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Comment by mixedbit | Hacker News Reader

I fail to understand why German automotive industry is lobbing pro diesels. All German car makers make both gasoline and diesel engines, if diesels were banned or taxed to be more expensive customers wouldn't resign from buying cars but would choose some other available option (gasoline, hybrid, electric).

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There have been zillions invested in the Diesel, which would have been wasted. The Diesel is also seen as the more efficient engine: less fuel consumption and less CO2 emissions.

This is what I don't understand, it seems like a sunk cost fallacy. For each diesel sold, the auto makers sell one less gasoline car, the profits should stay the same.

They have a competitive edge on diesel technology against other car makers. Look at the WEC championships to see how effective Audi's diesel development was there, racing technology almost always translates somehow to street technology for consumers.

On that playing field only Toyota came close to beat the German diesels so it's not only a sunken cost fallacy, they have an advantage on diesel technology that makes it understandable (from a business perspective) on them pushing for it.

I think it's because they have a technical edge (well...) in diesel engines for cars and / or because they sell so many of them, especially in Germany itself. Markets favoring diesel engines thus favor German car makers.

I wonder if the technical edge is there only because German diesels do not meet emission regulations. It is easy to have the best product on the market if all the competitors need to make weaker engines to meet the regulations and German companies make a cheating software instead.

> especially in Germany itself

That's because there are tax advantages for Diesel. Originally a subsidy for agriculture (because their machines all ran on Diesel), it made Diesel motors a favorite for those who need to drive a lot (incl huge corporate fleets).

Changing any of that is a highly contentious political issue. Merkel's political style doesn't deal well with these.

They lobbied against safety belts, catalytic filters and a lot of other stuff. They can safely be ignored and usually they are pretty good at adapting to new conditions.

1. The Diesel process is more efficient than the Otto process (the theoretical limit is much higher)

2. Taxes in Germany: Diesel fuel is taxed at a much lower rate than other gasoline. In turn, the cars themselves are taxed a bit higher. If you drive a lot, a Diesel car is more economical for that reason.

2. Have ever had a chance to drive a car with a Diesel engine? The power over RPM curve is so different that the experience feels very different and arguably much more convenient.

I think the point is high CO_2 exhaustion rate of the gasoline cars, so that entire industry (and customers) switched towards the diesel engines, actively promoting them to be superior and eco-friendly variant of gasoline engines. Turns out they were wrong (just the other type of the pollution - Feinstaub) and to make things worse, they kept silent until the entire thing broke viral.

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