VW Scandal Will Speed Up Diesel's Demise
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British opinion on diesel was really positive and I know lots of people that purchased diesel engined vehicles when (to my knowledge) they were unsuitable for the type of driving those people were undertaking.
In Germany, people will not buy a diesel if they are mostly driving short trips. It is common knowledge (here) that the air filters on diesel engines need time (~15 minutes) to properly warm up to be able to burn off the soot in the filter. Therefore, only the traditional fleet cars who are driven by salesmen driving long stretches on the Autobahn tend to buy diesels.
Was this also the same in the US, because many of my friends that own diesels in the UK had never heard of this?
There's also this:
http://www.businessinsider.com/why-diesel-costs-more-than-ga...
It goes into the public's views on diesel over time. The article actually was discussed on HN too: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6079973
I personally almost made a very bad decision. The Jetta TDI was on my shortlist when I was shopping for cars in late summer. Had my GF not disliked it, I probably would have ended up with one.
To be frank, I went with the diesels because the mileage was very good just looking at the EPA numbers which are when the emissions system is supposedly working. At first I was worried about smell but the only smell I encountered was the fuel itself.
I have no problem buying another diesel should it fit my needs at the time. Yet the advances in gasoline engines more than make up for the advantage diesels have. I know with my 4cyl turbo Z4 I am getting sufficient mileage (32 lifetime, 40 on pure highway) that I have no reason too go back.
Now for larger vehicles the mileage improvement is about the only way to go; that being pickups and SUVs. There really aren't any hybrid trucks about and the few SUVs that are do work but diesels seem to offer better highway.
Much as the anti-electric car (paid?) brigade goes nuts about how every red blooded american needs to drive more than 500 miles without taking a break or else the car is totally useless for everyone and will never sell, the anti-diesel people living in Florida will rant and rave about how hard it is to start a diesel engine in -30F weather with a nearly dead battery. There's an american tradition that you never replace your starting battery until it literally 0 volts and won't start the car at all, no matter how annoying it is or expensive tow trucks are or how expensive it is to burn out starter motors or how inconvenient; given that, the user experience of the last 1/3 or so of battery life for diesels is much worse than gas cars.
Another common stereotype is euro car replacement parts are just like detroit replacement parts coming from the same factory in China yet mysteriously the euro car parts cost 3 to 10 times as much. Note that its not true, BMW brake rotors cost the same as Lexus brake rotors, but it is a common perception.
As it stands, diesel engines are fairly incompatible with hybrid technology. The primary driver for fuel economy improvement with a hybrid is the ability to turn the engine off for periods of time. Diesel engines do not handle start-stop very well, as they are much more temperature sensitive. Other optimizations, such as Akinson cycle engines, also cannot be applied to diesel engines with any benefit.
Diesel fuel economy shines the most on the the highway. But highway fuel economy for a Prius is already quite good. It's unlikely that you would find a diesel hatchback of its size that returns better highway economy from the same amount of HP.
There's really nothing to be gained from a diesel hybrid.
Maybe, but even the nicest, newest diesels are still aesthetic abominations.
I just walked past a gleaming brand new porsche cayenne diesel and it sounds like a chitty-chitty-bang-bang set piece.
If you're a sound designer and you need to evoke low-tech, rattle-trap primitives, you could do a lot worse than just record a new diesel porsche/bmw/audi.
Also, vibration, as compared to similar gasoline engines (and this is also true for the diesel-like gasoline engines that utilize things like TFSI ... much more vibration than the corresponding non-TFSI engine).
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Compare that to your statement about "smaller petrol engines" for which your example is Macan Turbo 3.6L engine. Over here, such an engine is ridiculously large and almost stupid.
A small, efficient petrol engine over here is something like a 1.0 litre turbocharged gas engine in a Ford Mondeo.
Additionally the tax system was adjusted to make diesel engined cars more appealing.
Dodge sort of* broke open light truck use when they offered a Cummins turbo diesel with ordinary sized pickups in the early-mid 1990s.
Prior to that, you needed to pull something to justify a diesel engine. Ford sort of numbers their trucks F150/F250/F350/F450 and diesel started being more of a thing about the 350 range. Some of these had dual wheels and what we call a "fifth wheel" setup - there's a largish plate oriented haul hitch in the middle of the bed for pulling cattle and horse trailers, heavier equipment.
*sort of - you'd find all the makers offering diesel in fits and starts through the years. So individual counterexamples abound.
Some people arbitraged the lower price of diesel for a while, but a few years back, diesel became more expensive than gasoline per mile.
I understand in the US diesel is always more expensive than gas. Here that is only the case in the winter. In the summer it is 5-10cents a litre cheaper than gasoline. In the winter it's about 5-10cents a litre more expensive, the reason I have been told is the demand for diesel oil increases due to furnace oil consumption, which is basically diesel oil.
There are quite a few TDIs on the road where I am, but I live rural so there are a lot of highway drivers. They don't make much sense as an urban car, for stop and go traffic the fuel economy isn't good at all.
Think of the biggest, most powerful truck (lorry ?) you've ever seen ... big enough to tow, for instance, 4-6 horses in a trailer, or a 30 foot boat.
Lots (and I mean lots) of normal, private citizens drive these vehicles as their normal commuter cars or to run errands, etc., unrelated in any way to business/work. It is not uncommon at all. A lot of these are indeed diesel.
Also the vehicles (for private, non-business use) are preferentially taxed.
Most of those people use the truck part of the time for tasks that only a medium-duty truck can do, such as towing a boat or trailer, horses etc. They just aren't wealthy enough to dedicate the truck to that single purpose so it is also used as a "daily driver".
> Also the vehicles (for private, non-business use) are preferentially taxed
I'm not aware of any such tax advantage, at least where I live (TX). Diesel fuel is taxed at a significantly higher rate than gasoline. There were (still are?) some IRS deductions for business use of expensive trucks/suvs but that doesn't fit the case you've described.
disclaimer: I own a 3/4 ton diesel pickup used exclusively for private trailers hauling
And I see plenty of trucks with nice big tires, dual rear wheels that don't even have a tow-hitch _installed_, let alone a turntable.
It has to be for business purposes, but as always, the IRS is lax in verifying that.
They might be better served by doing the math, and realizing that they are far better off buying an economical vehicle at a much lower price point and for much lower maintenance and fuel costs, and then renting a heavy duty vehicle to tow their boat the few times a year they actually need to.
One should optimize for the most common use case.
They are not marketed here.
It's hit or miss on finding a gas station that has diesel, but that has definetly changed over the years.
Actually, if I could put 300,000 to 500,000 miles on a small diesel engine, I would buy one. Twenty years ago I would be happy if a vechicle lasted 100,000 miles. I had a Toyota with a 22r engine that spoiled me; I now expect all vechicles to easily last over 250,000 with nothing but oil changes, and new brakes.
Sadly, the POS VW diesel that I bought didn't last nearly that long. What a steaming pile that thing was. So YMMV.
There's awfuly many things, that can go wrong, if you don't consider how the engine works - i.e. your turbocharger, DFP, double-mass flywheel - they are subject to physics and you must know, what you can do with the car and what you can't do, to maximize their lifetime.
DPF - don't drive in the city :P if you do, take the car out on the motorway every few weeks at least and maintain speed above 50mph so the car can burn out the soot in the filter.
Double mass flywheel - well, it's designed to absorb the "shock" of attaching the clutch too early. So if you're driving a manual, be gentle with the clutch and your flywheel will serve you well. If you rev your engine and just release the clutch the flywheel will have to absorb a huge amount of force - it's designed to do that so it shouldn't be too harmful, but do it enough times and it will split and have to be replaced.
Edit: PS Also, do the timing belt maintenance if/when applicable
PPS: R&R the glow plugs every 50k or so. You may even be able to re-install the old ones (test them first). This is mainly to prevent them from becoming seized to the head, necessitating an expensive repair.
I would just add, that:
- the few seconds to cool down the turbo is about 30 to 60. Depending on the ride you just had. Just listen half a song more on your stereo ;)
- DPF needs cleaning every cca 700 km (but really depends on multiple factors). You either have a control light, that will let you know, or you notice a sudden fall in distance-to-empty, because that fuel is being used to burn out the filter ;)
Basically, even if something breaks there, it is still possible to repair it. However, it can be expensive (1000+ EUR for DPF or turbo, again, depends on the car).
Personal impression based on my friends commons on car buying recently. I think electric cars are going to eat whatever small market share diesels have in the US. Also of late diesel fuel is more expensive than gasoline at least in the bay area.
Usually only people who care about performance choose petrol engines.
http://forcechange.com/1141/california-passes-toughest-diese...
Every week while going to work, I'll see at least one truck belching black smoke while accelerating, due to poor maintenance. I look forward to the day when all the trucks have to have periodic emissions testing like the cars do now.
Google 'Rolling coal'.
Anyway, mostly it is construction and semi trucks I see blowing black smoke. Usually they are really rusted out anyway, hence the lack of maintenance comment.
Urea injection by the way, is the technology that VW decided to cheat instead of use.
The unique thing California has done is to require all vehicles be retrofitted with particulate filters.
If power generation is not in the vehicle, our national fraction of combustion generators can be reduced systematically. This is already under way; some US cities are already at 0.
That leaves storage on vehicle. The more EV's we have, the more incentive to find clean, high energy density batteries. This is not a static field either. Graphene is just one vaporware which might appear on the street shortly.
However, my understanding of the overall picture is that car engines (both diesel and gas) are so much less efficient than a power plant, that even with transmission, it's cleaner to switch to centralized power generation.
For gasoline the number is supper tricky to determine. So here comes a back of napkin number
A fuel truck transports about 30,000 gallons (20,000-40,000). On average they achieve about 4-7.5 miles per gallon). So they use about 1% of their tankage for every 60 miles traveled.
This suggest to me that transportation loses for gasoline are in the same ball park number. Distribution and marketing is often claimed to be about 5% of the total, but I don't know where that number comes from.
All in all the difference is probably not that large, and I suspect the electricity one will drop faster than the gasoline one due to interconnect upgrades.
Battery cost is still dropping at an exponential rate while energy density continues to rise. Likewise solar panel costs, and installation (especially at utility scale) is also coming down in price as the industry learns.
I’m no expert, but I predict that within 10 years it will be entirely practical (and much more environmentally friendly than diesel/gasoline, especially w/r/t urban smog) to have bus fleets, delivery trucks, etc. running on batteries.
Same with nuclear, sure there are pebble bed reactors and other safe designs, nobody proposes them on the industrial scale. Why is that? Efficient and cost impact profit.
I mean if VW got busted, with breaking NOx values by up to 20 times, for the purpose of better acceleration, fuel efficiency and other parameters. So does it mean that others somehow cheat, but do not get caught? Or VW, the biggest car company group in the world, were producing much worse engines, than any other car manufacturer (which sells cars in US) in the world. Somehow I think it's the first one...
That's not what happened here. VW has no plausible deniability in this case.
://www.extremetech.com/computing/177841-samsungs-latest-android-update-no-longer-cheats-on-benchmarks
http://www.geek.com/games/is-nvidia-cheating-on-benchmarks-5...
https://techreport.com/review/3089/how-ati-drivers-optimize-...
Diesel has a problematic history in the US, though, and US emissions standards are tough on diesel by-products like NOx. I would like to know how much of that is anti-competitive and how much is genuine concern for the environment.
VW (and the EU in general) bet heavily on diesel. VW in particular had to cheat to meet the US emissions standards because they were under pressure to compete with other automakers to gain entry into the US market. Whether others did the same remains to be seen. US makers don't really product diesel cars, that is why they did not have this problem.
Genuine concern. US cars were virtually crippled in the 70s due to NOx standards (power-robbing EGR valves being the main culprit, IIRC). For example, the high-end version of the Chevrolet Camaro in 1976 was getting 165bhp out of a 350ci V8 small block (for comparison, I think the plain Jane 2015 Corvette my parents just bought puts out 450bhp from the modern version of that engine). The straight six cylinder version put out less power than my 1.4L four cylinder Scion.
All that smog in the LA valley back in the 70s? That was NOx, so at least in the case of California, those standards were there for a reason. Besides, small diesels were just a gleam in VW's eye when those standards were put in place, so there was nothing to anti-competitive about.
I remember that a few years back, there was a big scandal in Germany over a supermarket chain that had installed hidden security cameras to watch their employees. The press went around and asked other supermarkets if they had hidden surveillance cameras, and they all denied. Meanwhile, store managers where driving to the supermarkets in the night and removing the illegal cameras...
If Volkswagen takes a big hit it will have an effect. Even if we can't catch every cheater, we might be able to scare them into playing by the rules.
Most people, would say, "Oh, you are just providing a map for professional shop lifters?" Yea, it could be used that way, but some stores go a bit overboard on the video surveillance. I will walk out of a store with too many video cameras, or security guards.
I worked security once, and was shocked on just who went to jail for shoplifting. Rich looking people got off with paying for the merchandise. Poor looking people went to jail. I had one store owner let the big spenders steal a little. The worst offenders were store employees, especially management, but that has probally changed with cameras literally everywhere?
In most retail chains, they blanket the store so few non coverage areas. Generally its not watched like a hawk except in big department stores. Panda express is a rare exception...borderline stasi.
Major chains got smart about theft...some make it profitable or turn employee thieves into permanent snitches.
Truth be told, nobody is watching you usually shop although people traffic cams are all the rage....
Emissions are not a joke. By cheating on it on such a scale, VW (and others like it) are literally fucking with the fate of mankind.
This NOx emission thing is more a PR disaster than an actual environmental problem. The VW diesel engines are still remarkably efficient and nice pieces of technology, at least if you compare them to the huge gasoline engines that they often replace.
(FWIW, I drive a diesel but not made by VAG (this is Renault). It’s probably worse than any current VW engines, but because it’s a few years older, no one complains. It passes the local MOT tests with flying colours, and I get around 5.6 l/100 km or 42 mpg for a minivan which I think is nice enough).
It’s not an outrageous leap to suspect they may also have been cheating the new European emissions standards. If those are properly enforced, diesel cars could be in trouble.
cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_emission_standards#Em...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/road-and-rail-transpo...
From what I understand, VW didn't technically cheat the benchmark in the meaning that all the readings were truthful. What they did was enable a benchmark mode in their engine software, so the engine ran differently under those conditions. Or, framing the problem differently, they didn't let the user run the engine with the same parameters as the benchmarks ran under.
So, what's stopping them? Why not give the users what they thought they paid for?
I take it the engine would deliver less power with the economy parameters, but isn't those values easier to get away with? You could even have an economy mode button inside the vehicle (or perhaps they already do?) in which case all they wouldn't have been liable for anything as all the benchmarks would have been truthful.
They can't let users switch between modes, where one more violates pollution standards, the would still be considered a defeat device.
They can update the cars to meet emission standards, but it might actually be the case that their cars can only pass the certification cycles in their cheatmode, but won't actually pass an in use monitoring test.
Even if they can pass emissions, lowering the power and fuel economy is going to mean class action lawsuits from their customers.
That's the big issue, they sold them as emissions compliant vehicles that delivered some given performance/efficiency, and the software can't make both claims true at the same time.
Most people buy a diesel car because the fuel is cheaper, they will basically not care about those 3 aspects.
As for the result, the article points to Paris: the city didn't have a smog problem 20 years ago, and now spends half the year with smog warnings (60% diesel cars in Paris area). Just walking by, you'll notice most cars are noisier and smell much more than in a comparable situation in London or NYC. By now, diesel cars in Paris area are the main particule emitters, ahead of heating.
Diesel is a high price technology disguised as cost efficient by an inconsiderate european strategy. Can't wait to see diesel go away - a large scale environmental disaster.
The same is true for petrol engines. Diesel requires little or no additional maintenance.
>Most people buy a diesel car because the fuel is cheaper
Except the fuel isn't cheaper (in the US), even accounting for the higher specific energy. http://www.fuelgaugereport.com/
I like them because the engines last longer and get better fuel economy; and in my pickup truck, higher power.
>As for the result, the article points to Paris: the city didn't have a smog problem 20 years ago
The city didn't have as many of any kind of car 20 years ago. If you want less smog (particulates) from diesels, then relax NOx standards.
Diesel engines are more vulnerable when driven cold and on short distances (i.e.: typical european city usage). They do need periodic fine tuning, which is mandatory here in most european countries. If the engines has DEF, it has to be refilled and carefully maintained. If it hasn't, the filters also need care (again, most people overlook this).
> fuel price
diesel fuel is about 30% cheaper in Europe, where diesel accounts >50% sales in key countries (germany, spain; france 80% in 2008). Obviously not relevant in the US where diesel is basically non existent. Europe is the main diesel market in the world - worth spending some time there in a major diesel city to forge a definite opinion.
> Paris
Actually less cars in city center, and more in the overall urban area. NOx are contributor, so are Particle Matter PM-6 and PM-10, both byproducts of diesel engines in actual use (obviously far above euro6 norms). Up to 80% of PM in London come from diesel, according to UK government: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/green-motoring/10190942/...
I get that your personal experience with diesel in the US is not bad. Like asbestos sounded great when it saved your family from fire. But really, don't use it.
The UK models may be stripping off the heaters for cost. I hear people don't even use winter tyres in Britain...
We also had lead in petrol back then - nice!
I can only recall this anecdotally, a friend's mum ran a diesel car and my mum explained why they had such a noisy thing. You could suffer from tinnitus for hours after getting out of what I believe was an early square shaped Golf (with diesel engine). Diesels back then had no clever electronics or fancy injection so it was a dirty fuel.
You will find plenty of people who will say they were the best diesels, because they would burn literally anything, you could put used oil from your frying pan in it and it would happily burn it without any problem. They were uncomplicated chunks of metal, so it's quite common for them to do a million miles without any significant problems. Of course they were dirty as hell, so it's a good thing we don't use cars like that anymore. The only legitimate use I can think of is people who go in off roaders to Africa or deep parts of siberia, where the fuel quality is absolutely horrible, so you can't have a modern diesel with a high pressure direct injection system - one spec of dirt in your fuel and your injectors get clogged.
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/oil-and-...
Diesel has always been more expensive, but there have been a few times (2007) where the prices got close.
And that's just the cost of the fuel from the pump - it doesn't take into account MPG of the car or duty benefits for diesel car ownership.
Also not that diesel is more energy dense per unit volume. (And a US gallon is different to an imperial/British one)
> there's no warm air coming out
Ok, is a different problem then that I thought. Never say this in any of my cars, but it seems that other qashqai owners have the same problem. Not easy solution for a feature that your car just do not implement. If the air is in closed circuit (inner) will warm a couple of minutes before, but do not expect miracles with your model. In this case, is just a problem of poor design.
> what do you mean by heaters?
I don't know the name of the piece in english, they are needed for warming up the engine before starting the car. When some of them eventually break and is cold outside you can't start the car after several minutes. (Just need to replace the broken pieces, but is a new car and this is not the problem here).
If your problem is that the engine starts, but it takes a very long time to get warm air from the heating system, in modern cars it's most likely just that the engine is extremely efficient in converting energy of fuel to kinetic energy, so there is no excess heat that could be used for heating the cabin and keeping windows clear from mist.
(Heating is also slow or off if your engine is out of coolant, but if you keep running it without coolant, you'll soon break it so that you really do notice.)
Just think what this heating problem will be in electric cars...
Diesels have gone from simple and nearly infinitely durable to complex and easy to break constructs. There's EGR, DPF, direct injection, turbos, you name it, and those are expensive to replace/repair.
On the other hand, modern diesels are quiet, they don't vibrate much, and they deliver a crazy amount of power. But that's just something totally different from what diesels used to be, and modern petrol engines are catching up, in a good way. I could imagine driving a 3-cyl turbo petrol, PSA makes a few surprisingly good ones.
Unlikely. This may have been true a long time ago, but refining technology has come a long way.
Diesel (or home heating oil, or kerosene, pretty much all the same thing) used to be something of a waste product in the refining process. Thus it was cheaper than gasoline, even though its energy content per volume unit is higher.
Today, with improved cracking technology, refiners can make pretty much any amount of gasoline or diesel they need from a barrel of crude oil -- what waste is left is very heavy oil used for ship engines or industrial use.
But it seems to be getting more clear over the last days it is the business people - the one that read Bloomberg - that are also the cause. Because the engineers where unable to do it within the given cost requirements. They told, that they need a greater budget per car to comply with the regulations.
They can comply, but fuel economy will plummet. Other negatives can happen as well, the engines can get crudded up quickly, which has already been a problem in VW diesels, and in some Mercedes models as well.
The EPA has also been criticized here as being a tool to prevent foreign competition from high efficiency diesels available in Europe and Asia.
>They told, that they need a greater budget per car to comply with the regulations.
The second problem I mentioned is caused by the EGR Exhaust Gas Recirculation systems, which are primitive; so, yeah, throwing money at that would help.
Overall, I'm fairly confident that the VW mess is the tip of a huge iceberg. Other mfrs have been caught doing this exact same thing before.
The fuels pollute differently, as they aren't chemically identical. Bio creates more soot when it burns as it's not as efficient of a burn. But the main charm is that no/minimal greenhouse gasses are produced by the burning (it's corn oil, not dinosaur oil).
But.
The new Clean Diesel's aren't very Biodiesel friendly due to the cleaning process requiring a fuel that burns a little better than Biodiesel does. So it is a hassle if you wanted to try Biodiesel in your Clean Diesel. Not many people were trying it according to the folks at Dogpatch BioFuels, enough so that they looking to find new buyers for their fuel.
I don't know what matters most to the EPA, and what VW was cheating at, to know if the defeat device in a Bio car does worse things to the environment.
The only biodiesel restriction I'm aware of in larger (e.g., 3/4 to 1 ton pickups) is related to the amount of water bound to glycerin in the fuel. Common-rail injection systems are very finicky and any above-design-limit water can cause corrosion which damages the injectors or fuel pump.
My truck is certified for only 5% (B5), newer ones are B20 certified. The only difference is the fuel system. I've not heard of any emissions impacts.
(Someone around here was driving his old Mercedes using leftover fries cooking oil from a local McDonald's. He had to stop it, but not due to pollution, but for tax reasons. The government really hates losing that revenue.)
And during this one its again being blamed on a individual company.
The real blame lies with government. why did the US govt fail to properly test a car made by a foreign company ?
I propose that we focus on what's right to do rather than who gets the pie, so:
Why did the US govt fail to properly test a car that was destined for consumer use (regardless of company origin)?
What does VW being foreign have to do with it? Are US companies inherently more trustworthy? You should ask "Why did the US government fail to properly test a car made by any company?"
In Europe, the standards are a joke (no one drives like we test the cars).