dsl vs. hbd continued...

As mentioned in the other thread, right now there's a disparity between the quality of gasoline available and the quality of diesel available. If the diesel was ultra low sulpher and/or B100 biodiesel, it would be compatible with the latest emissions cleaning technology for diesels. Right now catalytic converters, soot traps, and even EGR's don't work so great with high sulpher fuel.

Take away the sulpher and you can implement all of those methods that have been available to gasoline engines for 20-30 years already. Only then would we be able to compare the two forms of combustion in an "apples versus apples" scenario. In such a scenario, for regular vehicles, diesel wins because of it's higher thermal efficiency. Diesel fuel contains more BTU's per gallon and is more thermally efficient to boot.

Still, there is NO reason you can't use hybrid tech with a diesel engine. VW has already said they're working to produce a diesel hybrid. That would mean that things like autostop, electric assist from low speed, and even full-electric mode at low speed should still be perfectly workable for a diesel hybrid.

I would not buy a diesel prior to the September 2006 deadline by which all diesel sold in the USA is required to be ultra low sulpher. However, having said that, keep in mind that means in 18 months ULSD will be here to stay. That's a very, very short time from now in terms of the lifecycle of vehicle technology. 18 months from now every company that makes diesel engines will be able to offer them in the USA just like they do in Europe and Japan and have them pass US emissions and be clean like their gas counterparts.

Definitely the diesel side.

I get my water from a well.

I would not want all those dumped batteries leaching heavy metals into my groundwater. Sure some will be recycled, but some won't give a damned and will let the cars rot away in a field. The lead-acid batteries in normal, non-hybrid cars are already a major disposal headache.

Plus what do you propose to use to deliver your goods on the non-diesel side? Gasoline trucks would ruin your economy; hybrid trucks probably aren't practical.

On our side we'd rely on diesel trucks for delivery, and we would continue to rely on diesel-hybrids, in the form of diesel-electric locomotives, for heavy goods haulage.

I spent three weeks in a part of Europe where about 40-50% of the new cars on the road are diesels, last summer. Did a fair amount of cycling too. I did not have any more problems with air quality there than over here.

Mike G.

For straight biodiesel, yeah, cold weather is a real issue. It begins to gel arounds 30 degrees F, but before you panic, over the counter additives can get that down to 5-10F or so. VW I believe actually uses a heated fuel filter even which could extend useful temp ranges down to maybe 0F. There's other means of providing gel resistance too for areas that really need it during the cold months. I've read of no storage life problems however. Even good old gasoline is only rated for 3-6 months without use of a fuel stabilizer.

Soy is not the most cost effective means of producing biodiesel on an extremely large scale. The main reason it's the leading biofuel right now is because of farm subsidies that help make certain crops cost effective up to a certain point. From what I've read, there's an oversupply of soy in the USA right now, so soy farmers are all too happy to find any buyers they can, including non-food uses such as refining into biofuels.

For large scale production such as, say, replacing all ground based transportation fuels for the entire USA, algae production is more cost effective and requires far less land use. See the following University of New Hampshire analysis from August 2004 on the topic:

http://www.unh.edu/p2/biodiesel/article_alge.html

The bottom line is that it's possible, and it would require only about 9.5 million acres of land compared to the 450 million acres already in use for farming in the US, and another 500 million acres used for grazing. We've got about a billion acres of great land in the USA and it would take only about a percent of it to replace all transportation fuels with biodiesel according to that report.

A diesel electric train is not a hybrid in the same sense a car is. The diesel-electric train just uses the electric motor as a transmission, and when it brakes, the brake pressure is converted to electricity and then exhausted as heat through the top of the train (though the noise is very similar to regenerative braking on a hybrid). A true hybrid train would get little efficiency gain from regenerative braking, because it spends so little time actually braking relative to the distance it travels, and most of the time it is operating under full engine load (unlike a car). Only purely electric trains use regenerative braking, and even then the effect is mostly limited to other train using the same catenary system.

I dont want to live on the "Hybrid Coast"
The HOV lanes would be clogged with useless
hybrids which will end up in wrecking yards
after only 100000 miles versus 400000miles
for frugal, inexpensive, low maintenance modern
diesel engines.

Hi Steve...if we are going to discussing if diesel engines
are more durable than gasoline engines then we might
as well discuss if 2+2=4 or 5.
A few weeks ago I posted a link from the goverment
stating among other things that diesels last much longer.
Here is another link
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,15282222

Comparing 2006 Jettas.
Turbo gasoline, direct injection MSRP $23590

Turbo diesel, direct injection MSRP $21605

Diesel is almost $ 2000 cheaper!!!!!!!!!!!!

That buys a lot of diesel...
Many american manufactureres charge a very
high premium for the diesel option, but MB and VW
do not.

correction above should be "about Paris Hilton's
escapades"

Steve, I think what you did is a misleading exercise. Comparing a based Jetta to fully loaded TDI will of course yield a large difference.

But comparing apples and apples, you will find that a base Jetta, in Canada (2.5 L gas engine) costs $24975 CDN, whereas the TDI starts at $26750 and is less than the optional 2.0T turbocharged gas engine.

That's a difference of less than $2000. The gas and TDI Jettas are available with the same option packages so it is possible to build a top-of-the line gas vs. diesel; and the less than $2000 difference remains. When we got our Passat the difference was even less, approximately $500 compared to an automatic gas Passat with the same option level.

So diesel does not cost a "hefty $6300" premium. In fact the premium for a diesel vs gas Jetta is less than the premium for a hybrid vs top-of-the line non-hybrid Civic.

The gas Jetta is rated at 7.2 L/100 km on the highway wheras the diesel is rated at 5.1; I drive approximately 50,000 highway km per year. Right now diesel is approx. the same price as regular unleaded where I am (about $1.05/liter). With the gas engine I would burn approx. 3600 liters per year, or roughly $3780. The diesel would use 2550 liters. The fuel savings works out to $1100 per year so in less than two years I recover the TDI's investment. That's assuming I meet government fuel economy ratings, something I've never done with a gas engine but which I have never failed to do with a diesel.

If you factor in the fact that the TDI has much higher resale value than a gas Jetta, then you can see that for a high miler like myself a TDI makes perfect sense. Someone driving 25,000 km/year, would take about 4 years instead of two to recover the investment on fuel alone, again not factoring in resale value (at last check a TDI engine pulls in a whopping $4000 extra at resale time in the Jetta, and Jetta wagons like ours in particular have outstanding resale value).

Please, if we're going to compare diesels and hybrids, let's compare apples and apples. Comparing a base gas car with a top-of-the-line diesel and saying the premium for a TDI is $6300 is way misleading when the same engine is available in either top, mid-range or bottom end trims for the same price differential of about $1800 CDN.

OK, configure a Jetta TDI over at www.vw.ca

I can assure you that there is NO TDI in North America that sells for $6300 over its gas equivalent, except maybe the V10 Touareg but that's in another league.

You probably goofed in selecting option packages.

BTW there's no Value Edition in Canada but the base TDI here is similar in equipment to the Value Edition in the US and is called "GLS". You can configure it with one of three options packages:

Pkg 1 adds sunroof and alloy wheels
Pkg 2 adds leather to pkg 1
Pkg 3 adds homelink, trip computer, rear sunshade and some other stuff, to package 2.

There are a few stand-alone options such as ESP (stability program) and side-curtain airbags.

The most expensive package, Package 3, adds about $5000 to the price of the car (in CDN $). But you can add that package to either the TDI or the base gas engine (2.5L).

Sorry typo, $3705 difference.

Steve u are something else........

:-)

Steve...re your item dated 25mar
#1, #2 and #3...do you have any links to back
up those statements?