Why don't diesel cars come with an option to manually regenerate the DPF?

I'm interested in understanding why a driver cannot request their car to kick off a regeneration manually, for example, when they get on the motorway for a long journey. I have a Honda CR-V 2.2 with a DPF. I recently I got home after a long journey, including about 50 miles on a dual carriageway, and as I was about to park up in my garage I could smell the regeneration process underway - so I backed back out and did a quick run up the main road for 20 minutes. When I got home, all was well. It seems to me that car manufacturers are making these more difficult to keep clean than they should be without a manual override option. Any thoughts?

Asked on 12 February 2018 by Tim Brew

Answered by Honest John

A manual override to actively regenerate the DPF will use a lot of fuel and could set fire to the car. What all manufacturers should do is fit a dashlight that warns the driver when active regeneration is taking place so that they don't switch off while this is happening. They don't because the public would construe this as extremely inconvenient, which it would be if you were on a tight schedule; and that would be yet another nail in the coffin of diesel cars.

Tags: dpf diesel cars regenerating

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