Petrol Vs. Diesel

Hoggy1000

Alright alright, Title says it all

Was looking into buying a car and was wondering what are the people or boards opinions on the two different fuels?

Big Nasty

What sort of mileage do you do?

Urban or motorway?

Hoggy1000

Urban, Only in to school or college next year (Hopefully)

barura

Diesel engines are a lot more complicated these days then when they first started but like with anything if you keep them serviced they'll be happy campers. I've noticed the dual mass flywheel's in them are prone to breaking these days but without any personal experience on how this happens I can't have an opinion on it.
Petrol is cheaper to buy new than an equivalent diesel so take that into account when you're buying.

If I was buying a new car that I was going to keep for 5 years I'd work it out like so and then decide on it:

( Price of car / 5 )+ cost per year to tax +( kilometers driven a year / 100 * price of fuel per litre * litres per 100km ) + general maintence = x

x being the price of a car to run per year, assuming nothing catastrophic happens to it ie. a crash.

So you have your car A that is petrol. It costs 10,000eur. Per year it costs 254eur to tax. You do 20,000km a year. General maintence is ~ 500 for tyres breaks etc etc. It get's 5.7litres per 100km. Petrol costs 1.50eur per litre

(10,000 / 5) + 254 + (20,000/100*1.50eur*5.7) + 500eur = 4464eur

Car B is diesel, it costs 13,500eur. Per year it costs 104eur to tax. You still do 20,000km a year. Maintence is ~650 euro for heater plugs etc. It gets 4.2litres per 100km. Diesel costs 1.45eur

(13,500 / 5) + 104 + (20,000/100*1.45eur*4.2) + 650eur = 4672euro

So there you go. Petrol vs diesel in my point of view as a cost. Some of the figures are a bit messy, but you get the general idea I hope. Diesel will keep a higher resale value though, so I'd take that into consideration as well. Finance is a whole different kettle of fish and we haven't even started on insurance!

Edit: I have actually sat down with real world figures on this but can't find where I wrote them down. It was for a skoda felicia but the running costs, when worked out this way, show that over time it worked out to be roughly the same price between the 1.2 petrol, 1.6turbo diesel and a greenline model.

rai555

barura wrote: »

Diesel engines are a lot more complicated these days then when they first started but like with anything if you keep them serviced they'll be happy campers. I've noticed the dual mass flywheel's in them are prone to breaking these days but without any personal experience on how this happens I can't have an opinion on it.
Petrol is cheaper to buy new than an equivalent diesel so take that into account when you're buying.

If I was buying a new car that I was going to keep for 5 years I'd work it out like so and then decide on it:

( Price of car / 5 )+ cost per year to tax +( kilometers driven a year / 100 * price of fuel per litre * litres per 100km ) + general maintence = x

x being the price of a car to run per year, assuming nothing catastrophic happens to it ie. a crash.

So you have your car A that is petrol. It costs 10,000eur. Per year it costs 254eur to tax. You do 20,000km a year. General maintence is ~ 500 for tyres breaks etc etc. It get's 5.7litres per 100km. Petrol costs 1.50eur per litre

(10,000 / 5) + 254 + (20,000/100*1.50eur*5.7) + 500eur = 4464eur

Car B is diesel, it costs 13,500eur. Per year it costs 104eur to tax. You still do 20,000km a year. Maintence is ~650 euro for heater plugs etc. It gets 4.2litres per 100km. Diesel costs 1.45eur

(13,500 / 5) + 104 + (20,000/100*1.45eur*4.2) + 650eur = 4672euro

So there you go. Petrol vs diesel in my point of view as a cost. Some of the figures are a bit messy, but you get the general idea I hope. Diesel will keep a higher resale value though, so I'd take that into consideration as well. Finance is a whole different kettle of fish and we haven't even started on insurance!

Edit: I have actually sat down with real world figures on this but can't find where I wrote them down. It was for a skoda felicia but the running costs, when worked out this way, show that over time it worked out to be roughly the same price between the 1.2 petrol, 1.6turbo diesel and a greenline model.

both cars with 100.000 and 5 years old has residual more than 0

barura

Oh yeah, but it's a nice rough guide, for me at least. :P

Big Nasty

Hoggy1000 wrote: »

Urban, Only in to school or college next year (Hopefully)

Petrol

C4Kid

@ barura - Your calculations got me looking for the costs in running two idential cars 1.4 petrol and 1.9 diesel and as you suggest theres very little difference if any in the Total Cost of Ownership between them.

I went for the petrol in the end but was regretting not even looking at a diesel and I've reassured myself that my running costs are the same if not less then the diesel. Firstly because I do less than 10,000 miles PA, I'd need to double that for diesel to make sense. I can service it myself and theres less insurance and tax to pay for the sake of a few less MPG, let alone additional costs like injectors, turbo's etc failing.

I decided to see if there is an online calulator , This is the job

http://www.iva.net/calculators/car-costs-calculator.php