Posted on 12/30/2007 8:51:21 AM PST by saganite
Merging with northbound traffic on Interstate 75 just outside Auburn Hills, Mich., I punch the accelerator, quickly swing left into the passing lane and pull forcefully ahead of the cars around me. In any other ride, on any other gray morning, it’d be just another Interstate moment. But this rush hour, I’m behind the wheel of a preproduction 2009 Volkswagen Jetta, which is powered by a 2.0-liter turbo-charged, direct-injected diesel engine that, even as I leave the speed limit in tatters, is averaging nearly 50 mpg. Equally important, what’s coming out of the tailpipe is no dirtier than the emissions from the 35-mpg econoboxes I can now see in my rearview mirror. Speed, fuel efficiency and minimal emissions? These aren’t characteristics usually associated with diesel-powered vehicles. But they will be.
Most Americans have a bad impression of diesel cars. We think of them as loud, hard to start and foul-smelling. We sneer at them for lacking the get-up-and-go of their gasoline-powered cousins. And we dislike them for their perceived environmental sins, chiefly the polluting brew of sulfur and nitrogen compounds that they emit into the atmosphere. All those complaints were fair a generation ago, when the twin energy crises of the 1970s propelled diesels into national popularity and kept them there for a decade. Back then, many drivers ignored diesel’s faults, or were unaware of them, because diesel cars ran 30 percent farther on a gallon of fuel than similar gasoline-powered cars. It felt savvy to buy a diesel, even daring. Then fuel prices dropped in the mid-1980s, and drivers abandoned their clattering, odoriferous fuel sippers. They went back to gasoline.
Today, diesel powertrains are on the map again, for both car manufacturers and efficiency-minded drivers. The technology could be here to stay, even if fuel prices (improbably) decline. .
(Excerpt) Read more at popularmechanics.com ...
Your description of the diesel design properties reminds of a supposedly true story my neighbor told me about this blonde bartender who innocently asked how a four-stroke engine worked, saying that nobody had been able to explain it to her.
Four guys tried with the usual statements of intake, compression, ignition and exhaust all using colorful and descriptive terms like imagine a vacuum cleaner, think about about fluffling a pillow, light the fireplace, watch a window fan, etc.
An old dude, sittting at the end of the bar, known to be impatient, cranky and spare with words got up off his stool and walking towards the group of young suitors just stepped up between them and said:
” Look Missy, it’s like this - SUCK, SQUEEZE, BANG, BLOW!”
The blonde beamed and said, “Well, why didn’t y’all say so in the first place,” and went back to wiping glasses.
Bat I can bet may 401K that not even a world running on hydrogen only can satisfy the environmentalist movement ...take my guess increasing water vapors in the atmosphere will cause heavy rains to some and lack off to others the pour in Africa with even less drinkable water... ..they need a reason to exist and no amount of progress is satisfactory, ie clean air reference standards change 18 times in the last 20 years, if were not a large section of EPA had no reason to exist today.
Mind-reading not allowed around here - I should have read farther; then I could have made reference to your obviously previous post.
Are you still hanging around bars or is this blonde chick pulling my leg?
That interests me also. I think the Element uses the Accord 4-cyl engine, and Honda is planning an Accord diesel, I hear. They could put that diesel in the Element. The Element is heavy and un-aerodynamic, so its present gas mileage is lousy.
“The enviros will never be happy as long as there are people on earth who are not living in absolute poverty. On the extreme are those enviros who want the human race to be exterminated because they think humans have ruined the “purity” of nature (I think these fanatics are one step lower than the Nazis, if that is possible). The more “moderate” environmentalists long for a communist-style planned economy where few consumer goods are produced and everyone stands for half the day every day in bread lines for a slice of stale bread.”
Here’s a link to some of that upside down mentality:
http://www.pushback.com/environment/EcoFreakQuotes.html
I would expect the ethanol lobby (proponents of an enterprise almost as fraudulent as Global Warming itself) to sabotage large-scale diesel adoption.
“All engines run on some variant of the “suck-squeeze-bang-push” cycle.”
So does my wife.
here: http://consumerguideauto.howstuffworks.com/2007-honda-element.htm
But damn that thing is plumb ugly.
No the still suck, but it is on the intake side of the turbo.
I remember the tales from back in the 70s fuel crisis years about China sneaking barges, tankers of gasoline into the US because they had such a surplus of raw gasoline, no additives, etc caused by their demand for diesel and no use for gasoline itself.
To make diesel fuel you have to refine gasoline out first whether you want it or not.
Back in the beginning, gasoline was the first dry-cleaning fluid since they were trying to find uses for it here.
I REALLY would like a new Jetta Diesel-— but the problem with buying a diesel now - the new fuel standards and engines require the newer ultra-low sulfur fuel - which I have yet to see a station carry yet. So buy a diesel today - and cannot fuel it up tomorrow... not a good proposition.
That being said - I saw a 2007 Jeep Liberty 4X4 Diesel the other day that I was seriously tempted to buy.
Get the fuel supply issue taken care of (without further skinning the consumer with crazy prices) and Diesel looks promising.
Where do you live that you don’t see ULSD yet? Even here in the middle of Nevada, you’re very hard pressed to find a source of anything other than ULSD at the pump now.
ULSD was mandated to be out to the pump by October 2006.
Dunno where you are, but here in the intermountain west, when you go to good diesel stations, you see a chart on the pump indicating the cloud point of the diesel by date. They show that From April to Sep 01, they’re running #2 with a cloud point of -5 or -10F, then from Sep 01 to Nov 30, they’re running a mix with a cloud point of -20F, and from Nov 30 to April 30, the cloud point is -30F. This is very commonly seen at Sinclair stations.
It isn’t the ethanol proponents that will sabotage diesel adoption. It is the California Air Resources Board, and the smirking chimps elected in four northeastern states who think they’re proving something by copying the CARB emissions standards.
The CARB diesel emission standards are in excess of even the EU’s emissions standards, especially on NOx. The Californians, you see, have this obsession with smog, and they blame diesel engines for their smog. What they can’t seem to understand is that there was smog when there were only a dozen white men in southern California (missionaries at that) and the only source of smog was the fires of Indians in the area. There was smog even then. The simple fact is that if they want to be rid of the smog, they’d better start knocking down the mountains east of the coast to let the inversion layer break down.
Must be a local thing to Arkansas then...
Regular Unleaded priced today: $2.97
Diesel at same station: $3.54
That is a pretty significant difference in my book. But of greater concern. Have you seen a station that offers the new “ultra-low sulfur” diesel? I have looked hard and have yet to find one anywhere I have been.
.....But that’s only because they’re loud, hard to start, and foul-smelling......
Actually, you’re wrong. I have a 5 cylinder turbocharged diesel van that sold by Dodge but made by Mercedes that is quiet, easy to start, and has no odor. As a very large vehicle it gets 23 mpg at cruise with lots of power. While still accelerating, It stalls out at 83 mph as directed by the computer.
It is 10 year old technology in a ‘06 model.
It's also butt-ugly. Second only to the Scion
“So why not a diesel hybrid?”
Every modern locomotive is such an animal.
We rented a diesel Golf in England. Plenty of power and at least 40 mpg. If engines are so efficient why not hook one up as a hybrid?
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