What do you drive?

[Xela]

1 hour ago, Vive_La_Villa said:

I've got a 10 year old Astra that i really need to change now. I love the look of merc cla but the reviews seem average.  Any experience of them on here? Would it be worth the money? 

Get a diesel VW just to annoy @darrenm 

[Vive_La_Villa]

1 hour ago, Xela said:

Get a diesel VW just to annoy @darrenm 

I'm going to have to now.

But do they still sound like tractors?After 10 years of listening to my own tractor not sure could handle another one. 

[Xela]

2 minutes ago, Vive_La_Villa said:

I'm going to have to now.

But do they still sound like tractors?After 10 years of listening to my own tractor not sure could handle another one. 

I don't know, i'm not a farmer so have never owned a diesel! 

Big 6 cylinder german petrol engines for me! 

[Risso]

On 2/17/2018 at 11:13, darrenm said:

Are there honestly still people buying diesel cars? Haven't you been watching the news over the last 5 years?

About the worst possible combination is a VAG diesel. VAG cars are unreliable, pump out loads of crap causing the deaths of thousands each year and VAG are a pretty despicable company all round. My Ateca is an awful car and I wish I'd stayed with the Toyota hybrid. Yet the Ateca wins awards and hybrids are slated. 

Genuine question, but how do diesel engines that have the Adblu system fitted compare to petrol engines?  I have to top mine up every few thousand miles.

[chrisp65]

1 hour ago, Vive_La_Villa said:

I'm going to have to now.

But do they still sound like tractors?After 10 years of listening to my own tractor not sure could handle another one. 

People with modern diesels will tell you they are comparable to petrol engines these days.

 

This is because they must all be **** deaf.

[darrenm]

On 2/17/2018 at 12:02, Genie said:

Are VW worse than anyone else in reality? They said they were better which was the lie.

I have a diesel and my next car will be a diesel. I do an 85 mile round trip for work so Diesel all the way.

Not really no. From my limited fact gathering exercise, VAG were terrible in real world and are now one of the better ones. Some of the Japanese manufacturers like Mazda are shockingly bad and most of the industry is playing the game.

JLR apparently have never even tried to use a defeat device.

Some really interesting findings here: http://equaindex.com/equa-air-quality-index/

I single VAG out specifically because of shit like this: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/jan/30/vw-suspends-media-chief-monkey-exhaust-tests-diesel-emissions 

"The carmaker Volkswagen has suspended its head of external relations and sustainability after admitting that he had known about experiments in which monkeys were locked in small chambers and exposed to diesel exhaust."

With a hybrid you'd do the same or better MPG, save money on things that go wrong on the car, be allowed to drive into city centres, and not contribute to the air quality health crisis https://www.ippr.org/publications/lethal-and-illegal-londons-air-pollution-crisis

"Across the UK as many as 40,000 deaths a year are attributed to outdoor air pollution, and it is the second most significant factor impacting on public health in London, after smoking."

[Stevo985]

2 minutes ago, darrenm said:

JLR apparently have never even tried to use a defeat device.

When I was at JLR and the VAG controversy happened, we were categorically told that we had never done anything like that.

I can't guarantee it was true, but they were very direct in telling us so it would be a brazen lie.

 

But I think I've said here before that JLR had their own dodgy tricks to get round emissions. With fuel fired heaters that don't actually do anything.

[Seat68]

All being well I pick up my new diesel car in an hour, well new to me, its a 66 plate so thats a lot newer than I have had before.

[chrisp65]

20 minutes ago, Seat68 said:

All being well I pick up my new diesel car in an hour, well new to me, its a 66 plate so thats a lot newer than I have had before.

murderer

 

------

 

On the hybrid thing again,  I’m not quite as evangelical about them as DM, but one of the things I still quite like is the silent running half the time around town. Question was asked about whether diesels are comparable in noise to petrol. Well, my hybrid is nothing but tire noise half the time around town. Which does brings it’s own hazards actually with cyclists and pedestrians not looking before they throw a right angle turn.

On my one commute route, its about 11 miles and I’ve done the majority of that in electric stealth mode. Not so much in the winter where the engine cuts in more regularly, but the instant the temperature rises, the hybrid bit is so noticeable. Even this morning, the temperature being 8 C meant that I did more than half the journey on electric. That’s not a plug in, that’s just juice from braking and coasting. As a rough rule, a coast down a hill generates enough juice to get the car about half way back up the next hill. So, on a trip down a hill then up the other side, I pay for petrol for about the third or quarter of that ride where the engine kicks in.

Having played with the trip computer info., my mpg for the commuter runs, where I’m up and down hills in stop start winter traffic in and out of the city, lights, wipers, air con, stereo, all the buttons on, never getting up to 30mph. Well, that particular type of driving I’m still hitting over 60 mpg. As soon as it actually gets a run of road at over 30mph it’s up in to the mid 70’s mpg. That’s my actual geek calculations verifying that, based on 12k miles in 6 months, not the advertised blurb. ‘In theory’ if I go over 80mph on the motorway, I've found mpg drops off quite rapidly, so I don’t do dat no more. But driving along on electric at 70mph on the motorway is quite weird. The handbook suggests it can’t be done, but I’ve done it most journeys.

One more level of geekdom. I go on a forum for hybrid drivers and it does appear to be very hit n miss on whether it works. So many drivers of hybrids appear to really struggle to get anything but bog standard mpg and report no benefit whatsoever. Don’t know if that’s quality control in the manufacture of the kit, or people driving like dicks or what. I might just have a lucky one where the battery is actually wired up to something and working!
 

Edited February 19, 2018 by chrisp65

[tonyh29]

I got my Hybrid couple of weeks back

for a while I got around 90 mpg from it , but now I use it as you would use any other car , I'm getting a round 34 mpg ... I could get more if I could be arsed to plug it in but for the 18 miles it gives me ( which is more like 12 when you actually drive it)  , its frankly not worth it ... I do charge the battery off the engine on long journeys but even that is more novelty of watching the little screen show me what the car is doing and I'm sure I'll soon get bored of that

 

on the plus side I get free congestion charge and my company car tax dropped from 32% to 9% ... and I only had to sacrifice .2 of a second on my 0-60 in order to do so  

1 hour ago, chrisp65 said:

or people driving like dicks or what

as per my above ... I fit in this category  

 

 

Edited February 19, 2018 by tonyh29

[Genie]

3 hours ago, darrenm said:

Not really no. From my limited fact gathering exercise, VAG were terrible in real world and are now one of the better ones. Some of the Japanese manufacturers like Mazda are shockingly bad and most of the industry is playing the game.

JLR apparently have never even tried to use a defeat device.

Some really interesting findings here: http://equaindex.com/equa-air-quality-index/

I single VAG out specifically because of shit like this: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/jan/30/vw-suspends-media-chief-monkey-exhaust-tests-diesel-emissions 

"The carmaker Volkswagen has suspended its head of external relations and sustainability after admitting that he had known about experiments in which monkeys were locked in small chambers and exposed to diesel exhaust."

With a hybrid you'd do the same or better MPG, save money on things that go wrong on the car, be allowed to drive into city centres, and not contribute to the air quality health crisis https://www.ippr.org/publications/lethal-and-illegal-londons-air-pollution-crisis

"Across the UK as many as 40,000 deaths a year are attributed to outdoor air pollution, and it is the second most significant factor impacting on public health in London, after smoking."

For someone like me, investment in a hybrid will be far, far higher than a diesel for the same economy. I’m not sure how you have less things to go wrong with a Hybrid car either? Quite the opposite I imagine and then the repair bills will be higher too.

Edited February 19, 2018 by Genie

[chrisp65]

1 hour ago, tonyh29 said:

and I only had to sacrifice .2 of a second on my 0-60 in order to do so  

as per my above ... I fit in this category  

I've got two options. I can have a couple of miles of gentle petrol free motoring. Or I can flick the gearstick and have 15 metres of warp drive.

15 metres of warp drive is great fun in the dry, truly pushes you back in your seat. But it really is the width of a road junction. You get across the lights and it all goes a bit limp to say the least.

[darrenm]

7 hours ago, Genie said:

For someone like me, investment in a hybrid will be far, far higher than a diesel for the same economy. I’m not sure how you have less things to go wrong with a Hybrid car either? Quite the opposite I imagine and then the repair bills will be higher too.

Unless you go really old and really toxic on the diesel it wouldn't. But you'd be a public health hazard with anything before euro 5.

There's half as many moving parts in a hybrid. Nothing ever goes wrong with them. Diesels are notorious for DPF troubles, dual mass flywheel, fuel pump.

[Chindie]

DPFs are the devil. 

Unless you literally spend hours a day on a motorway (or you're driving a bus), it eventually will **** you. Take short journeys and it'll sprint to ensure it **** you as soon as possible.

[Genie]

9 hours ago, darrenm said:

Unless you go really old and really toxic on the diesel it wouldn't. But you'd be a public health hazard with anything before euro 5.

There's half as many moving parts in a hybrid. Nothing ever goes wrong with them. Diesels are notorious for DPF troubles, dual mass flywheel, fuel pump.

How does a hybrid have half as many parts when it has an internal combustion engine AND another power plant plus all the gubbins and software to enable it to switch between the 2.

I mentioned earlier that I do an 85 mile round trip to work and ~80 of those are on the motorway. I've had a couple of cars with DPF in the past, 1 was fine but the other (Vauxhall, never again) was a bloody nightmare.

[Risso]

10 hours ago, Chindie said:

DPFs are the devil. 

Unless you literally spend hours a day on a motorway (or you're driving a bus), it eventually will **** you. Take short journeys and it'll sprint to ensure it **** you as soon as possible.

This.  Had it clogged this week with no warning, so had to call RR Assist out to do a 'forced regen', whatever that is.  That and the requirement to put Adblu in every two to three months is a right ball ache.  I like the idea of the seven seater Tesla as a replacement, but they just look so shit, inside and out.  Looking at the petrol Range Rover Sport, but I think I'd literally be living in the petrol station with one of those.

[Chindie]

You can only do the forced regen so many times, IIRC, eventually the filter will be ****. And it's a surprisingly expensive replacement. 

If you don't, it'll jump into limp mode once or twice a week and you need to run it up the motorway for a while to get it useable for a couple of days again.

[Vive_La_Villa]

So should I return to Petrol?

[wazzap24]

6 hours ago, Chindie said:

You can only do the forced regen so many times, IIRC, eventually the filter will be ****. And it's a surprisingly expensive replacement. 

If you don't, it'll jump into limp mode once or twice a week and you need to run it up the motorway for a while to get it useable for a couple of days again.

Once it's starts it's a horror show. 

I backed my wife's corsa to the finance company over it. 

Dealers are blatantly miss-selling to customers too, I'm surprised more hasn't been made of it. 

[AVTuco]

On 2/9/2018 at 15:30, Chindie said:

I drive a 1l Lupo, so this thread makes me feel inadequate.

I drive a 2005 Kia Picanto.