Which is 'greener'? Petrol or diesel?

[User482]

In the VW controversy it turns out that in real use, VW do not do that bad.

The worlds worst polluter seems to be Vauxhall where they get to pollute 1000% of the maximum allowed emissions. (Vectra)
From what I gather, at low speed the pollutant is captured but when speed is obtained, rather than correctly burning the pollutant, you get mega high exhaust pollutant output.

http://www.driving.co.uk/news/some-vauxhall-diesel-cars-among-uks-worst-polluters/

NOx went up 50% for Corsa and 100% for Astra compared to older Astras and Corsas! So VW has become a bit of a convenient fall guy for a massive con.

If it's the research I'm thinking of, you can't really compare across brands as the tests were done on different days with different weather conditions. The unique point about VW group is that they deliberately cheated on the official test, whereas the other data is telling us that the official test is a very poor guide to how vehicles perform in real life.

 

[User269]

Neither is better than the other, argument here and elsewhere is inconclusive and debatable. If you're worried about this sort of thing, use the car as little as possible. I chose to reduce co2, so drive a diesel. But does anyone really believe any of this is going to make the slightest difference to anything? Oh yes, they do, here they come now..........