The 2.0 CR diesel is capabe of very high mileages especially if you choose 10k service intervals and drive in a way that is compatibe with a DPF. Personally i'd avoid having the dieselgate mod applied.
My driving is not compatible with having a DPF so I've chose a petrol.
Personally I think the best car to own as a private hire taxi is a Toyota or Lexus hybrid
While in the main agreeing with this its not that straight forward. Its a variable service interval with many things being monitored by the car, number of cold starts, oil condition and many others and the car tells you when a service is needed. Speaking to the main dealer he says it not unusual for a customer expecting 20,000 miles to come in at less than 8000 miles complaining the car needs a service, it works both ways, I personally ( shock horror ) use the variable service but do an unofficial oil change myself every 6 months. Better than either option in my opinion and Im someone who verges on being anal about my cars maintenance.
“My driving is not compatible with having a DPF”
For ages Ive been trying to figure out where the boundary is between compatible and incompatible, the extremes are obvious but where is the tipping point. I bought my car against many peoples advice because I only do 7000 miles a year and do very little motorway driving. 25% urban 60% rural and 15% motorway is an estimate and touch wood so far has been perfect after 32 months. Very very few active regenerations but I do my best not to to interrupt it when one has started. Is the incompatible closer to the compatible than we think?
If I could make a request from car makers it would be that they put an indicator lamp on the dash to tell the driver the car wants to do an active regeneration so that you could make sure you gave it the opportunity, for mine speed over 38mph for 5 to 10 minutes. Most DPF problems come about when these conditions are not met or when the car is repeatedly switched off part way through a regeneration.
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Its all well and good saying that you should give the car time to carry out its active regen, but most people don't have either the time or any way to do this if they are on the way to work, in traffic or on the clock for work purposes - we can't just 'drive around' all the time.
If you don't need to do over 20,000 miles a year mainly on faster-moving roads or lug very heavy loads/trailers/caravans around very regularly, then you don't NEED a diesel-engined car: the better fuel economy on medium to longer trips is more than outweighed by the far higher purchase and maintenance costs - many reports saying that the vast majority of modern diesel-engined cars require mileages well in excess of 75k - 100k miles to even break even, and that's without any major problems of the three-lettered acronym variety.
Its as simple as that. As such, the choice then is between a petrol hybrid and normally-aspirated/small engined turbo-petrol cars, dependent upon usage type and driving style.
The problem with buying especially second-hand diesel cars is that you cannot guarantee how the car was driven before you bought it, nor were they really designed for in-town use in slow-moving traffic - that, and the high levels of pollution they emit when doing so and its consequences, both to health and in the wallet, is also why hybrid petrol engined cars are so popular with taxi drivers in built-up areas.
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"Its all well and good saying that you should give the car time to carry out its active regen, but most people don't have either the time or any way to do this if they are on the way to work, in traffic or on the clock for work purposes - we can't just 'drive around' all the time."
Ive been getting an active regen every 550 to 750 miles and if I have to switch off I make sure the conditions are met on the return trip which happens anyway most of the time. Its hardly driving around all the time.
Petrol cars are not that much cheaper to buy. On my car, a Sharan the only petrol available is £750 less than than a diesel, and it sruggles to pull the 2 Ton weight up hills. The fuel saving on the Sharan even at my low mileage is at least £350 a year. The latest VW TSi petrol is priced mid way between the 1.6 and 2.0 L diesels. My diesel Sharan is still worth a good bit more than the petrol version.
If you run a big car the choice is not simple, there are very few petrol estate of MPVs. The Masda 6 estate is very nice but the 2.0 L petrol is very disapointing it needs a turbo, the Passat GTE is a dream but very expensive. What else is there? Seriously Ive been looking and the choice in petrol is very poor. Van drivers who work mainly in town are going to have problems I fear.
The point I am making is that I dont believe you need to be doing big mileages or blasting up a motorway for diesel to work not anymore anyway, a good mix works fine but confined to town and 30 limits is not.
Edited by Stanb Sevento on 26/05/2017 at 15:02
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The point I am making is that I dont believe you need to be doing big mileages or blasting up a motorway for diesel to work not anymore anyway, a good mix works fine but confined to town and 30 limits is not.
I agree, Stan. But completing regens can be problematic is you have the wrong car.
A colleague of mine had a Qashqai 2.0 diesel, Her daily commute Mon-Fri was probably 20-25 mles each way, but that included a slow section of the M1 and crawling town traffic for the rest of it. Several times the light came on and she had to take it to the dealer for a forced regen. The first time they told her it was her fault, and gave her a photocopied sheet telling her to drive at 50mph for half an hour if the light came on again. Of course, when it did she couldn't get out of second gear for traffic. They took to charging her £100 a go.
To me, that is a car that is not fit for purpose.
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The point I am making is that I dont believe you need to be doing big mileages or blasting up a motorway for diesel to work not anymore anyway, a good mix works fine but confined to town and 30 limits is not.
I agree, Stan. But completing regens can be problematic is you have the wrong car.
A colleague of mine had a Qashqai 2.0 diesel, Her daily commute Mon-Fri was probably 20-25 mles each way, but that included a slow section of the M1 and crawling town traffic for the rest of it. Several times the light came on and she had to take it to the dealer for a forced regen. The first time they told her it was her fault, and gave her a photocopied sheet telling her to drive at 50mph for half an hour if the light came on again. Of course, when it did she couldn't get out of second gear for traffic. They took to charging her £100 a go.
To me, that is a car that is not fit for purpose.
Exactly my point. I would say that the price difference from petrol to diesel can vary quite considerably, and is much more so as you increase engine size, more than just due to the overall price of the car. The smaller-engined diesels aren't so much more than the petrol 'equivalents' (based on power, maybe, but the driving experience is often a lot different, as the diesel engine is heavier and needs to be worked harder to get off the mark, though may be better at motorway speeds for comfortable cruising), but its noticeable that most of the serious reliability problems involving diesel engines are related to the smaller ones.
The price difference for the 2 litre car engines is far more marked (I just looked up some for the Ford Focus and it was £1600). As I said, if you buy a diesel-powered car and use it mainly on short journeys (whatever the overal annual mileage), and to a lesser extent for annual mileages below 20k, then the downsides outweigh the upsides - the short journeys kill the emissions system, significantly reduces mpg (not warmed up and needs far more active regens to burn of heavy accumulations of soot, even worse for VAG cars caught up in the emissions scandal which were 'fixed'). This inevitably leads to huge bills if you keep the car over 4 years (its stupid, uniformed buyers that have kept second hand diesel cars' prices high, hopefully this will correct iteself soon once people are made aware of such problems).
Diesel cars that are bought for low annual mileages but that are run on longer distances and/or on fast-moving roads for each trip may suffer from less reliability issues, but because they do low mileages, the higher mpg effect over petrol engined cars is far smaller, especially when the higher longer-term running costs and purchase price is factored in. Its also the reason why I have, thus far, only bought proven Japanese chain-driven engined cars - far less long-term reliability issues and no cost of replacing the cambelt (not small). Its noticeable that those cars with small turbo-petrol engines also command a mich higher price premium (not quite as much as diesels) over normally asiprated ones. As I said before, each car has its own use and driving characteristics, and people should buy what suits that, not something that might on paper be great but in reality may be quite the reverse.
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The point I am making is that I dont believe you need to be doing big mileages or blasting up a motorway for diesel to work not anymore anyway, a good mix works fine but confined to town and 30 limits is not.
I agree, Stan. But completing regens can be problematic is you have the wrong car.
A colleague of mine had a Qashqai 2.0 diesel, Her daily commute Mon-Fri was probably 20-25 mles each way, but that included a slow section of the M1 and crawling town traffic for the rest of it. Several times the light came on and she had to take it to the dealer for a forced regen. The first time they told her it was her fault, and gave her a photocopied sheet telling her to drive at 50mph for half an hour if the light came on again. Of course, when it did she couldn't get out of second gear for traffic. They took to charging her £100 a go.
To me, that is a car that is not fit for purpose.
Yes I can see there is a problem there. Poor woman, she has the wrong car and the only real solution is to change it. I’ll bet the seller did not discuss the issue with her at the point of sale. Perhaps that should be part of the advice to buyers, that driving in town or slow congested traffic must be balanced with an amount of faster free flowing driving.
Just spent a few days in a lighthouse in the north west of Scotland and the roads in the area are so different that it crossed my mind I could have a problem with my diesel. Once off the A roads there were 30 odd miles of narrow twisting undulating road where reaching 40 mph was a challenge followed by 13 miles of single track road where reaching 30 mph was a challenge and the last 3 miles were incredible, super narrow , walking pace bends and hills so steep you could not see the road through the front screen only clear blue sky. This area is diesel death I thought yet 90% of the cars in the area were diesel 4x4s. How do they do it? Is there some secret they have to survive this sort of driving. My car was fine but I was only there a few days.
Edited by Stanb Sevento on 27/05/2017 at 10:19
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"This area is diesel death I thought yet 90% of the cars in the area were diesel 4x4s. How do they do it? Is there some secret they have to survive this sort of driving. My car was fine but I was only there a few days."
Yes... they drive like lunatics. A tight road you'd naturally amble down at 30-40mph is a 70mph up on two wheels round corners race track to the locals. Even if old farmer Joe is a little slower in his Discovery or Shogun his young farmer son will soon clear the DPF out. Depending on how far off the beaten track you are the number of them who'll take a car to the pub then drive home again is pretty frightening still. I spent a weekend on Arran a while back and half the youngster that staggered out the pub at closing were climbing into motors.
Edited by SLO76 on 27/05/2017 at 10:49
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Yes... they drive like lunatics. A tight road you'd naturally amble down at 30-40mph is a 70mph up on two wheels round corners race track to the locals. Even if old farmer Joe is a little slower in his Discovery or Shogun his young farmer son will soon clear the DPF out. Depending on how far off the beaten track you are the number of them who'll take a car to the pub then drive home again is pretty frightening still. I spent a weekend on Arran a while back and half the youngster that staggered out the pub at closing were climbing into motors.
Well yes I did meet a couple af them, a middle aged gent in an X-Trail cought up and passed at what seemed like a suicidal speed and a little old lady in a Micra whos head only just cleared the dashboard came bombing round a bend in front. I got a wave and a big smile as I pulled into a passing place to let her through.
Edited by Stanb Sevento on 28/05/2017 at 11:09
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