rfx45

I was just curious why Diesel in the U.S. isn't very popular. I got into a discussion with someone who lives in Germany where most cars consumes Diesel. He said that Diesel cars tend to have a lot higher Torque, which makes it a lot faster or at least get's to the desired mph quicker than cars that has a high hp. It also gets more mpg.

He also brought some brochure from Mercedes. I can't quite remember but the C350 in Germany or Europe itself, only has 220 or hp and 300+ torque. It also showed a chart that higher torque goes a lot faster and more benficial on lower speeds, up to about 100-120 mph while hp's kick in at higher rpm's and higher speeds, over 100 mph. With that logic, it seems better to have it in the U.S. where most cars won't even hit 100 mph in their lifetime. That may not be 100% accurate but that is what I remember from what he told me. can anybody elaborate more on that?

The only reason I can see is the price difference between regular gas and diesel. However, now that gas prices has gone up, is the gap between the two close enough that Diesel is becoming a much better alternative. I think that is also one of the main reasons a lot of car manufacturers are bringing diesel cars in the U.S. What do you guys think?

RXSF

i can think of a few reasons:
1) Notall gas stations have diesel pumps, and if they do, only the #2 pump does
2) They "used" to be loud and un-luxury like
3) They "used" to pollute a lot, some still do without the bluetec technology
4) They have torque, but their performnce numbers for horsepower are weak. Plus the torque numbers are much higher now than in the past
5) Diesel is more expensive

xioix

Diesel is dirty

Diesel is getting cleaner, it is still not as clean as regular gas, that is the main reason it is not used widely here

ffpowerLN

iTrader: (1)

Have you seen the diesel price lately...

Also, on a more equal basis, for example like the 335i vs. 335d, the diesel version tends to be more expensive.

f=ma

i hate the noise

gshb

so many reasons why diesel still sucks.

1) diesel is more expensive than gas
2) more expensive to purchase vs gas engines
3) more expensive to maintain vs gas engines
4) pollutes more than gas
5) imagine every car on the road sounding like they were light diesel trucks
6) performance sucks, and if it doesnt then mpg is no better than gas
7) if demand for diesel were to increase, prices would go sky high and truck drivers will strike like they did in spain, shutting down practically every aspect of life

i saw a brand new jetta TDI and it spewed a black cloud when they were going from a light. its disgusting. LA smog is bad enough, we dont need to turn it into calcutta or beijing. maybe blutec is better or something, but theres only so much the car maker can do.

gengar

In the US, diesel costs more than gas. The end.

rfx45

Thanks for all the response. As for the price, I don't think it is a factor anymore. My Lexus takes in premium which cost about $4.80 a gallon while Diesel cost about $5-$5.10. I'm not sure how it is calculated but the difference should be minimal with price and mpg of each.

Performance-wise, with a high torque, it should peform better, especially for daily driving. Right?

gengar

I guess I should have been more clear. You asked in your OP why diesel vehicles aren't popular in America when they are in Europe. The point is that in Europe, diesel has historically been cheaper than gasoline (this has changed recently, with diesel trending towards gasoline price, although the average price of diesel per gal is still around 60-80 cents cheaper even today). In the US, the reverse has been true, with diesel historically being more expensive. Hence why diesel vehicles have gained traction in Europe but not in the US.

RON430

I know you young 'uns hate it when us old farts tell you about the good old days. Well, there were bad old days too. After one of our earlier oil shocks, yep, this isn't the first, General Motors with its infinite grace and wisdom decided they were going to give Americans diesels. Diesel was cheaper than gas back then and the mileage was terrific. So General Motors, proving that they really are dumber than a bag of hammers, took the gasoline small block V8 and set up a new set of heads on it for the diesel application in most all of its big cars. Of course, diesel is compression ignition and compression ratios in excess of 20:1 aren't uncommon. That's why diesels are much, much more robust engines than equivalent gas engines, all the metal needs to be beefed up to handle the loads from the compression. Except for when GM makes diesel junk to scam the car buying public. And what happened to the GM diesels? They developed a quick reputation for exploding destroying virtually everything, block, heads, everything.

The Europeans use diesels that are designed to be diesels and the high tech ones are a very different animal than anything that went before. A lot of people today are not aware of that part of diesel history in the US. A lot of people today are aware of it. So besides all the other mentioned reasons, you can add this one for the older generation. Among those who bought proper diesels, such as benz, they often have very fond memories as a diesel done right will go a very, very long time before needing a rebuild, generally multiples of the lifespan of gasoline engines. Add all the other reasons and the perception is that the American consumer is hesitant to go for diesels. I don't know how much of that is fact and how much is fiction. I see a lot of pickups in diesel as the guys who have to have them have found the diesel to be a great combination of mileage and power.

As the price of diesel rises, well ovr $5/gal here in NoCal, the advantage of diesel is eroded. But one thing is for sure, you won't know how well they sell until they start getting them here. Europeans can get big Audis with 3.0 and 4.2 liter diesels, big bimmers with 3.0l diesels, and big benzes with the 3.2l diesel but the only we can get here is the E320. If they don't bring them here, no one knows how exactly they will sell. But they need to sharpen the pencil and sell them at or less than the gasoline engine prices, also like europe. Bring them here and figure that mileage fanatics will pay more for them and you can add another reason to avoid them.

RX_330

In reality, any car should be able to perform daily driving tasks with ease - some of us just like to do it better and easier.

They may have a helluva lot more torque, but their low redlines limit their 0-60 performance capabilities.

Lexmex

When I lived in Mexico, diesel was much cheaper than regular gasoline. However, it was especially high in sulfur which added to the smog problems when I lived in Mexico City (even the regular gas had this issue). However, diesel was especially popular because diesel could be found at any station.

Infin1ty

There is one reason I would buy a diesel, and that is Bio-Diesel. The only diesel I have ever considered though is the VW Jetta.

Why I don't own a diesel now? Simple put, its about a $1 more a gallon, then regular gas, and I don't think I have the time right now to make bio-diesel.

rfx45

Ahh, I see. Thanks for the explanations. I guess it makes much more sense now.


Could you get furtehr into that? How does 0-60 suffer? I thought the low redlines, high torque allows the car to get to higher speeds quicker than a regular gasoline car?

RON430

I wouldn't get hung up on 0-60 because anyone using that meaningless spec to benchmark a car for purchase now doesn't have much to go by in the US. To the best of my knowledge there have never been any of the modern diesels that are performance oriented made available in the US so no one here has any experience with them. If Audi decides to produce, and bring here, the R8 diesel, you won't find very many people complaining about 0-60. But when all you have to benchmark is some 120hp diesel in a VW, it's not very impressive. I don't remember the reviews exactly but the proposed numbers on the R8 diesel are on the order of 0-60 in the 4's, 200mph top end, and 22 mpg.

The Europeans went to diesel primarily for mileage and as they cleaned up tried to present a case for them ecologically. But as more attention gets turned to different technologies, the stories are often changed. The following is from IEEE:

11 June 2008—Diesel vehicles are increasingly presented as an equal alternative to gas-electric hybrids, thanks to their up to 5.88-liter-per-100-kilometer (40-mile-per-gallon) fuel economy advantage over conventional gasoline-powered cars and trucks and new emissions-control devices that vastly reduce their exhaust. “We think that’s a win-win for both the environment and the climate,” says Allen Schaeffer, executive director of the Diesel Technology Forum, a Frederick, Md.–based trade group that promotes diesels.

But mounting evidence on the pernicious effects of particulate pollution—including a potentially serious contribution to climate change—suggests that diesel’s promise may be oversold. Some regulators are getting the message. California is implementing new fuel standards to reduce the carbon content of transportation fuels, and draft rules for the state’s Low-Carbon Fuel Standard, to be finalized by the end of this year, seem to explicitly avoid giving automakers and consumers an incentive to switch from gasoline cars to diesels as a solution to climate change.

“We expect the Low-Carbon Fuel Standard to introduce more alternative fuels: biofuels, electric vehicles, hydrogen vehicles,” says Renee Littaua, manager of the fuel section at the California Air Resources Board (CARB). “We’re not looking to give credit to dieselization.”

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger issued an executive order last year calling for a 10 percent reduction by 2020 in the greenhouse-gas pollution associated with the production and burning of motor fuels sold in the state. But CARB staffers hope to keep fuel suppliers from selling more diesel instead of gasoline to meet this commitment. Fuel producers and importers would have to reduce the carbon content of both fuels to comply.

Understanding why California is ambivalent on diesel requires a closer look at diesel performance and emissions. First, while diesel vehicles go farther on a liter of fuel than gasoline-powered vehicles, it takes more energy to produce a liter of diesel. “In terms of barrels of oil, there’s a greater amount of petroleum per gallon in diesel than there is in gasoline,” says Don Anair, a senior analyst with the Union of Concerned Scientists, an advocacy organization in Cambridge, Mass.

More oil per liter means that diesel’s fuel efficiency translates to a somewhat smaller climate change benefit. CARB estimates that when corrected for diesel’s higher energy and carbon content per liter, the average diesel vehicle will generate 19.8 percent less carbon dioxide than the same vehicle running on gasoline would.

The bigger knock on diesels is higher tailpipe emissions of nitrogen oxides (NOx), which contribute to photochemical smog and soot. Anair is the first to admit that diesels have come “a very long way” thanks to particulate traps and other equipment, which capture about 95 percent of the engine’s soot. It is thanks to these advances that over half a dozen major European, U.S., and Japanese automakers will be offering diesel cars across the United States starting with the 2009 model year. Nevertheless, says Anair, these “clean diesels” will still have higher tailpipe emissions than comparable gasoline-powered cars.

Under federal tailpipe standards for pollutants such as soot and NOx, automakers can qualify a given vehicle for a range of different performance levels, called bins, that run from Bin 1 (equivalent to a battery-powered vehicle with no tailpipe) to Bin 10 (the highest pollution level allowable, which many SUVs will be shooting for). “The new diesels are generally going to meet the Bin 5 standard, whereas there are gasoline vehicles that have been meeting the lower bins for a while now,” says Anair. Hybrids are among the best, with Toyota’s Prius and Camry Hybrid hitting Bin 3 and the Honda Civic Hybrid qualifying for Bin 2.

That extra pollution from diesel is important to CARB. At its May board hearing, agency staff presented an updated estimate of the public health impacts of black carbon (of which diesel soot is the state’s top source). The new analysis found black carbon to be 70 percent more toxic than previously believed and suggests increasing the estimated annual mortality caused by fine-particle pollution in California from 8900 to as much as 24 000.

Black carbon is also under scrutiny as a contributor to climate change. In contrast to sulfate particles from power plants, which cool the earth locally by reflecting away sunlight, black carbon particles absorb sunlight and release heat. Estimates of black carbon’s warming effect have varied widely, prompting the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to downplay it. As a result, regulators—including CARB—have left it out of their analyses of diesel emissions.

But recent research could change regulators’ minds. A report in Nature Geoscience this March by atmospheric scientist V. Ram Ramanathan, at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, in San Diego, and University of Iowa chemical engineering professor Greg Carmichael, measured black carbon’s warming effect at three to four times as much as the range of estimates recognized by the IPCC. They conclude that emissions of diesel soot and other forms of black carbon may have a warming impact on Earth’s atmosphere second only to carbon dioxide. The result affirms above-average estimates from researchers at Stanford, Caltech, and NASA that clashed with the IPCC view.

Mark Jacobson, the Stanford professor of civil and environmental engineering who first identified black carbon’s warming potential in 2000, says that factoring this potential in could eliminate most of diesel’s apparent carbon advantage. “It’s just total nonsense to think that diesel cars actually reduce carbon emissions,” says Jacobson.

In a hearing before the U.S. Congress’s House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform this past fall, Jacobson testified that a diesel emitting 10 milligrams of black carbon per mile (the limit for Bins 2 through 6 under the federal emission standard; 6.25 mg/km) will cause more warming than a typical gasoline-powered car even if it is 30 percent more fuel efficient. Jacobson’s conclusion: “The conversion of gasoline to diesel vehicles is a poor strategy for addressing global warming.”