Template talk:Fuel types

AdBlue nozzles

I think here is the right place to discuss fuel=adblue, as I would like to seperate the different ways nozzles. Cars and Trucks use different nozzles, but at the moment there is no way to map them different.

I haven't actually seen vendors themselves differentiating adblue nozzle types in their data (ie it's just "This place has an AdBlue pump"). Is it not a safe assumption that a standalone AdBlue pump would work for both HGVs and cars? Also, given you're proposing new tags, it might be worth doing so on some other medium, ie the Tagging mailing list or a social media channel? Doubt this discussion page will get you much input Tohaklim (talk)

Winter diesel

This template currently defines fuel:diesel:class2=* and fuel:diesel:class0=* for winter diesel based on an EU standard:

Diesel for colder weather climates (with a threshold filtration temperature of −32 °C), on the EU EN590 scale. Can be branded as "winter diesel", "Arctic diesel", "diesel −32 °C", etc., depending on the location. Class 2 appears to be the most widely sold variety in Scandinavia and the EEU, however you can replace the "2" in fuel:diesel:class2=yes with 0 (to describe diesel with a threshold filtration temperature down to −20 °C); 1 (−26 °C); 3 (−38 °C) and 4 (−44 °C).

This definition was added seemingly without discussion in 2019. But so far, fuel:diesel:class2=* is used in just a few countries, and fuel:diesel:class0=* has never been used at all. Tyr asd has questioned whether existing usage even aligns with the definition given. [1] It seems strange that the global concept of winter diesel would be tied to EU standards and nomenclature. The winter diesel standards outside of Europe are measured completely differently, based on a relative temperature that differs by month and region. Meanwhile, "class 2" means different things from country to country, such as ordinary diesel in the U.S. Moreover, folks in OSMUS Slack have pointed out that gas stations don't offer a choice between winter and summer blends; rather, these standards mean they're required to reformulate the blends based on the time of year. [2]

For all these reasons, I think we should remove any mention of these subkeys from the table before they cause further confusion.

 – Minh Nguyễn ^💬 21:13, 20 November 2022 (UTC)

You could discard all fuel:octane_xx tags with the same argument: The number varies from country to country. If you have a better tagging scheme, feel free to propose it. Extend it with whatever naming is used in your part of the world, but I don't see why this should be just discarded. Mueschel (talk) 00:11, 21 November 2022 (UTC)

@Mueschel: There's a key difference: with octane numbers, we eventually agreed to map the signposted numbers according to local conventions instead of translating them to a European standard (which would've required corporate espionage in most cases). But it's quite different to insist that EN590 class 2 is the very essence of a winter diesel standard. As written, the table suggests that mappers in the Australia, Canada, and the U.S. need to do their own measurements just to know if the "winter diesel" at the local gas station qualifies as class 2 in the EU, and there would need to be conditional tagging because the freezing point would vary month to month.

As to your suggestion, the U.S. calls winter diesel "diesel #1" and summer diesel "diesel #2". So we would extend fuel:diesel:class2=* by giving that key the exact opposite meaning. Fortunately, gas stations here don't ever let you choose which diesel comes out of the pump. What I'd like to know is if gas stations elsewhere do offer such an option.

 – Minh Nguyễn ^💬 01:05, 21 November 2022 (UTC)

I don't get the point. diesel:classN is using European classification. The Wiki entry clearly states "Diesel for colder weather climates, on the EU EN590 scale.". Any place that doesn't use this classification can use their own naming standard. --Mueschel (talk) 09:17, 21 November 2022 (UTC)

@Mueschel: So you're on board with changing the definition to say that fuel:diesel:class2=* is for winter diesel in the EU but for summer diesel in the U.S.? I see the analogy you're trying to draw with the previous octane number situation, but to me this is a more extreme discrepancy, one that would be easily rectified using a more descriptive subkey. – Minh Nguyễn ^💬 20:40, 21 November 2022 (UTC)

I don't think we should use the same tag for two different meanings. This is a good example why we should use country or region prefixes in tags, or use generic names. Either fuel:winter_diesel:class2=* as Tohaklim proposes, or fuel:diesel:EU:class2=*. I would not use any of these tags, if there is no choice and it simply varies throughout the year. No matter which way we choose, it can't get worse than the ~600 different fuel tags that already exist... --Mueschel (talk) 13:21, 24 November 2022 (UTC)

@Mueschel: I agree. Country or region namespacing could help us clean up this table considerably. However, I wonder how much appetite there is for namespacing some of the other overly specific subkeys that are already more heavily used, like fuel:adblue=*. As for winter diesel in the U.S., it's still unclear to me that there's never a choice. I've been to truck stops that offer lots of choices of various blends of fuel, resembling a salad bar more than a gas pump, so I was surprised to hear that diesels #1 and #2 aren't commonly offered as choices simultaneously. – Minh Nguyễn ^💬 18:49, 24 November 2022 (UTC)

I am obviously biased, having added this to the wiki in the first place, but it was already in some use then, and adding it was done precisely to avoid "confusion" you mention - it explicitly calls out the standard used to determine what is "winter diesel" and where that standard applies. Appreciate it's not the most eloquent name, but having something like fuel:winter_diesel=* would've been even worse, as I can't see how that value could possibly be harmonised with standards across the world. Maybe fuel:winter_diesel:class2=* might work better Tohaklim (talk) 00:31, 21 November 2022 (UTC)

@Tohaklim: Are there places where gas stations offer a choice of winter and summer diesel blends simultaneously? Do individual gas stations decide whether to offer winter diesel voluntarily? I don't think the mere fact that the formula can change from season to season should entail adding an additional tag. After all, some places (including some parts of the U.S.) are required to switch between winter and summer blends of unleaded fuel too, regardless of octane number, in order to improve air quality. Tyr asd seems to be suggesting that the preexisting usage was erroneous. If that's the case, it would be better to remove the documentation or explicitly mark it as deprecated. – Minh Nguyễn ^💬 00:55, 21 November 2022 (UTC)

@Minh Nguyen: Indeed there are (at least in Europe), garages can offer multiple blends. It wouldn't be "summmer and winter" as such, but rather "cold weather" and super-cold weather (eg class 2), although this varies regionally. So the main blend changes with the weather (generally to class 0), as it does in the US, but fuel providers also offer a more premium, lower temperature option, which may also include additional branding etc. Tohaklim (talk) 10:54, 21 November 2022 (UTC)

The point I observed in [3] is that the majority (approx. 150 out of 200) of the features using the fuel:diesel:class2=* tag are coming from a single import, where I'm quite certain that none of those fuel stations actually sell "class 2" diesel. I think this error in the import can be partially attributed to the fact that the :class2 suffix is simply labeled "Cold weather diesel" in the table (suggesting that it could be used for all winterized diesel variants), and the fact that the description in the table doesn't mention that this tag should only be used for situations where special super-cold-weather diesel is sold in addition to "regular" winter or summer diesel.

@Tohaklim: Could it be that you're misremembering that this tag “was already in some use” at the time when you added this entry to the wiki table? I just checked the stats for the date when you added this to the wiki, and I can only find the 27 fuel stations which you had added between October 5 and October 7. Before October 5, the tag had not yet been seen in the OSM database. It might also be worth to add, that in addition to the ~30 fuel stations you added in 2019, and the ~150 "invalid" occurrences in Italy which had been been imported by mistake, there were only about 15 further uses of this tag in OSM since then. Only two of which are located in Nordic Countries where such fuel should be at least somewhat widely sold.

Unfortunately, the low data quality of the current usage of the tag renders it quite unusable from a data consumer perspective, I think. Would it not be better to think about how this can be mapped in a better way, using a new set of tags?

--Tyr (talk) 19:16, 21 November 2022 (UTC)

Do you think there's a real issue with quality right now? Almost all nodes are in the EU, so the meaning should be clear and can be retagged easily.--Mueschel (talk) 13:21, 24 November 2022 (UTC)

@Tyr: I could be misremembering. As above, I'm not wedded to this subkey, but is the issue here the tag itself (and the assumption that people may take it literally as "class 2" in whatever local context, instead of reading the wiki definition), the definition on the wiki (as being too broad, not explicitly localised, or not distinguishing between sales models), or something else?

On the Italian import, have you reached out to the importing user to confirm how they matched this tag? Tohaklim (talk) 21:39, 21 November 2022 (UTC)