Rest In Peace, old friend, your work is finished.......
If you want on or off the DIESEL "KnOcK" LIST just FReepmail me........
This is a fairly HIGH VOLUME ping list on some days......
Posted on 01/03/2007 9:18:11 AM PST by Red Badger
Rest In Peace, old friend, your work is finished.......
If you want on or off the DIESEL "KnOcK" LIST just FReepmail me........
This is a fairly HIGH VOLUME ping list on some days......
KnOcK!.......
This is very different than what hybrid owners report. Prius owners gripe about lower MPG than EPA estimate
My own take is the diesel owners are right on!
I gave serious thought to buying a VW diesel a while ago. The price of diesel fuel stopped me.
Do the math. Diesel costs about 15%-20% more than gasoline in my neighborhood, but diesels get 50% to 75% better mileage than comparable gasoline autos.
The "street" price of diesel fuel should not be a factor in your buying decision. For the sake of argument, let's say the VW got 50 mpg on a gallon of Diesel and the same car with a gasoline engine got 40 mpg. Both have 10 gallon fuel tanks. Say the price of a gallon of Diesel is $3.00 and gasoline is $2.50. A fill-up of Diesel costs $30.00 and gasoline costs $25.00. You can go 500 miles on the diesel and 400 miles on the gasoline. Costs per mile in the gasoline is $0.16 and cost per mile in the Diesel is $0.166. So for that extra $0.006 you can go 100 more miles, in the diesel at a $0.50 per gallon price differential. But I know th real world price differential is much less than $0.50 per gallon, so the costs per mile would be lower for the Diesel engine...............
Yeah, that's what I determined. Plus the VW owners were not convincing me that 50 mpg was normal. Further, the VW was about $6,000 more than my Civic. I've been happy to get near 40 mpg at 65-75 mph typical driving week.
There is no downward pressure on gasoline prices, d' masses are addicted to gasoline. Let the price of diesel rise too far or too fast and the OTR owner/drivers will park their rigs to save their pocketbooks.
I'm with the owner/drivers. I tank about every six weeks while at home on the Island and pay a stiff premium to get the fuel here. On the road, I do a full day on a tank.
Either we are equal or we are not. Good people ought to be armed where they will, with wits and guns. NRA KMA
Don't let the price of diesel fuel scare you away. My wife and I just completed a 1,600 mile trip to the Big bend region of West Texas in her 2006 VW Jetta TDI and averaged 39 miles to the gallon. Not bad when you figure most of the trip was in hte mountains and the highway driving was at 80 mph (the legal speed in West Texas). Do the math we were paying on average 20 cents more per gallon for our diesel than we would have for unleaded.
What is the additional cost of the diesel option? On American trucks it's around $6,000. Takes a long, long time to earn that cost premium back.
That's true, for now. But in the next 3 years Honda, Toyota, Nissan, Mercedes, BMW and others are coming out with new diesel engined passenger vehicles for the US market that will make the choice a whole lot cheaper and easier. The Big 3 will have to compete on an economy of scale and quickly. Right now they are relying on other companies to supply the diesel engines at apremium price. Detroit Diesel, Cummins, Allison, Caterpillar, et al will get into the act and prices will have to come down..........
"I gave serious thought to buying a VW diesel a while ago. The price of diesel fuel stopped me."
I have a 2000 VW Jetta TDI I get 45MPG plu on highway trips and on the order of 40MPG just putting around town.
I can make something between 600 and 700 miles per tank (14.5 gal)
you may want to re-reconsider.
And this will change. Diesel is only so expensive because it's not as common. Diesel should actually be cheaper than gasoline, since it's easier to refine and you get more of it than gasoline from a barrel of oil. The only problem is that in the cold months the diesel supply competes with the demand for heating oil, which is almost the same thing.
Of course the government has a problem with this similarity because people like to use the low-taxed heating oil in place of high-taxed diesel in their cars (which is why heating oil is dyed red). Just don't get caught pumping from your heating oil tank into your car.
I belive the base prices of, say, a Jetta diesel vs a Civic are probably about 4k different.
I like Civics but the lack of torque prohibits me from buying them.
I wonder what those using high percentage biodiesel (B-20 or above) are getting, real world. The increased lubricity ought to have some effect on fuel efficiency.
Honda's diesel is designed to produce more torque at high revs, where as the VW version is a more traditional diesel with bags of torque at low revs.
Apparently Honda's chief engine designer had a real hatred of diesels lack of revs and the vibrations at low revs (they even built an advertising campaign around it!), so he set about building one that performed more like a gasoline engine.
You get less torque at low revs but you still get the economy of diesel. Pretty neat if you are not planning to tow anything!
Uhm now tell them how much more it costs to change the oil and service them. To me the upside is they last so much longer.
I can't wait for a bio diesel hybrid.
I'd like to see small to mid-size diesel pickups. The only one's now are the monsters (like my neighbors F350, you get neck strain talking to him when he's sitting in it).
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/27514/story.htm
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