into the core of Paris as Singapore has done for decades now and London has been doing for the past few years.

But if people cannot drive into the core, how do they get there? There will have to be public transit. Bern has a network of trolleys (surface streetcars). Paris and London, like Singapore, has surface buses as well as a good subway network but they are crowded at the best of times. You cannot suddenly dump all people who now drive into the already crowded subways; the subways will have to be improved. London and Paris are doing that but it takes years and much money to build subways.

The solution will have to be carefully planned and Parisians will have to put up with hardship for quite a few years more.

Blackraven

The good about Switzerland is that it isn't decentralised........in the sense that you don't have to be in the capital city to get the best of what your country has to offer. I mean, you can not just situate yourself in Zurich or Geneva.........but you can be in Bern, Lucerne.............or even in Lausanne (which has the only full-metro train service in all of Switzerland).

Germany as well. You can do well not only in Berlin but also in Munich, Frankfurt, Stuttgart or anywhere in the country.

Netherlands as well. Amsterdam and Rotterdam are main areas......but there are people that situate themselves in places like Zwolle or Eindhoven.........or even The Hague/Den Haag.

Japan too. Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya are very strong central cores........but you can be anywhere in the country and you won't lose out. Shimane has one of the country's best art museums. Shizuoka prefecture and Hyogo Prefecture has great modernist architecture. Hiroshima prefecture is the home of Mazda. Hokkaido houses the country's best ski resorts and many foreigners (from East Asia are buying properties near the ski resorts).

With that said, I agree in that London and Paris face a similar situation. In the case of London, there is just too many coming in and out of the city.

I've heard from a number of UK forumers at Skyscrapercity that the they've said that the UK has one of the heaviest levels of traffic congestion in Western Europe. Just look at the how much vehicles get stuck in traffic over the M25 MOTORWAY




In the case of Paris, the rush hour traffic along the Peripherique can get nasty.



Right now, this is bearable.......but there are times when you are at a snail's pace movement.

-----------------
With that in mind:

As much as it would be nice to see a reduction in the price of Unleaded fuel in France, I don't think the economics will allow for it. Such a move will take a hit on their finances and yet the money has to come from somewhere.

The most logical short term move would be to increase the price of diesel fuel in France for passenger cars (through subsidy elimination and addition of tax/levy).

There could be an exemption for trucks, lorries and heavy-goods vehicles.............but standard passenger cars would have to pay for a higher diesel fuel rate.

spwolf

nobody is ever going to do diesel ban... they will lower amount of them by raising gas taxes on diesels, to gradually make them the same (taxes) and hence price of diesel more expensive... that alone will decrease amount of new diesels on the road significantly because it changes value proposition... then EuroVI will also make smaller diesels even more expensive.

I doubt many Parisians buy 508 or DS5... think Clio, think 208 and similar vehicles.

mmarshall

I'm not an expert on British or European diesels (not having any experience with them), but do they use the urea-injection systems there that allows newer U.S.-market diesels to pass emissions tests? In fact, the low-sulfur diesel fuel that we have used here in the U.S. since 2005 was developed in Europe. That low-sulfur requirement (combined with a relatively small and non-cost-effective market) are two reasons why, as bitkahuna points out above, American-spec diesel fuel costs substantially more than even premium gas.

Big Andy

The traffic on the M25, which encircles London, can get very heavy, but then it was designed to reduce congestion within it, which it does do a good job of. In the case of the picture above you may not have noticed the roadworks sign bottom left indicating that 3 of the 4 lanes are closed ahead, hence the tailback.

Paris has tried a number of ways to cut congestion, including only allowing cars with odd or even numberplates being allowed on alternate days. Of course, the trick there is to ensure that if your car has an even numberplate, your wife/partner has one with an odd numberplate, then your covered. Also as was mentioned above there are really no old cars in Paris or London, during the financial crisis very generous scrappage schemes got rid of most of the old cars and moved people into smaller, more fuel efficient, less polluting ones.

Going back to the original post, the air in London is generally very good in comparison to the past but there are some areas, around Oxford Street and such, where it can exceed EU limits. That said, it's nowhere near as bad as China where smog can blanket the sky for weeks and blot out the sun. I'm also a bit sceptical about the blame for this being put on private cars - even diesel ones which, whilst not having urea-injection systems, still mostly comply with the Euro 5 limits and are far cleaner than they were in the past. For my money, if you want to find the source of diesel pollution look at buses, taxis and trucks - they're generally the biggest culprits.

bitkahuna

iTrader: (20)

did you mean to write it isn't centralized?

britain and france certainly have other large cities, but obviously not as big as london and paris. not sure your point. london and paris still only have a few percent of their respective country's populations. london's done a lot to improve pollution though. the two cities are also dramatically different - london being a collection of 'villages' and a confused bowl of spaghetti of roads where paris was very well planned with lots of straight lines.

the M25 goes AROUND London, so it's not all about traffic going into London - many are trying to get around it and despite the traffic it's typically the best way. it's really no different to me than beltways around american cities like 285 around atlanta for example, which can get horribly clogged too.

diesel isn't subsidized, it's just taxed less than gasoline.

i totally disagree with this - because while increased fuel taxes on goods transportation would (or may) cause an increase in the price of those goods, trucks are a HUGE part of the problem. trucks need to move to natural gas or better still, use more trains and then use electric or hybrid trucks for the last few miles. thankfully when driverless vehicles become a reality, things will improve massively as non-perishable goods can be transported in electric trucks who may have to stop a bunch of times to recharge, but who cares, there's no driver to pay.

spwolf

even the best EuroVI diesels emit 15-30x more NOx than best petrol hybrids. If you count in really poor official mpg numbers which lower the above numbers, difference is even bigger.

So by replacing EuroIV diesel (which were clean in our standards) with modern petrol hybrid, you save up to 100x on emissions... if you replace it with EV or PHEV, you save more.

Considering that Paris gets cleaner air when they shut down traffic for a day, then it is pretty obvious that cars are causing that pollution, hence the measures in the original article.

Sulu

Following GM's argument (from a few years back) that its big vehicles -- pickup trucks and BOF SUVs -- are better candidates for hybridization because the actual amount of fuel saved per vehicle by going hybrid is greater than a small car (Toyota's policy), big delivery trucks should be perfect candidates for hybrid powertrains.

And for those on short, scheduled runs between depots, electric drivetrain could suit the purpose.