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Diesel cars can be banned from German cities, court rules

reuters.com

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Re: Diesel cars can be banned from German cities, court rules

#311

Post by akgerber »

tjansen wrote: post #149
IshKebab wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think the pedestrians who get killed by cars were somehow "forgetting to control it"? That makes zero sense.

Why? Excluding children, most pedestrians who get killed by cars didn't pay attention while crossing the street. That's the no 1 cause for adults. The other one is walking on streets without sidewalks. (sorry, ony have stats in German: https://www.adac.de/_mmm/pdf/Praesentation11-13_192487.pdf )

As a matter of simple physics, the only way pedestrians are killed in crashes is because cars are moving sufficiently fast to bring deadly force to a crash— which makes cars traveling at speeds over 20mph in areas with pedestrians the fundamental cause of pedestrian deaths.

https://nacto.org/docs/usdg/relationship_between_speed_risk_...

Re: Diesel cars can be banned from German cities, court rules

#312

Post by mjevans »

oh_sigh wrote: post #247
foepys wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stop touting "Germany buys electricity from France because they don't have nuclear power". France always exported electricity because they cannot power their nuclear power plants up and down as easy as others can their coal plants. In hot summers and cold winters France relies on Germany electricity to stabilize their net because nuclear power then becomes a problem.

You could always smelt aluminium, pump water uphill, or simply boil some water etc with the excess power. Excess production is a far smaller problem than lacking production - so please don't try to play this off as Germany doing France a solid on this front.

If you have a hydrogen fuel economy as well the excess could be used for electrolysis, or any other form for storing energy potential for a future date.

Re: Diesel cars can be banned from German cities, court rules

#313

Post by blau3 »

scrumper wrote: post #113
blensor wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you please elaborate where you got your data points from. I am a diesel car owner (have been for about 15 years) and I have yet to experience those issues you mention. Currently it has -12°C outside and my car starts just fine.

Back in the late '90s when I got my first diesel (a Citroen AX, with what was at the time the smallest production diesel power plant available) you'd have to wait many seconds for the glow plugs to warm the car before trying to start it. Diesel also freezes in the extreme cold, though that's not really a major issue in the UK. You could also run it on used cooking oil. In the 20 years since then diesels have undergon…

> If you put old vegetable oil in them they would break instantly and expensively.

Haha, an acquaintance of a local Linux user group I used to visit drives an old BMW which he has modified to run on vegetable oil. To be precise, oil which has been used for preparing french fries. You can easily recognize the smell. He was a car mechanic, I guess he knows quite well what he does.

Re: Diesel cars can be banned from German cities, court rules

#314

Post by logfromblammo »

oh_sigh wrote: post #247
foepys wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stop touting "Germany buys electricity from France because they don't have nuclear power". France always exported electricity because they cannot power their nuclear power plants up and down as easy as others can their coal plants. In hot summers and cold winters France relies on Germany electricity to stabilize their net because nuclear power then becomes a problem.

You could always smelt aluminium, pump water uphill, or simply boil some water etc with the excess power. Excess production is a far smaller problem than lacking production - so please don't try to play this off as Germany doing France a solid on this front.

Or synthesize methane with Sabatier rxn and pipe it to storage tanks at peaker plants.

Re: Diesel cars can be banned from German cities, court rules

#315

Post by megy »

72deluxe wrote: post #65
jonasvp wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[citation needed] Cars are a net negative for societies (see e.g. https://tu-dresden.de/bu/verkehr/ivs/voeko/ressourcen/dateie... ). Just imagine having most (80%+) of goods transported by cargo bike: lots of (local!) employment, lots of new technology needed, etc.

Like sofas, armchairs, refrigerators, washing machines, dishwashers, flat-screen TVs and oak beds? Great idea, but how would you feasibly transport them? The deliveroo boxes are going to have to increase in size...

Oh no, people might actually buy less things!

Do we need to have personal cars just for delivery of those items? Or can we have trucks?

Re: Diesel cars can be banned from German cities, court rules

#316

Post by mywittyname »

bdamm wrote: post #290
bluedino wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an illusion that diesel vehicles are faster than gasoline. Gasoline engines have way more horsepower and are faster that the diesel options (unless Germans are getting neutered or smaller power plants than say, the USA)

That's a strange statement. More horsepower based on what? I think if you look around, you'll see that the largest and highest horsepower combustion engines all burn diesel. Semi-trailers are exclusively diesel. Your statement on speed is also odd. Record setting cars may burn gas, but your typical car driving around a city or highway needn't ever go faster than 160km/h. Most cars can achieve this, and most modern ca…

> the diesel will win just about any street race.

This is really wrong. It's a weird myth that gets perpetuated in America where people don't really drive diesels.

Let's compare a 2.0L diesel Golf TDI to a 2.0L petrol Golf GTI. Same car, same displacement, both turbo engines.

The Golf TDI does 0-60 in 9.0s and a quarter mile of 17.0s@84 mph.

The Golf GTI does 0-60 in 5.7s and a quarter mile of 14.2s@100 mph.

There's a staggering difference in performance there. The TDI is so slow that it's genuinely difficult to find a Motor Trend instrument test on a slower car, because at that point, it's too slow to really bother.

I found the 2018 Rav4: 0-60 in 9.3s and a quarter mile of 17.0@82.

Re: Diesel cars can be banned from German cities, court rules

#317

Post by kazinator »

mywittyname wrote: post #316
bdamm wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a strange statement. More horsepower based on what? I think if you look around, you'll see that the largest and highest horsepower combustion engines all burn diesel. Semi-trailers are exclusively diesel. Your statement on speed is also odd. Record setting cars may burn gas, but your typical car driving around a city or highway needn't ever go faster than 160km/h. Most cars can achieve this, and most modern ca…

> the diesel will win just about any street race. This is really wrong. It's a weird myth that gets perpetuated in America where people don't really drive diesels. Let's compare a 2.0L diesel Golf TDI to a 2.0L petrol Golf GTI. Same car, same displacement, both turbo engines. The Golf TDI does 0-60 in 9.0s and a quarter mile of 17.0s@84 mph. The Golf GTI does 0-60 in 5.7s and a quarter mile of 14.2s@100 mph. There's…

If it were true, Formula-1 would use nothing but diesel engines.

Re: Diesel cars can be banned from German cities, court rules

#318

Post by Zak »

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC wrote: post #206
Zak wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a big picture sense, they're the same. I think it says something different about intent though. A subsidy says something is essential or desirable. A relatively lower, but still very high excise tax says one thing is disliked less than the other.

But ... a tax break is a subsidy! And really, there usually is little significance to how the subsidy is paid, it's usually just an artefact of how it developed historically and how things were easiest to implement, potentially depending on psychological factors. I mean, what would the alternative look like? You have to pay the same tax for both, but then can claim back a fixed percentage of the taxes on diesel? On t…

I think jacquesm adequately explained one of the major distinctions: a high tax that's slightly lower than the tax on a competing good does not result in a below-market price. While many of the effects are similar, it is not the same.

Re: Diesel cars can be banned from German cities, court rules

#319

Post by seanmcdirmid »

mjevans wrote: post #310
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do they really shut the reactors down during the weekends? My dad worked in nuclear, and the plant would be down for a few days if it ever tripped, planned outages were about two weeks.

I am not a nuclear engineer; however a /trip/ (forced sudden shutdown) is probably different from a planned standby of some sort.

Usually they are false alarms due to lightning strikes messing up sensor equipments. But ya, probably a bit harsher than a planned shutdown.

Re: Diesel cars can be banned from German cities, court rules

#320

Post by hycaria »

jacquesm wrote: post #201
hycaria wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you really need a car if you lived in Amsterdam though ?

That depends strongly on your family situation and your job. For a single individual working in the city or a family with all their extended family nearby you could easily get away without a car. But not everybody is that lucky and plenty of professions will require you to be in places where public transportation is not an option. An interesting reversal of intentions is happening between the cities of Almere and Ams…

It's an interesting read but really does not answer at all. Don't see how having all extended family nearby is a factor. Rentals? Getting picked up by the family too remote from a public transport hub? You don't need a car as much as you think you do.
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