dieselgate: The death of "clean" diesel

What has Dieselgate shown us this week?

1. European Car manufacturers don't care about the long-term health of their customers.
2. You can't do low-end diesel cars that aren't polluting in the real world —or if you do, their power profile doesn't match modern customer expectations aggressive driving
3. The car manufacturers are prepared to systematically deceive governments and their pollution tests.
4. Self-regulated tests don't work in this world —no more than the cigarette vendor's smoking trials.
5. The US government's extended test regime eventually caught this —though it took the threat of the 2016 models being blocked for VW to own up. They must have known about the crime in advance, but were just pretending "different driving conditions"

All claims that diesel cars are getting cleaner are complete bollocks

Cars have not got cleaner, they haven't got more fuel efficient. Instead the car companies have rigged the tests.

The current EU certification regime, models a 1970s driving style, and, being self-certified, has been utterly abused to the point where it is meaningless —in both pollution and mileage. 

Now, what is the good outcome of this? Diesel is doomed.

The fact the mileage figures are rigged for all vehicles is now going to become obvious. Everyone who bought a car based on mileage numbers has been ripped off.

Europe is going to need new tests, and soon. These will have to be strict and done independently. The EPA regime of testing real cars is now the only test process shown to work. There is no way the car companies can defend proposals to test this way, as they can't claim the existing process isn't utterly meaningless. And, they can't put it off.

They won't be able to have nice little meetings with Angela Merkel, Cameron, or Francois Hollande and say "cut us some slack". The politicians will know the situation is metaphorically and literally toxic —and want to put some clean blue air between them and the car companies. Now comes a chance to have some real-world tests, and force diesel cars to become cleaner or get taken off the price list.

Same for the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders. Their September 3 paper,  ‘Air Quality; The Automotive Industry Contribution’ is full of coverage of diesel engines, how EURO6 will deliver a 50% reduction in NOx pollution, and some statements which we now know to be untenable

Under Euro-6, diesel cars are the cleanest in history

-no, they are no cleaner than before. They've just cheated the exams better.

An EU policy review in 2013 confirmed Euro-6 will deliver key air quality objectives by 2020

A review written on the assumption that the car companies weren't lying through their teeth. That assumption is now shown to be false, hence the conclusion untenable.

There's one little mention of cycling in there:

Planning policies, which recognise changing mobility trends in urban areas and offer an integrated range of choices to suit journey needs, including cycling, walking, car sharing and public transport, will also be paramount, and must keep traffic moving.

They do accept cities are changing, but retain that phrase "keep traffic moving", which comes just after "Managing traffic to smooth its flow can significantly reduce air pollution.". That's the old "smoothing traffic flow" bollocks. Well, we can now point to people talking about "Smoothing traffic flow" and say "it's not going to deliver"

The DfT must be in a quandry here. They can't use the rollout of EURO6-certified cars as their roadmap for pollution levels in cities dropping, so they can't hope the pollution problem will go away if they wait long enough. Unless radical action is taken, the cities of 2020 will be as polluted as the cities of 2030 —if not worsened by more road traffic and increased congestion.

They're going to have to act, and that means read that Defra paper on NOx pollution and not say "wait long enough and it will go away". Cities are going to have to act, and they're now able to go the central government and say "you have to fund this".

London could be first, as the C-zone is the infrastructure. In particular, someone needs to look at all the diesel models that scraped in at under 100g CO2/km. How many are really doing that —and if not, is it fair for a diesel car that chucks out NOx pollution to get in free, while a petrol-engined car gets billed? The next mayor of London is going to have to look at that issue, and set a timetable for the end of the diesel exemption, as well as perhaps one for non-hybrid, non-electric cars in general.

Dieselgate has shown the world how dangerous diesel is, and how it won't go away. This is too big an opportunity to waste.

White Vans and their costs

the RAC foundation have an analysis of the White Van.,

This also includes Tipper Trucks, bringers of death to the city.

• 53% of vans are private; of these 45% of km driven are used for commuting, 17% personal. 1% for between jobs , 23% for collection and delivery. 
• 47% company, 32% commuting and 3% personal. Presumably these journeys constitute a taxable-in-kind benefit and taxed as any other company car.
• Of the company cars, 35% for goods, 19% between jobs. 
• 99% of private owners are men. You knew that, right?
• 39% of LCVs are less than 25% full. When you consider the percentages of vehicles used for commuting and personal use this is unsurprising. A lot of these vehicles are used as substitute for corporate or personal cars.
• The majority of LCVs are diesel. You knew that too.

Selected quotes from page ix

• There is evidence that LCVs have been used to substitute for HGVs
• A key factor is pay – an LCV driver might earn £15k, an HGV driver £25k
• Regulation will have an influence; vans, their operation and their drivers are less heavily regulated than HGVs

That page also predicts a doubling in size by 2040, even though page viii showed that vehicle registrations make it clear that demand is elastic: when the economy is in trouble, less vans. Therefore their growth estimates contain implicit estimates about economic growth.

The safety details on p.xi are relevant. 

1. Overall collision rates are down
2. peak collision hours are 8-9 and 5-6. These are also peak commuting hours, so vehicle use may be highest at this time.
3. 50% of vans fail their MOT first time round
4. 89% of vehicles pulled over are overweight. This contrasts with the percentage-full numbers, implying that a specific set of LCVs aer massively overweight. Tipper trucks?

The report (p.14) implies that LCVs are only in 5% reported RTCs, despite being 14% of traffic. What is not looked at is what the percentage of KSIs arise in those RTCs. Tipper trucks have a justified reputation for being lethal in London. meaning even though their percentage may be down, their damage is significantly higher.

LCVs and personal use.

Any LCV used for commuting and personal use is a taxable benefit. Yet as the paper notes,  "Although Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs record personal LCV usage for tax purposes, this is somewhat unreliable and not a true representation.". They get more detail F2F -which means that van drivers under-report their personal usage. 

LCVs and working hours. P17

only 44% of drivers know the legal limits on hours, which is ~ten working hours excluding commuting. If a driver commutes 1 hour a day each way -that's 12 hours on the road.

LCVs and Costs

The paper implies that the highest operating costs of the vehicle are fuel, at an approximate maximum of  £3,600/year. Yet the salary of a driver is a higher factor in the operational costs of the vehicle -as noted when the paper discusses how a motivator for LCVs is their reduced salaries than HGVs. 

The cost saving of switching from HGV driver to an LCV driver covers the entire annual fuel bill of the vehicle

HGV and LCV safety 

The paper highlights that the staff cost savings are a key factor driving a switch from HGV to LCV. Yet that cost saving comes at the expense of training -HGV drivers have to pass more tests. When you consider how dangerously HGV drivers can drive, how so many of them appear to be on the phone when you look at them on the motorway (try doing this from a coach, you get a better view), the fact that the driving qualification requirements of LCVs is less than HGVs is important.

When the "staff cost savings" of switching from HGVs to LCVs are mentioned, it really means "it is cheaper to employ staff without the stricter qualifications of HGV drivers"

Tipper Trucks

The article includes tipper trucks in this class -clearly part of the EU designation.

This implies 

1. that the qualifications to drive a tipper truck are less than for an HGV
2. assuming the knowledge is spread across all vehicle categories, only half the owners of tipper trucks know the working hour limits for driving LCVs.
3. Assuming the MOT failure rate is spread across all vehicles, 50% of tipper trucks are not in a condition to pass an MOT.

These are things to consider in any road safety discussion. It is also highly likely that these are the vehicles found to be overweight. One does not observe an overweight white van, but a full tipper truck is visible -and this could lead to the higher success rate on VOSA searches.

To conclude: the numbers here show the trend towards the LCV becoming a ubiquitous vehicle in the UK cities. While safer vehicles than HGVs, the fact that the driving standards are lower may increase risk, especially for the larger vehicles, the tipper trucks in particular.

Finally: 

People may whine about the cost of fuel, -but only the VAT-deductible cost of business travel is relevant. Commuting costs are not a business expense unless the owner is lying to HMG about personal use -and even trying to claim VAT back on those journeys. 

@Racfoundation: why so scared?

The RAC foundation have just published a document on costs of fuel.

First, its a PDF file, which shows they are still in a world where they expect people to "print" things before reading them. Quaint and rapidly becoming irrelevant. Maybe its something they expect to print themselves and hand out. But to whom? Because even the politicians will have iPads where they read news on their first class jollies in to London -and PDFs look even worse on a tablet than they do on a laptop or desktop. Whoever their target audience is, it's well, some relic of the past.

Second, it claims that cars are buses

To all intents and purposes cars are public
transport: they carry most members of
the public, most of the time

That's even though they own up that to the people with the least amount of money don't have cars, don't suffer from petrol poverty

In those households in the lowest income quintile (fifth) 48% have no car

100% of the people in the lower quintile have houses to heat, gas bills to pay, electricity bills to clear. If someone who cares about that lower 20% of income's energy poverty, addressing the cost of heating and lighting houses benefits 100% of that group, whereas any change in petrol and diesel pricing is most significant those people who drive a lot -business who can offset it against tax, and people with big-engined cars who drive a lot.



Finally, and this is where it gets to its most ridiculous, it pretends bicycles don't exist.

Here's page three of the sob story:

Number of journeys by car
Of all the trips made in Great Britain:

• 64% are as a car driver or passenger (main mode)
• 22% are on foot
• 6% are by bus;
• 3% are by rail and Tube

78% of distance travelled by all modes, including walking, is as a car driver or passenger.
Source: DfT National Travel Survey NTS0301, NTS0302

They get the text of those links wrong, but the links themselves to NTS0901 and NTS0303 are valid DfT surveys.

Except what happens if you add the numbers?

64+6   = 70
22+3   = 26
70+26  = 96
100-96 =  4

The numbers the RAC Foundation give don't add up to 100%. Four percent left over? An error? In a paper that is focused on percentages and numbers? Perhaps there's been a mistake and one of the numbers is mistyped, the way the links were?

Time to look at the data, the excel spreadsheet the Dft serve up, with a ready-to-paste chart.

Lo and behold, 2% other, and 2%  bicycle.

Why is the RAC ignoring that 2% of bicycle? Are they scared? Do they want to pretend it doesn't exist? Do they want to pretend that we don't deserve 2% of that 28 billion pounds -560 million? And that walking deserves 6 billion pounds -both out of the road budget and not the HS2 money.

The RAC foundation seem to be hoping that bicycles will go away, that all will return to pre-1973-land, where petrol was dirt cheap and every city was going to be rebuilt the way Leeds was.

Which puts them in very limited company

1. The ABD
2. The UKIP
3. The Department of Transport
4. Gideon "paddock mortgage" Osborne

The first two are the Kingdom of the Swivel Eyed Fuckwits -a lost cause not worth worrying about, except when other fuckwits like Pickles try to come up with policies that divert bottom-feeding Daily Mail commenters to his party and not the UKIP party.

The other two are trouble -especially with lobby groups like the RAC foundation.

Here we have it then, now its apparent why the document is PDF formatted -it was designed for: handouts at the upcoming party conferences, something they can give away at their lobbying booths trying to make the case that fuel costs are too high and that "something must be done". That something isn't HS2, more likely fracking.

But their lobbying doesn't include that 2% of bicycles: it really is pretending they don't exist.

Which is why everyone should ask them a simple question: why so scared?

RAC foundation: Should road infrastructure come from road infrastructure budget or somewhere else?

The RAC foundation seems to be drifting more and more off tangent. For a "research" organisation, well, their blog post seems like a daily mail content generator.

Today, Should cycling money come from road or rail funds?

Here it picks on the fact that Maria Eagle, Shadow Transport Secretary, called for a proportion of the UK road budget to be spent on cycling infrastructure, and calls it out:

Ms Eagle talks only about diverting funding for roads to boost cycling infrastructure. 

See that? The RAC foundation has just come out and declared that none of the billions spent on roads should be spent on bicycles. Instead they question whether HS-2 should be it.

Well, the HS2 economics are bogus, and as the RAC note, you could get everyone in the UK a bicycle and have lots of spare change -£36B to be precise, which would come in handy making it safe to cycle.

Yet why does the RAC seem to be resisting spending money on infrastructure to make it safe to cycle? Is that meant to be completely separate from the many bypasses and roundabouts being built from the £28B spending spree?

Because if they do think that cycling should come out of a separate budget than roads, then why do pedestrians get pavements in most road developments? Why isn't the RAC bemoaning the fact that pavements and zebra crossings come out of the "road budget" and not something else?

The answer is obvious: if the RAC said that HS2 should fund pavements rather than the road budget, everyone would laugh at them. Yet here they seem unable to accept or recognise that bicycles are a legitimate form of transport, and that the money spent on the UK road infrastructure should accomodate them.

The daftest bit is when they come over all defensive and say "is the demand there?".

Another thought, of course, is whether there is or is not the significant latent demand for cycling infrastructure that the suggestion of much more spending on cycling implies. Here, a recently Parliamentary written answer suggested that nationwide only a tiny fraction of journeys are undertaken by bike, and that this is not expected to change significantly for at least a couple of decades, which suggests that spending lots of money on cycling infrastructure is not a good idea.

That parliamentary question is flawed in that it compares #of miles per transport, not no. of journeys, so the long-haul drives would skew the figures. If you look at short-distance journeys the percentage, while atrocious, is less so: we are seeing about 10% of adults cycling per month (again, bogus numbers, but a different way to look at them).

So here's a proposal to the RAC. Why not give the cyclists the exact fraction of the road budget that reflects their use in a region? In central London, that would mean 25% of the spend; in central bristol, probably 10-15%. Spend that money to make cycling safe and a virtuous cycle would kick in: more people cycle, more cycling budget. Eventually it would even propagate to places like S. Gloucs.