[SGVLUG] Especially for Tom & his Prius....

[Dustin Laurence]

On Mon, Jul 10, 2006 at 08:28:50PM -0700, Christopher Smith wrote:
> 
> Diesel has in fact been getting a lot cleaner recently, and we can
> actually expect some cleaner diesel vehicles coming to the US market
> next year (basically they trap particle emissions before letting them
> out).

Yeah.  The main limitation seems to have been the high sulfur content of
US diesel (it apparently poisons a catalytic converter, among other
things).  In September in CA and Octoberish elsewhere all diesel has to
be <=15ppm or something, which changes that.  Then new light diesels can
be sold in CA for the first time in, well, a while anyway.

But then in 2007 the standards tighten, IIRC, and VW at least is going
to withdraw again from the CARB states until 2008.  D-C apparently can
meet them and won't do that little dance.

Bottom line--diesels are going to have to meet the same standards and
will have low sulfur fuel to do it with.  Should be rather interesting.

Diesel's also are more efficient in real-world use (which is why
> you tend to get better fuel economy). Finally, if you go with a
> biodiesel blend (assuming you aren't light on the biodiesel) you get
> significantly improved emissions... much better than with gasoline.

And, important to some of us, *massively* lowered net greenhouse impact.

> ...a lot of this guy's
> complaints were just silly (but his delivery is quite amusing). Like
> that hybrids are too slow.

And if that isn't a problem, you can just get a Civic GX, which is
gutless as can be but extremely good on point emissions.

> ...You can easily get a speeding ticket on the
> fastest highways (the "99" wasn't kph, it's mph, so unless you are on
> the autobahn, do you care?)

Note that the Lupo, which he compares with, must make the Prius look
like a muscle car.  But I think the point was "if you're going to have a
boring gutless car why not do it right and get one with a 1 liter
3-cylinder weedwhacker engine that gets *really* good mileage?"

Reasonable compromises and practicality are generally not good subjects
for satire. :-)

> ...the hybrids actually have better pickup from
> a standing start than comperable conventional vehicles (the joys of
> electric motors and being generally lighter weight... although the
> low-friction wheels do cut in to that a bit).

Max torque at zero RPMs is indeed awfully nice--the phrase, I think, is
that "Americans buy for power but live for torque."  Diesels excel at
low-end torque by comparison with spark-ignition, but nothing short of a
steam engine compares with an electric motor.

> ...The Prius
> might seem cheaply to someone used to luxury vehicles, but my
> observation is it seemed pretty comperable to vehicles about $3k cheaper
> than it ($3k which hopefully you'd recover with a lower gas bill, not to
> mention tax incentives) and often even ones at the same price (not to
> mention that it has a number of features that generally seem to be
> available in much more expensive cars).

I wonder if there is some difference in the expected fit & finish
standard in Britain?  It's not like they don't have econoboxes there,
though.

> Finally, his fuel economy test was commuting in to London, which means a
> lot of driving in the open road, where Prius gets relatively crummy fuel
> economy. Try doing a fuel economy comparison as a city commuter vehicle,
> say navigating through downtown NYC traffic, and the diesel is going to
> look quite bad.

It should be that way, but I'm not sure that is so true anymore; people
seem to be getting remarkably good city driving economy in the recent
ones.  It helps that the computer apparently can shut the fuel
completely off when coasting, I guess.  Still, it's nice that the
optimal use-cases are somewhat the opposite, so that if you have a
well-defined use case one or the other might be a clear choice.

> Honestly, having recently been shopping for cars, I can tell you that
> I'd have happily bought a hybrid but for the fact that a) the selection
> is still quite limited compared to a non-hybrid so finding a good fit is
> tricky and b) demand is so high that you end up paying well above the
> sticker price if you want a car anytime soon.

Sadly, both are true of small passenger-car diesels in the US and most
of all in CA.  Really only VW makes a diesel in the category we're
talking about (Mercedes doesn't come close in the US market), and you
can't buy a diesel with less than 7500 mi in CA until the 2007 model
year anyway.  That, the relatively small numbers, and the fact that VW
fans have the same kind of rabid devotion as Mac fans means that they've
driven up the price as well.  Apparently a used Jetta wagon can go for
more than it's list price new.  Sadly, the wagon is probably the best
choice for us. :-(

Dustin

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