My wife and I more or less randomly parked our cars (my 2010 Prius, her red 2012 Audi A-3 Turbo-Diesel) this way on our property. I thought it was a good high-mileage face off:
Well, my wife drove her car up nose to nose with mine. I thought it was funny enough to put up both here and on tdiclub, and see what the difference in reaction was. Does this mean I have officially turned into a troll? I actually like both cars.
The Prius triggers gag reflexes at the other place. Sometimes it's like junior high all over again. You're not a troll--it was just funny to see the same posting in both places.
I know, and I don't get it. All the market surveys suggest that hybrids and diesels are not really competitors because the characteristics of purchasers are so different. With the new cleaner diesels it seems to me that someone interested in fuel economy and related issues would sensibly look at both types of cars. But the marketplace tells me I'm crazy.
Diesels are competitive with hybrids, when it comes to highway driving with few slow downs. They continue to burn fuel at idle, when the hybrid goes into EV and downhill regenerative mode.
My tool box has a pipe wrench, vice grips, and pair of pliers and they all get along just fine. Just use the right tool for the right job and get over it. Well I need to check the late night TV Infomercials to see what 'the only tool you'll ever need' is being sold tonight. Bob Wilson
Diesels are starting to fall out of favour over here in the UK. Sure if you spend all your time on the highway, or run an SUV they can make sense, but for city use or smaller vehicles, they're just not viable. Check out the following UK link showing the issues of diesel and how even at our $8 a gallon fuel costs, you need to be doing 20k-30k miles a year to even start to break even. And then there's the issue with the diesel particle filters. Certainly not as reliable as the catalytic converters used on petrol cars. Petrol vs diesel cars: Drivers warned on diesel filter trap | This is Money
2012 Prius Plug In and 2006 VW NewBeetle diesel here. Love the reduced cost of regular unleaded compared to premium. I've lost my lust for diesels because of the higher cost of diesel fuel (than premium unleaded) for longest time. I was shocked to see the cost of diesel, last Saturday, was 38 cents cheaper than premium unleaded?
A recent development, interesting: U.S. Gasoline and Diesel Retail Prices Was looking for a place to share: Column 1 0 [tr][th]RND_ADJ_FE[th]hp @45 mph [th]hp @65 mph[th]hp @80 mph[th]Veh Model 1 [tr][td2]71.4[td2]7.5[td2]18.0[td2]30.7[td]PRIUS c 2 [tr][td2]70.2[td2]7.3[td2]18.2[td2]31.6[td2]PRIUS 3 [tr][td2]69.2[td2]7.4[td2]18.4[td2]32.3[td]PRIUS Plug-in Hybrid 4 [tr][td2]68.0[td2]7.9[td2]19.2[td2]33.3[td]CIVIC HYBRID 5 [tr][td2]67.6[td2]8.8[td2]19.9[td2]33.0[td]Fusion HEV FWD 6 [tr][td2]65.5[td2]8.2[td2]18.8[td2]31.5[td]Jetta Hybrid 7 [tr][td2]63.7[td2]8.4[td2]19.7[td2]33.3[td]INSIGHT EX 8 [tr][td2]63.6[td2]8.4[td2]19.7[td2]33.3[td]INSIGHT DX/LX 9 [tr][td2]63.6[td2]8.1[td2]18.7[td2]31.6[td]CRUZE ECO 10 [tr][td2]62.8[td2]9.5[td2]21.4[td2]35.7[td]Passat 11 [tr][td2]62.0[td2]9.5[td2]21.7[td2]36.3[td]Golf 12 [tr][td2]60.5[td2]9.6[td2]21.8[td2]36.3[td]Jetta 13 [tr][td2]60.1[td2]9.5[td2]21.5[td2]35.6[td2]A3 14 [tr][td2]59.7[td2]7.5[td2]18.3[td2]31.4[td]NISSAN VERSA S 15 [tr][td2]59.3[td2]7.6[td2]18.4[td2]31.6[td]NISSAN VERSA SV 16 [tr][td2]59.3[td2]7.4[td2]18.0[td2]30.6[td]CIVIC HF 17 [tr][td2]59.0[td2]9.3[td2]21.7[td2]36.7[td]ILX HYBRID 18 [tr][td2]58.7[td2]9.1[td2]23.3[td2]41.5[td]PRIUS v Source: EPA roll-down table Bob Wilson
Perhaps do to the drop in heating oil demand. We should be expanding the natural gas infrastructure to replace heating oil with it.
GC- is there any concern in Europe that petrol vehicles (especially GDI) will effectively be required to use particle filters once Euro 6 is fully implemented?
When diesel fuel became more expensive than premium gas and the whole emissions / urea changes were introduced, I lost interest in a diesel vehicle. Past experience with poor VW quality and reliability elimintated any interest in future VW or Audi products.
Fair enough. I probably subconsciously got the subject line from all the auto magazine "face off" articles on high performance sports cars. On the tdiclub website, the thread is in a subforum for pictures of your cars, so the "tease" element isn't there. But if you want to know my opinion on performance: Prius is more fun to drive than some folks think (e.g., it isn't like driving a ball of pizza dough, as someone or other described it). But on the pure fun to drive scale, the Audi wins. On the fuel economy scale, even though we both mostly drive on the interstate, the Prius is beating the Audi long term. By how much is not clear to me, since my wife is not into writing down gas purchases, and so I haven't been able to figure out the error (if any) in the Audi's mpg readout.
In a word, no. The diesel filters clog up because the particles of soot must be larger than petrol emissions after a catalyst. It's also not all dpf's that cause issues. We used a fleet of Mercedes taxis and they had them and never any bother and they spent most of their time in town. But some Skodas, Fiats and others did cause issues, big issues. Over here we have an annual safety and emissions test once a car is over 3 years old. Many many diesel cars released in 2008/9 with the dpf's are failing their emissions tests to the annoyance of their owners. Three years also happens to be the limit of most manufacturers warranties
I understand exactly where your coming from. My SO has a GL350 Bluetec, and there have been no issues with its buttery-smooth clean diesel powertrain. She always beats me in range; she gets around 700 miles a tank. However, she can't make quick errands without using gas (and she can't use the HOV lane) ;P
Wxman's question concerns more the newer direct injection engines coming to market. IIRC, they do produce more and possibly larger particles than the traditional port injection.
