OT: The Diesel might not be dead after all...

[joosttx]

Please diesel jeans are like so 10 years ago

[rwsaunders]

Originally Posted by ultraman6970

What is displaced pollution????

In most cases the fossil fuels that are consumed in order to generate the electricity to charge the batteries of the electric vehicle.

[dddd]

Originally Posted by AngryScientist

i just looked for kicks.

sorry Ralph - i know you're a ford fan, but that focus is a pretty poor showing.

EPA estimated up to 40 mpg, 3cyl engine, 123hp (@6k rpm), and basically $20k. that's a pretty weak combination IMO.

the car is 3k#. my goodness that would be a handful with 4 adults going uphill on the freeway with the AC on...

That Focus does really well as he said compared to the small cars of 30 or 40 years ago, and it's a much bigger car than those old ones.

The EPA ratings are a good bit more conservative these days as well!

My '88 Izuzu P/U with a 94HP 2.3 liter gas engine and 5s box gets a true 28mpg on the freeway at 65mph. It was EPA rated at 24mpg hwy in 1988, which would be about 21mpg by today's ratings methods (which take more mixed driving distances and other variables into consideration). People often don't believe me when I tell them I've driven 550 miles on just one 19.8 gallon tank of gas. The truck weighs 2700# and never had air conditioning or power steering btw. It has never broken down in 170k miles of driving and still uses all four of it's original pairs of brake pads (and it's original clutch).

So I think that the "40mpg" Focus could be freeway driven (by a cyclist:-)) to 50mpg in good conditions.

[cetuximab]

Originally Posted by Gsinill

Just wait till the gas price creeps up to five bucks again.

With new drilling tech i.e. fracking, I do not think oil and gas prices will go as high as 2008. The market now has the ability to increase supply when prices cross their price threshold.

[cmg]

Originally Posted by rwsaunders

In most cases the fossil fuels that are consumed in order to generate the electricity to charge the batteries of the electric vehicle.

and what, fossil fuels are also consumed to get oil out of the ground and to convert it to gasoline.

the notion that a 3 cyclinder turbo charged engine will out last it payments is hoot. you'll be enjoying the comfy seats while the car is in the garage with a broken motor. no manufacturer is going to put a turbo on anything they can't sell for more than $20k.

[Davist]

Generation is the issue with electric vehicles. We are not producing enough electricity to power the projected fleet. Charging a vehicle in your driveway on a sunny day based on rooftop solar is a bit unrealistic for most of the US due to weather/need to be in an office, etc. Energy storage is in its infancy, and will need to be a lot more prevalent and useful. My company makes EV chargers (including the bus stop one) which uses a huge amount of power to charge things quickly, which results on stress on generation. Li Ion batteries, when used in EVs are basically done when the reach 80% of useful life. HUGE issue with toxic waste at that point, if we end up with a 10-20% EV fleet, we'll have bigger toxic waste issues (given current storage tech) than we ever would have had with an all nuclear grid...

[AngryScientist]

interestingly just read that ford is scaling back it's small car lineup big time to focus on SUVs and trucks...

If there was any doubt that the auto industry is rapidly changing, Ford just delivered proof. The industry pioneer is scaling back its North American small car lineup in North America to just two vehicles, the Mustang and the unrevealed Focus Active crossover, in the "next few years." The rest of its range will be limited to SUVs, trucks and commercial vehicles. Ford isn't shy about its reasons: "declining consumer demand and product profitability" make it impractical to develop other sedans. You'd better act quickly if you've been looking at a brand new Fusion or Taurus.

[oldpotatoe]

Originally Posted by matttuck

i read an article on bloomberg the other day that said china is adding electric buses at a staggering rate, such that it is actually curtailing oil demand. They said it is the equivalent of london's entire fleet of buses, about every month.


https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...e-oil-industry


i'd much rather see these big vehicles go electric, they are at extremely high utilization rates compared to normal passenger cars, and really take advantage of the torque electric motors provide.

Until the battery technology gets better for passenger cars, and charging becomes faster, i don't see it as a viable alternative.

but...

most of mainland china's electricity is produced from fossil fuels, predominantly from coal – 73% in 2015

[BikeNY]

Originally Posted by Ralph

I'm just making the point that Ford, GM, BMW, MB, Hyundai, and others have taken the best part of diesels and merged that with modern gasoline engines to produce smaller fuel efficient engines that make good power with pretty good clean fuel economy. And when you clean the diesel engines up, plus their added cost, not much advantage to a diesel anymore in a passenger car.

Plus the Turbo charged gas engines mostly have steel billet crankshafts and forged pistons and rods....the parts that gave Passenger car diesels their reputation for long life. Well passenger car gas engines have those parts now.

Heavy duty diesel engines in trucks, fork lifts, locomotives, and stationary applications (like pumps) a whole nother category. Their engines are built entirely different from a passenger car diesel. They can do an amazing amount of work from their BTU's of fuel.

Seems like the diesel and gas engines are slowly converging...

You are correct that all these new technologies have considerably improved the fuel economy of current gas engines, but they are now much more complex and expensive, approaching that of modern passenger diesel engines. They are also emitting lots more particulates then before.

If your brother can get 50mpg on the highway in that Focus, he would easily get 60+mpg in VW Golf TDI.

[cinema]

i read the new equinox diesel is able to pull 40mpg freeway. i think the complexities of these new diesels seems to make them less friendly though, and they're quite different from the old NA or indirect engines that you could fix with a hammer and a wrench and could go 500k before rebuilds

[cmg]

remember when Gm built diesels in the 90's. have a hard time envisioning improvement. the new diesels are designed for the buyer to have a constant car payment and little else. once when he buys it and again when it blows before his last payment and when trades it for the next one and rolls his payments for another 60 months........

[C40_guy]

Originally Posted by AngryScientist

interestingly just read that ford is scaling back it's small car lineup big time to focus on SUVs and trucks...

Leaving them nothing to sell next time gas prices spike. D'oh.

[dancinkozmo]

....i dunno, the last "fast & furious" was pretty awful....i'd say vin diesel is done .

[biker72]

Current AAA fuel prices have diesel running about 25 cents higher a gallon than regular gas.

On my 2k mile Minneapolis trip last year my 2015 Accord averaged 38.2 MPG running 5 mph above any posted highway speed. This did include some city driving at posted speeds.

Why change to diesel????

[C40_guy]

Originally Posted by biker72

Current AAA fuel prices have diesel running about 25 cents higher a gallon than regular gas.

On my 2k mile Minneapolis trip last year my 2015 Accord averaged 38.2 MPG running 5 mph above any posted highway speed. This did include some city driving at posted speeds.

Why change to diesel????

An equivalent 2015 VW Passat TDi would probably get 42-45 mpg. Maybe not worth the additional complexity of owning a diesel, even with their lovely torque output.

Diesel cost does fluctuate independently of gas. For quite a while, diesel was the cheapest fuel in New England, below regular gas.

On the other hand, my 2010 Touareg TDi gets 27 mpg on the highway (and its replacement, a '13 Q7 TDI gets 31). An equivalent gas V8 engined Touareg might get 18-20, on premium gas.