Diesel Auris beats hybrid Auris

You must have a very good sense of smell then, Dave, because our diesel car (2010 BMW 335d) produces no odor whatsoever that I've ever noticed, even after cold start when it's parked in the garage. There's a slight "burning" smell if you shut the car off during a DPF regen, but that doesn't occur very often. On the other hand, my son's 2011 5.0 Mustang GT produces a VERY noticeable smell after a cold start in the garage.

I've also followed many 2007+ diesel pickup trucks (Ford & GM 2007+ trucks are easily distinguished by the ventilated exhaust tips), and I haven't smelled anything even when they're accelerating from a traffic light.

 

I can't believe this thread has reached 3 pages without anyone stating the obvious "diesel has 20% higher energy density than petrol".... you can't compare those two...

 

Plutonium has a higher energy density than petrol also, but that doesn't make it a better fuel.

 

You could convert the diesel mpg to mpge if so desired. This will lower the number on the diesel.

Most people care more about the cost, and gasoline and diesel versions of a model are close for the price per mile. At least in the US. In Europe, diesel fuel tends to be cheaper along with it getting per volume economy.

 

It was mentioned, on the first page of this thread, and in many other threads.

 

A diesel hybrid is just not viable financially, at least not in the Prius class.

To make a diesel hybrid would add £2k/£3k to the cost of a Prius. In the UK that would make it about £25,000 for a base model (and this is pretty much what the Peugeot diesel hybrid costs). The new Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV costs £26k and offers 30 miles emission free.

But PHEV is the way it's going. The extra cost of diesel to a hybrid system is pretty much what the extra costs associated with PHEV is to a petrol.

The Volvo diesel PHEV is a cool £45,000 or just £5,000 less than the Tesla S.

There are benefits to diesel but in this class of vehicle it is just no longer viable. It's old technology being bodged to comply. It's like using steam to power ships. There are many benefits to steam as a propulsion method, but it's dirty, expensive and last centuries technology. A bit like diesel.

 

Still no links? Lacking links to that story, I can't judge what essential details might have been left out.

Uncle Wayne and his troupe at cleanmpg.com frequently pushed Insights way above that.

 

From Wikipedia, a table of the Euro emissions standards:



Perhaps GrumpyCabbie knows of a specific diesel car that approaches Auris HSD emissions, but Euro6 in and of itself is still far, far dirtier. E.g.,
NOx+HC is 24 mg/km in the Auris
while
Euro6 allows up to 170 mg/km in a diesel.

And for PM,
Auris is zero
While Euro6 continues to allow 5 mg/km in diesels, unchanged from Euro5.

 

X2

There's a reason why just about every backup power for buildings are diesel powered and the same idea applies to vehicles as well.
Newer diesels are very clean and more efficient than their otto cycle counterparts.

Pretty good MPG on this vehicle:
Volkswagen 1-litre car - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Those 1-litre Vee-Dubayas are selling like hotcakes, huh?
They've been on the streets (kinda....) since 2009.

I don't have anything against diesels.
In fact, I wouldn't go on a submarine without one. Like my telephone company's central office, modern submarines use them for backup power.
However (comma!)
Their use in a small privately owned vehicle is still a little counter-intuitive for a wide variety of reasons...including complexity, cleanliness, and cost--motor, fuel, additives, maintenance etc.

In the US, they just don't make much walking around sense....for now.
Perhaps $9/gal gas and a diminution in the difference between petrol and diesel might change the numbers a little, but according to my math, my petrol powered G3 gets better mileage than any other car sold in the US.....not counting some of the boutique cars that combine GAS and electricity, or shun both gas and diesel.

 

I know this is an olde post; I thought it worthwhile to point out an error for posterity:

The quoted numbers should not be per mg, they are per GRAM.
Also, diesel Euro 6 allows the makers to pass if the combined Nox+HC is less than 170 mg/km. As I understand things, it is an allowance for diesels to either clean up NOx or HC; they do not have to clean up both.

So while a diesel could theoretically be much cleaner than Euro6 demands, if they just reach the combined target the car remains a much heavier (up to ~30x) polluter than a Prius/Auris

 

Show me a gas powered hybrid (prototype even) that gets better than 300 MPG......there's a reason diesel hybrid is coming, like it or not.

When you see people posting supposed knowledge of diesels then you find a Cummins smoke show pic at the bottom (you know the trucks are tuned by their owners to do that right?) claiming all diesels are dirty it doesn't bode confidence in the rest of any information provided.

 

The problem with diesels that I've never gotten a good answer to is this:

Depending on the source, about half or more of a barrel of crude oil contains carbon chains too light / short to make diesel fuel. There are relatively efficient processes (cracking, coking, etc) for converting longer carbon chains into shorter one. I'm not aware of any efficient means of going the other way.

It would seem to me that this inherent limitation means that while diesel technology can be a part of the solution to improving petroleum consumption efficiency, it can never be a complete solution. If we had a 100% conversion to diesel we would have to consume more crude oil to meet demand, and have all this gasoline sitting around with no use.

To me that's a pretty strong argument for using gasoline (hybrid/electric) for applications where they can be used with similar or better efficiency to diesel (such as most personal vehicles), while saving diesel fuel primarily for the applications its best at (heavy duty, constant rpm, long term storage for backup power etc). At least in the near term when we remain primarily dependent on petroleum derived fuels.

Rob

Easy. The XL1 is a plug-in diesel hybrid. Any plug-in hybrid with enough battery and drive motor power can get 300mpg+ if all you count is the gasoline/diesel fuel consumed. There are already Volts and others getting this kind of mileage in the real world. By the same standard, any full BEV like a leaf already gets infinite mpg. Which just underscores why mpg of a plugin vehicle is fairly meaningless.

Rob

 

I agree with you Rob, except it's my understanding that most of a barrel of CRUDE oil is heavier than gasoline-range hydrocarbons, especially in the heavier crudes that are now being processed. In some cases, distillate makes up the largest portion of product from simple distillation of the crude oil.

This is a source from which I got that info...

The Oil Drum | Refining 101: The Assay Essay

 

Rob, I do agree with what you say above, but in the case of hybrid vehicles the main benefit of diesel (ideal for constant load power generation) will likely be best suited to marriage with plug in electric vehicles. Essentially you are marrying a backup generator (where diesel shines) to a battery storage system (whichever prevails......lithium, supercaps, etc) powering essentially an otherwise all electric vehicle. The range is the most obvious problem with pure electric vehicles (despite technically infinite MPG) so hybrids are clearly the best compromise at this point. The VW begins to show why the combination of technology works so well (even if it is just a prototype at this point). I would be interested to see how well fuel cell hybrids do in the future as their efficiency improves too. The main issue now really is the price of fuel getting cheaper so as long as people continue to get cheap fuel, there will be little financial incentive to move these other technologies along.

 

First, show me a diesel that does that. US-EPA scale. The plug-in VW certainly doesn't.

After you do, then I'll start making adjustments for the differing fossil carbon contents between petrol and diesel.

 

I don't think Toyota needs to do that. The Atkinson-cycle gasoline engine takes care of the spread between gasoline and diesel engine fuel-economy.