Sorry, but diesel is far more practical that gas/electric hybrids....
I am amazed that people are latching onto this dead end.
They've been making 50+ MPG diesel cars since the early/mid 90s..
Gas/electric is overpriced, overcomplicated, and a waste of resources for a passenger vehicle.
Diesel/Electric hybrids make sense for things like LOCOMOTIVES, BUSSES, SEMIS and other large heavy equipment.. but are wasteful in the passenger market.
Everytime I hear the word "diesel" I envision one of those volvos spewing black smoke, the rear window covered with soot.
They've been making 50+ MPG diesel cars since the early/mid 90s.. >>>>>>>>
More like the seventies, the VW Rabbit diesel was reported to do about fifty one miles to the gallon in highway driving.
Volkswagen Diesel Rabbit, in the early '80's.
A friend had one. The Owner's Manual stated that if the car did not get 50MPG, get it into the shop and see what's gone wrong!
It was an underbored 1100CC gas engine block, modified. Peculiar thing. In order to fine tune the valve and injector timing, there was no keyway on the timing chain gears. The was a conical bore to the engine sprocket that mated to a similar taper on the crank. When the timing was set correctly, one torqued the nut down, locking the taper. A "tooth" width on that diameter was too coarse to furnish accuracy.
And it doesn't do anything to reduce the so-called greenhouse gases from the cars that use it. It simply moves the source of the gas from the car back to the electric generation plant which supplies the juice to charge the batteries.
Yes, diesels are nice, the reason they are a dead-end as well is that they are also filthy and inefficient at low RPM (hence the need for a turbocharger in most passenger vehicle applications).
You have the sensible application of diesel engines exactly backward. Diesels are used in commercial application because they produce huge mountains of torque for heavy work.