Then articles like this come along, and it's hard for me not to think there is a coordinated smear campaign against diesel.
I have to imagine big money is involved, though I don't know. Does anyone else feel the same way or have any input?
Diesel has been linked to producing more byproducts that are responsible for smog than gasoline. If anything this has all been a long well funded war by european car manufactures to push locally produced diesel vehicles which appear to have better efficiency than gasoline. France was swept by the trend and now is regretting the fact that >60% of their cars are diesel powered.
Simply put this was all a tragedy of choosing wrong metrics. Europe chose CO2 levels as the important metric to try to reduce. By optimizing for CO2 they allowed vehicles that produced 4 times more NO2 and up to 22 times more other fine particulates which are significantly worse for human health. Gasoline or Diesel, we still are damaging our environment. It's just with Diesel we see more of that damage done on ourselves.
Edit:
And just as a final point, the US alone has spent $51 million for "green diesel" VW cars. Now we know.
It is a one time event where the worst air quality passed over Beijing's when it was at its best.
Diesel tends to be better at providing a satisfying driving experience with really high mileage. Better mileage means less CO2.
Diesel also tends to emit particulates and trace elements in the oil that it combusts. That means more smog, "acid rain," etc..
If you have to pick one axis, "acid rain" is out of vogue and CO2 isn't and diesel looks like a clear winner and you wonder why every car isn't one. If you pay attention to both axis then diesel starts to dramatically lose its advantage and you really have to use some exotic cleanup technologies just to keep it in the same league as gas engines.
I really don't know if there is big money involved, so much as just too simple a view of the problems. It's not like "clean coal" they both use effectively the same fuel that's just refined differently.
Take fuel mileage out of the equation, though, and IMO diesels suck to drive. You drive one strictly for the mileage benefit (or arguably torque if you're towing something).
Have you driven a new one in the last 5ish years?
Driving anything coming out of Germany that is less than 5 years old is a massive improvement over a gasoline car. Sit on 70mph, uphill, still in top gear doing low rpm and you can easily accelerate past all the gas cars that are dropping down gears, revving through the roof and slowing down.
Off the line, you are pushed back in your seat right off idle, rather than waiting until you're up above 3k rpm in a gasoline car.
Their first road trip to a destination we visit regularly surprised us all.
While with a gasoline car we would need at least one refueling stop each way, the diesel managed both direction, and a bit of back and forth while there, on a single tank.
That, in combo with the lower fuel consumption, was presented as a way to ween the world off oil.
Then came the whole NOx issue...
People were too poor to have cars but they needed a pickup to work the farm. So if you had a car...