Taxi Driver Online

Is the savings on Hybrids or LPG's worth it?

I am thinking of buying a new car for private hire work (I am new to the game).

LPG seem to offer more flexibility in terms of model type but I have heard that reliability is an issue.

Hybrid there is only really the Toyota Prius which I really like as a car but worried it maybe a bit small for taxi work.

If not either do I just go for a Skoda or something?

I live in London so expect to be doing shorter haul stuff with a bit of airport.

Your thoughts would be much appreciated.

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Jaimito

I think the savings are huge, but one wonders why we aren't all driving LPG motors?

If drivers go LPG, then I would only suggest they do it on a new car.

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IDFIMH

Well I am about to trial vegetable oil.

A whole new meaning to 'nipping into Tesco's to fill up'.

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A member of the Hire or Reward Industry

Glad to see others are looking to move over to veggie oil. I tried it in my wifes old diesel a few months ago and it burns really clean too. I tried it the next morning on a cold start and it fired up first time, this was on a Peugeot 405 H reg with about 147K on the clock.

The trouble with veggie oil and bio diesel though is our bloody government who refuse (at the present time) to reduce the amount of tax on it which I think is about 12 pence to the litre. We have farmers out there with acres of fields laying to waste who could quite easily grow the crops needed but can't at this present time compete with the cheap euro imports that we have at the moment, it's not just the crops though, imagine the gallons of waste veggie oil that our chip shops and fast food restaurants churn out every day.

There is a problem with using neat veggie oil though, it'll run for a while as good as anything but apparantly it'll gunge up the injectors before too long, it's probably better to mix it 50/50 with diesel for best results or have a change over valve for when the engine is hot enough. As for tax I presume we already pay VAT on it anyway and as long as your not producing for it to be used and sold to others I don't think the tax man is concerned, a bit like moonshine for personal use...

I may be wrong, but I think I read that if you're caught it's basically the same as using red diesel.

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Taxi Driver Online
www.taxi-driver.co.uk

Yeah but the chips come out lovely.

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IDFIMH

But how are you going to get caught? Unless you drive a big wagon or some sort of commercial vehicle then what are the chances of you being dipped? I can get a barrel of veggie oil from the wholesalers that works out about 48p per litre, even if you pay the 20p per litre tax to Gordon Brown you are still only paying out 68p per litre which is still a lot cheaper than the 90p+ that we have to pay at the pump.

It doesn't actually smell of chips, although it would be a great smell Mmmmm. With fresh veggie oil it just smells really clean rather than the dirty sooty smell that you get from the sooty particulates given off by burnt diesel.

I've always hated diesel cars because of this and the damaging effects on the environment but the thought of a cheaper and cleaner fuel sounds very welcoming.

I have a skoda octavia 1600c/c w reg bought it new runs on LPG and its been as good as gold but strangely I have never bought another one

So basically your approach is that you only obey rules if you think you will be caught if you break them?

Remind me never to go into business with you

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Taxi Driver Online
www.taxi-driver.co.uk

[SOAP BOX MODE]

I think you've got me all wrong TDO, what I mean't was that from a personal point of view in your own private car "why not?"

Of course if you use this in a business/commercial vehicle then you are asking for trouble as these are the type of vehicles that would be targeted, but why not use it in your own, after all, you'd be doing your bit to save the environment and given the fact that normal diesel, even the type that's low in sulphur is more damaging to the environment than petrol.

With all of the vehicles driving around in places such as London it's no wonder why we have so much smog in our cities, a switch to bio-diesel would be putting natural carbon back into the air, the very same carbon that is soaked up by our plants and trees during the daylight hours.

If I've offended someone then I'm sorry but our government is so screwed up when it comes to issues such as global warming, if they reduced the tax on bio-diesel then our farmers could afford to produce it for this country instead of importing all of the time from our foriegn neighbours.

When the oil reserves run out in the next 60-40 years where will all the London cabbies be as well as all of the haulage companies and anyone else that relies so heavily on the by-products of crude oil?

[/SOAP BOX MODE]

So what you mean is that if only half the population paid duty on their fuel then the other half would have to pay double to make up for the lost revenue, and your attitude is why not, presumably because you are one of the ones who aren't paying double?

Or should we all dodge fuel duty then other taxes will just go up and we'll be no better off?

The only logic I can see in your stance is that you want a free ride on the backs of everyone else.

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Taxi Driver Online
www.taxi-driver.co.uk

Aahh TDO, a conformist.

In the first instance, taxes will go up anyway, that is just a natural fact of living in this country seeing as we pay more tax in this country than probably any other in the whole world. In a recent poll Birmingham was number 47 in a list of most expensive places to live, London was placed 4th.

On top of all that and before you even look at tax payments and lost revenues think about the global environmental issues. London is in no doubt probably the biggest and most important city in the whole of the UK, we have thousands of vehicles powered by diesel engines made up of taxies, buses, lorries, cars etc. Diesel is commonly known to be the fuel that throws out more harmfull polutants than any other fuel we have ever used and thus harming our environment not only for ourselves but for our children and our childrens children and for generations to come. Now some might argue the fact "don't worry, I won't be around long enough to see the efects", what a callus attitude that is.

So onto my next point. If we all made a stand, and lets face it, us as being BRITISH haven't made a stand for our soil in 60 years and that's one of the reasons why this country has gone to pot, but that's another topic. But if we all made a stand to make a change over to bio-diesel then that would greatly help the economy of this country, for a start off it would mean our farmers who have land laying to waste would be able to produce crops for the production of bio-diesel which in turn would mean an upturn in the ecconomy of this country and who knows, lower taxes, but that would never happen. Instead we have to import it cheaply from our european neighbours because their country don't charge as much tax as ours does.

All of those London cabbies, lorry drivers, buses and cars could run on clean un-poluting bio-diesel with no extra cost to the motorist but with a major advantage to the environment, but if you lot in London WANT to live in a city full of smog that is getting worse then go ahead, shoke yourselves and you children with the polutants that diesel throws out.

If I realy wanted to cheat the tax man out of revenues then I could have gone over to using red diesel a long time ago as it is readily available around here for all to buy, but I don't, using red diesel won't help the environment but using bio-diesel/veggie oil will.

We need to make a stand for this clean fuel and a chance to better our economy and our environment but of course we won't because we are BRITISH and we lost our backbone 60 years ago, what a sad sacrifice...

And a good looking one at that.

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IDFIMH

i always thougth petrol was worse than diesel for pollutants?

Just a few links for you to look at.


http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/til/jsp/m ... d=16924789

http://www.ace.mmu.ac.uk/Resources/Fact ... on/26.html

http://www.elmbridge.gov.uk/services/en ... utants.htm

Basically, diesel is meant to be greaner than petrol and in some cases it is although the burning of diesel produces more NOx than petrol (a contributor to acid rain) and more particualtes, the more common name for this is soot. Soot is the real problem as it bypasses the body's natural defenses.

http://journeytoforever.org/biodiesel.html

The above link is to a website which outlines the advantages of bio-diesel over conventional diesel.

Bio-diesel is upto 75% cleaner than diesel and so it does less damage to us and the ozone, it provides just as much combustion power as diesel and also lubricates more than conventional diesel meaning less wear and tear on the engine which of course reduces the overall running costs etc.

The predictions are that crude oil will only last for the next 60 years, some predict that it will only last for the next 40 years. Given the fact that every fuel we use today is derived from crude oil don't you think that it's time we start looking to cheap alternatives such as bio-diesel. It's ok looking to LPG but lets not forget that gas is derived from crude oil too.

http://science.howstuffworks.com/oil-refining4.htm

As I mentioned before, we have the resources to produce our own bio-diesel but our farmers can't do it at the moment because our government want to charge too much tax which make it cheaper to buy from our european neighbours which of course isn't good for our own ecconomy is it?