During the last few days BILSweden has made public 2 statistics that may not seem related to each other, but in fact they are linked to another.
The first has the title:
Sex av tio nya bilar är dieslar i Västra Götalands län
(Six out of ten new cars are diesles in the Västra Götalands region)
It talks about how the sales of diesel cars have increased over the last years.
Diesel and E85 car sales increased from 2006 till 2008 while petrol(Bensin) sales decreased accordingly. But from 2008 diesel cars became more interesting (maybe because oil prices reached it’s maximum of about 140$ per barrel that year).
Since then diesel sales dominate the field reaching the current 60% value, not only in that region but in the whole country.
The increase of diesel sales helped Sweden reduce its CO2 emissions from new cars.
– The sharp increase in diesel share, not least of diesels with emissions of 120 grams per km, has been a major contributing factor to the average carbon dioxide emissions from new cars has fallen by 20 percent during the past four years, “said Bertil Molden president of CAR Sweden.
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But today a new statistic has been published.
Koldioxidutsläppen från nya bilar lägre än vad de officiella värdena visar
(Carbon dioxide emissions from new cars are lower than the official values show)
[table id=22 /]
As we can see the official values decrease, while the “fair” values, which take into account the difference between fossil fuels and renewable fuels, reached a minimum in 2009.
The official method does not take into account whether the fuels are fossil or renewable. For example, counts as ethanol gasoline and bio-gas as natural gas, which overstates the actual emissions. The official value of new cars carbon dioxide emissions, which Transport Agency has reported to the European Commission, declined from 164 grams / km during 2009-151 g / km in 2010, which is a record decrease for one year. The fair value, taking into account the lower emissions from biofuels was under BIL Sweden calculations on largely unchanged, in 2010, 134 g / km. The reason that the fair value did not decline was a decline in the proportion of newly registered passenger cars of ethanol, due to uncertainty about the benefit of these cars after 1 January 2012.
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I hope diesel gets a little bit more expensive during this year, maybe then people will start reconsidering E85 once again, and the Swedish politicians will leave E85 cars as “green cars” for another couple of years.
/RedJ
Any chance of telling us if Saab is still alive ?
Saab is sleeping,
it is already quite late in Sweden.
Tomorrow after the breakfast, and a big cup of coffee, we will know if Saab was even wounded.
/RedJ
*LIKE
Correction: AP not PA, my error.
Sorry…. Saab never will die so long as it’s in our hearts and our souls.
RedJ, I’m not sure that I share your enthusiasm for E85. The diversion of agriculture for use in making E85 has significantly driven up the price of staple foods that poorer nations depend on to feed their populaces and recent studies have shown emissions are worse for vehicles using E85 than regular petrol.
I agree with you , E85 is not the solution to stop climate warming and reduce co2 emmisons…………,
And keep in mind that we will also need to replace coal, not only mineral oil.
So true! Another oil is not the solution. It’s just moving focus to the foodchain. Now we’re driving cars and causing a lot of trouble in the middle eastern. Then we’re driving cars and letting people starf to dead because the fields where in normal ciscumstances food was being produced are now being used to grow fuel for our cars (not mentioning the water/irrigation issues).
I personally don’t like the E85 solution at all, it’s just window dressing.
Do we really consume less oil by subsidizing diesel cars and thus stimulating more driving…?
Good for the industry, though.
Diesel cars aren’t susidized. They are however taxed slightly different. Less tax on the fuel, more tax on the car, but the difference between gasoline and diesel is getting smaller.
Ethanol on the other hand is subsidized, it’s tax free.
Call it what you want, but the CO2 based government contributions are very much in favour of diesel cars. Without these, and with a realistic fuel price, the sales of diesel would be less. And we would overall consume less oil based fuels…
There’s more ways to make ethanol than chopping up a cornfield. 20 times more ethanol can be harvested from algae than any food based solution.
Thank you.
supplier GM raised prices despite binding contracts and saab refused to pay?
as noone else cares about the subject given i wont either. Today was out driving in the centre of my smallish town i saw TWO wild 9-5’s within twenty minutes. A white aero one in a hotel parking and minutes later i passed a silver one om my way home. The white Aero at the front hotel parking with about 30 cars in a row was a real presence i tell you. The 5 series beamer station wagon parked next to it looked like a little car that needs to call mummy.
LOL…awesome! I’ve yet to see a 9-5 on the road, but the closest Saab dealer is an hour away, so I don’t expect I would often see a newer model Saab anyways.
My small town is in the middle of sweden with 50.000 inhabitants. prior to today i seen at the most one 9-5 a month here and that is the reason i was so surprised to see two of them on my short trip to the liquor shop today.
While there are many differing opinions over which source of energy will reach ubiquity in the future, none of us should actively hope for such a thing as this.
For the sake of our lungs, we should actually hope so. Diesel is choking our cities.
Next week I have to make a trip to Frankfurt which I can do in 2,5 hours if I put my foot down. At over €1,53 a litre I guess I’ll have to accept a 120km/h limit which will no doubt add another hour to my journey. : (
I am not a fan of fossil fuels – not by a long shot. I jus don’t “wish” greater cost upon consumers, many of whom are already struggling due to the economy, simply to boost some other form of combustable fuel that may be cleaner than diesel but is barely an improvement compared to pure electric.
The statistics just make it plain clear, that even in the homemarket Saab cannot survive without having a competitive range of Diesel engines. The advance of Diesel in Sweden is however particular, it first got at the expense of gasoline and since 2 years at the expense of E85. I am not an expert about it, but is E85 in Sweden not won out of wood chips? No problem / interference with global food shortage.
To develop a strategy for a more powerful Diesel for the 9-5 (and 9-4x)is still a key requirement.
No, it’s not made from wood chips. A little over half the ethanol is made in Sweden from grain, the rest is imported.
Many car magazines states (I haven’t owned a brand new diesel so I wouldn’t know myself) that the initial consumption on a brand new diesel car is very high compared to the official numbers.
Once you have driven some 5000 km you can expect the consumption to start dropping.
I’m at 12.000km, but the numbers are still way off. The way CO2 output is measured in the automobile industry is not realistic.
Not only is it not realistic, I would say it’s on the border of what is legal. Billions of tax payer’s money is spent on subsidies, based on measurings that bear no relation to reality…
These are measured values, or calculated values based on measurements, and as such, they are hard to disagree with. I think that you would be right if everybody would follow your driving and fueling pattern.
DPF is one the reasons why new diesels do not get low consumption in real world. Especially if you drive on cold weather and short trips. The engine tries to burn particles more ofter causing higher fuel consumption.
It´s not cars or manufacturers to blame but the ER fuel consumption measurement. It´s not even close to what we consider a normal everyday driving.
I do use a bike as much as I can, and boy does the diesel exhaust irritate my lungs…
I find it sad that European makers are complaining about E10 when they’ve been making E10-compatible cars to sell in North America for over 30 years. Is that not a long enough time span to determine if there are any long-term effects on engines?
The same thing happened with unleaded fuels. They sold compatible cars in the US for twenty years while claiming that they didn’t know how to do the same in Europe.
Edis,
I know that “the solution” is not available now, but if we stop researching in different possibilities, and only use resources we know will be depleted sooner or later, this can’t be “the solution”.
Anyhow, I do not have “the solution” either, therefore I see bio-fuels as of many technologies that will lower the crude oil dependency, which will be in the future at least as important as reducing the CO2 footprint.
Do you mean that the chemical reaction of sunlight, nitrogen oxides (NOx) and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) which is creating smog no longer exists? Wow. I mean, wow.
Yet no one talks (enough) about diesel’s superior role in maximizing PM10 concentrate in the air and thus causing a deadly environment for humans (and animals), causing possible lung symptoms in the least, but principally lung cancer. Diesel should die, not us, if we had a choice.
Great article RedJ! Well researched, and with an interesting point: Maybe people will go back to E85-cars because they are less expensive to drive? Yeah, why not? I certainly drive my Dame Edna on E85 and would definitely consider NOT to go on the Diesel Band Wagon when I change car.
After all, the Otto is a smoother engine as well…
@Red J – the question of where would we get electric for our electric cars from, I still say nuclear. Japan’s crumbling reactors aside, when nuclear energy is done with upmost care and safety, it is über clean and essentially limitless in power output.
I don’t know what you mean with über-clean, but a technology that creates the waste the nuclear reactor creates it’s not that clean, imho.
And Uranium is not limitless, it will also come to an end, sooner or later.
Another view on the diesel is the huge costs of replacing the particle filter. Some of the car magazines in sweden have articles on prices in the range of 15-20.000 SEK! = 1500-2000euros = ???? $
The old myth about diesels being cheaper to maintain persists, even though it hasn’t been true for 15 years.
In fact, my mechanic tells me that modern diesels cost significantly more to maintain. Being in North America, his experience is limited mostly to VW diesels (and truck diesels), but it likely holds true for other automotive diesels.
Bernard,
people usually only see what they have to pay a the gas station after the short trip over the weekend, and this can be twice as much with a petrol car than a diesel car.
But yes, almost any other cost is higher with a diesel car.
I think they (www.teknikensvarld.se) mainly reffered to BMW and VW in this study.
As another example Volvo came out cheaper with appr 6000SEK = 700Euros = 950USD.
And 20.000 SEK = 2200 Euros = 3150 USD