See lot's of people selling petrol cars and raving on about TDI's and chiping them.... quoting great savings

Question I have is... are diesels really saving you money?

Example I have just bought the wife a Mitsubishi spacestar

Choice was between petrol version and diesel

Salesman was pushing for me to buy the diesel usual spool (it will be cheaper to run)

For a kick off the diesel was £500 more...
Diesel servicing every 6 months/ 7500 miles
Petrol servicing every 12 months/25000 miles

You do the maths.........

Plums.

Quite correct, there is usually vert little in it unless you do mega mileage

[Edited by russell hayward - 11/24/2003 7:03:09 PM]

My baseline on pure running costs alone (not resale) for justifying diesel over petrol is 20,000m per year.
It's very tight if you are doing much less than that.

My A4 Quattro V6 TDi (chipped) averaged 35.5mpg over 45k

An A4 1.8T Quattro (chipped) would have cost me £3k less brand new and would have averaged 30mpg based on what I've had since in my Octavia (same engine chipped, similar 4WD)

Assuming 20% worse mpg in my example, that's £1200 more in fuel over 60,000m / 3 years or £33 a month more.

If you buy more economical diesel and lose some performance then yes its more sense at 50mpg.

Yeah depends on your circumstances, high mileage and diesels are cheaper, also tend to be more dependable when they get to the higher mileages.
Another option with diesel assuming you have the space at home is that you can install a diesel tank and then can buy your diesel in bulk from your local oil distributor, saving even more money.

or cooking oil with a bit two stoke oil in it, even better.

Or a spot of red diesel, even better still!

'till the plod dips your tank and looks at your filters ;)

Did read a write up on bloke running his disco off the vegetable cooking oil. All he needed was to make a fuel heater to help thin it out.

He stopped after thinking that buying 100 bottles of oil from the supermarket was a bit of a chore and his work collegues started gossiping about it. ;)

Like for like between a derv and petrol version of the same car, probably not a lot in it.

Scooby > TDI - hell yeah! :D

More miles works out cheaper in a diesel....

That is you forget servicing costs... more often and more expensive for diesel motors.

Plums..

P.S. for every service of the wifes car it's 2-3 services in the same car with a diesel motor!

Plums, some of the new "hot hatch" diesels (like the Ibiza and Fabia) make sense as they're competitively priced.

For me as a company car user, diesel wins no contest. I save over £90 per month minimum on tax and fuel compared with any petrol saloon of equivalent size and performance. Which is nice :)

Service intervals on my TDi are 10k. I have a fixed priced contract through VW/Seat Finance as well. £43 per month covers all servicing, maintainence and tyre costs.

Need new tyres? I just call into National Tyres and get them to stick a set on. Come service time, I pay nothing to the dealer. I worked out I'll save money on this doing circa 20k miles per year (two services, at least one set of tyres etc).

What's all this b0ll0x about service intervals. My 330d has approx. 18k mile intervals. It has done 1000 miles from new and the service is due in 17400 miles time. I'm averaging just over 39 mpg.

You'll find that on modern diesels the intervals are similar to the petrol equivalents. My g/f's Golf TDI is every 12 months or 12k miles, but then it is a 1998 car. ;)

I'm saving shed loasds of money over my E39 M5, and going nowhere any slower! :D

Matt

Matt - that's because you used to drive the M5 like an old woman. ;) (BTW ChinnyBloke here has got rid of his now too, and is now driving an X-Trail diesel.)

As for saving ackers... depends on mileage per annum, and initial cost of the car. Service intervals are about the same on modern diesels to petrol equivalents.

Pete,

You cheeky cnut! At least have a proper diesel and not an X-Trail!! LOL ;) :D Catch up soon for a beer if you're about!

Matt

Hi Matt

How you getting on with the 330D?? Mine is starting to loosen up quite nicely and is showing just over 42mpg at the moment, running on the new BP Deisel stuff.

Steve

Hi Steve,

The 330d is fantastic. :D It's certainly quicker than the 2 that I have had previously. I suppose that it should be though. ;) The toys all work and it's very refined. I'm chuffed to bits. :D:D Glad to hear that yours is the same!

We'll have to get some pics posted! Seems that Scoobynet is turning into 330dnet! LOL

Matt

my A4 diesel did 20k miles before it's 1st service

My old fella does masses of motorway milleage, and also alot around London, he had a 2.0L DT Merc C-class estate, which he then traded in for a 1.8T sport Passat estate and it's way more expensive, he is going back to D. now, I am trying to talk him into an Accord, the motoring press are already raving about their first deisel engine, which I am in no doubt will be a stonker like the vtec.

Although he is also quite tempted with a forester - as he tows (grown) a horrible little caravan..

Our Octavia Diesel is on variable servicing (car tells you when it wants a service) The car has covered 26500 miles without calling for a service & our dealer has told us it may get as far as 30000 before needing a service, we also get 50+ mpg average. As this is the same engine as Audi, VW & Seat fit I guess they are also blessed with this ECONOMIC form of motoring.
Petrol I believe is now only suited to low mileage drivers & performance cars although having said that some of the new breed of Diesels are pretty quick as standard & once re mapped are very respectable

One of my mate's is as tight as a duck's water-tight bits, and he drives a golf tdi 150 - so it must be cheap.

ChrisB,

You'll struggle to get through a set of tyres in 20k. Mines has its 10k service this morning, Ive used 3mm on the front and 2mm on the rears.

I apologised and said I will try harder.:)

Not sure if £43 per month would be worth it for me.

I have had my 1.9 TDI (130) Sport Audi A4 for 18 months now from new and the first service was as 21K (£250) and then at 41K (£350).
Average over 47K is 48+mpg.
Been through 1 set of tyres and half way through 2nd set.

Financially a no brainer , if opting out and running your own.
Best money spinner ever.

Also out runs my colleagues in there 1.8T petrols...........

Stevie,

Factory fitted Dunlop SP2000s died at 11.5k. Chasing Scoobies through Wales for a weekend killed them off. It was sunny and dry, so meant they were almost like slicks :D

On 17.5k at the moment and probably half way through my second of fronts (VW will only fit Conti's) :D Rears still look good.

Another take on budget motoring.............


Buy an old Impreza Turbo for 6K or so, spend £200 more than a TDi insuring it, get approx 1/2 the MPG. Do the average mileage that most people do ie 12,000, 2 services at a specialist. Work out the costs, depreciation, extra insurance, fuel costs and find that for about the same as it would cost to run a diesel overall you can drive an AWD motoring icon.
Oh I forgot to add spend £75 on having it remapped and you can leave every TDi on the market for dead in most conditions (except possibly a range test)
Fun and fast motoring on a budget doesn't have to mean filling up at the dirty pump. You save so much on the initial purchase price and depreciation that in the final analysis you really don't save much at all runnning a diesel.
All a bit different if you are a company car driver, someone who likes to buy new cars on credit etc.

i think part of the problem of driving a low mpg car is psychological. you don't see the money you loose in depreciation coming out of your wallet every week, but you do see the money spent on petrol. when i had the soob i was filling up two or three times a week, and even though i wasn't paying for the petrol, i found the amount of time i was spending in petrol stations became annoying. there is something (to me) quite satisfying about filling up with 500 or more miles on the trip meter.

Which dreamland are you in? :D

--average mileage that most people do ie 12,000--

No one would buy a diesel for doing that sort of mileage though.

For general info I do about 30K a year in my A4 TDi and I save myself about £3000 a year in fuel, £800 in tyres, about £650 in servicing costs with another £500 insurance.

This is compared to my old MY99 classic.

You can't really compare a Subaru turbo and a diesel in mpg....

I was trying to compare like for like,

ie. Standard petrol car compared to Diesel car

Sorry I was comparing it to NACRO's idea :)

No problem Jye!

Plums.