Cold starts can be hard, they smell, make a funny sound, slow to accelerate. Maybe maintenance is easier when there are no spark plugs.
Have you driven a modern diesel? At lower speeds, they easily beat similar-displacement petrol cars off the line with superior torque. They are weaker at high speeds, but in normal (especially city) driving, a diesel is usually faster than a petrol.
But yeah, their main factor for popularity is the cost per km. They use less fuel than petrol engines, and the fuel is less expensive (in Germany). This is offset by higher road tax and insurance somewhat, but for commuters and others who drive a lot (>~20000km per year) diesels are a much more cost effective option in Germany than anything else.
On average, you should expect to drive at least 150.000+ km before you've broken even on a diesel car with its petrol counterpart.
People only look at fuel consumption and fuel prices, but maintenance and depreciation are actually one's biggest loss on a car purchase. And in general petrol comes out on top.
GM did manage to get a diesel Cruze into the USDM market, and keep it here, but it's low-margin and not a huge seller. A manual diesel Cruze starts at about $25,000 (compared to $17,000 for the base). So it is basically slotted as an "enthusiast" model, just not a high-performance one like Ford and Honda would offer.
Well, they require a more complex motor which handles higher pressures and supercharging. The picture would be different if you would compare motors with the same price.
Your statement on speed is also odd. Record setting cars may burn gas, but your typical car driving around a city or highway needn't ever go faster than 160km/h. Most cars can achieve this, and most modern cars, whether diesel or gas, can achieve this without much difficulty.
This leaves us with acceleration, where diesel vs gas is equally unclear. As small diesel engines often ship with turbos, you'd be perhaps comparing a turbocharged 2.0L diesel vs a normally aspirated 2.0L gas engine. Assuming roughly equivalent mass of the cars, with higher low-end torque, the diesel will win just about any street race.
If what you're comparing is purchase price to acceleration, then indeed the gas cars may win.
This is really wrong. It's a weird myth that gets perpetuated in America where people don't really drive diesels.
Let's compare a 2.0L diesel Golf TDI to a 2.0L petrol Golf GTI. Same car, same displacement, both turbo engines.
The Golf TDI does 0-60 in 9.0s and a quarter mile of 17.0s@84 mph.
The Golf GTI does 0-60 in 5.7s and a quarter mile of 14.2s@100 mph.
There's a staggering difference in performance there. The TDI is so slow that it's genuinely difficult to find a Motor Trend instrument test on a slower car, because at that point, it's too slow to really bother.
I found the 2018 Rav4: 0-60 in 9.3s and a quarter mile of 17.0@82.
Their difference in 0-60 seems to be 6.4s vs 7.4s according to what I find. Guess the difference in higher regions might be even less, because of a different torque profile in turbocharged diesel engines.
0-60 is an awful way to measure acceleration; most of what it measures in modern cars is traction, since a Mk7 GTI will shred the front tires with a hard launch. So high five second and low six second times are both accurate, it just depends how good the launch was.
That's why you compare quarter mile times when looking at acceleration. And the GTI is still so much faster than the GTD; a full second and a half and 7mph trap. Meaning, in a drag race, the GTD wouldn't be close enough to read the GTI's license plate.
I've owned a (Jetta) TDI before, I even tried to make it fast. Even with a tune and full exhaust it was slower than a stock turbo petrol.
It's always Americans that talk about how awesome diesels are. I never see posts from Europeans (who are the ones that actually have to drive them) talking up diesels. They are always complaining about how terrible they are.
Diesels are great for trucks, but not cars.
a. the torque is great - not slow to accelerate at all. Try one! The PD engine had great low-end torque but the common rail has great torque for the entire power band, which is extensive. Really rapid. Perhaps you were driving an ancient SD-engined vehicle without a turbo??
b. Driving is so smooth; petrol is quicker to respond which is less forgiving.
Also, as the engine components are larger and slower moving, they last far longer; my work colleague's 2005 5-series BMW is nearing 250,000 miles and is still supremely fast. (Contrast with a bike engine that goes for 40k or 50k due to high revs?)
My 2008 Golf did get smokey but the guy I sold it to has been using the BP cleaning diesel (or the Shell equivalent) and says it doesn't smoke at all any more.
I like the sound of them; the non-sporty petrol cars round by me sound like the engine is rattling to pieces (eg my colleague's Vauxhall Astra); with high-performance tuned sports cars then yes the petrol sounds great. I rarely see any V-configuration engines these days.
This perspective is from myself in the UK.
And petrol cars don't smell?
> slow to accelerate
I think you've never driven a big modern engine diesel car. I have driven this BMW 535d[0] and believe me this monster is not "slow" in any way (0-100km/h in 5.5 seconds). It accelerates faster than the petrol equivalent because of the more torque it produces.
[0]http://www.automobile-catalog.com/car/2011/1337945/bmw_535d....
I at least find the smell of diesel actively unpleasant; petrol isn't something I'd choose to smell all the time but it's still nowhere near as bad.
Also consider that 3.0L I6 diesel has the same 0-60 as a 2.0L turbo four-cylinder Honda Accord, but a huge reduction in highway acceleration (traps 98mph vs. 103mph in the Accord).
[0]https://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/2017-chevrolet-cruze-ha...
[1]https://www.caranddriver.com/chevrolet/cruze
[2] https://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/2018-honda-accord-20t-a...
They are good for accelerating 0-40, but they are significantly slower at 40+ -- which is where most people accelerate hard, like merging on the highway or passing.
When I merge onto the highway, I use 5500-7000rpms, when I don't want to accelerate quickly, I use 2000rpms. It's why I hate driving diesels: 280ft-lbs at 2000rpms is useless and only 105hp; I want 280ft-lbs at 6500rpms (345hp).
Edit -- sources: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es034928d, https://theconversation.com/fact-check-are-diesel-cars-reall...
I wouldn't assume that there's a direct relationship between diesel engines still being around and diesel engines still having an advantage over others. Not having to replace your fleet of trucks, buses, trains or whatever is a big enough advantage for most companies.
Also, importing energy from other countries isn't a sign of poor energy production. If buying energy from you costs me less than turning my power plant on for a day I'm gonna shut it down and call it a day. Not to mention the fact that energy prices are sometimes negative (i.e., they pay you for taking it).
To add a bit, it should also be noted that many of the reliability issues that passenger diesels have are related to emissions equipment. Industrial diesels engines are not required to have all the fickle equipment, so they are generally much more reliable.
So buses and trains have significantly longer service lives and lower operating costs than passenger diesels do. Turns out, diesel engines are wonderful when you don't care about emissions.
I am a diesel car owner (have been for about 15 years) and I have yet to experience those issues you mention. Currently it has -12°C outside and my car starts just fine.
In the 20 years since then diesels have undergone massive and very rapid evolutionary changes through tax incentives (massively favoring low CO2, high MPG cars) and resulting fleet buying pressures. The result is what we have now: fabulously complicated, precision-engineered common rail engines with multiple turbochargers, incredible efficiency, almost petrol-like smoothness, weird stuff like urea tanks, and instant starting. If you put old vegetable oil in them they would break instantly and expensively.
I went from that AX in 1995 to a new Jaguar XJ6 in 2008 (via lots of petrol cars). The only thing they had in common was the black pump. In no other way were those engines comparable; the Jag was a beautiful, torquey, silky, rumbling thing that felt like a big V8, did 1,000 miles on a single tank, and beat 911s off the traffic lights (well, until 30mph). The AX was an agricultural dinosaur that deafened anyone in it and was so nose heavy you'd break a sweat parking it. One of those cars I could and did keep in tune with a hammer and a can of WD-40; the other needed a team of factory mechanics with computers and an expensive annual service. I sold it as soon as the warranty expired, but the AX was running fine until my sister drove it into a parked car shortly before I got the XJ.
Haha, an acquaintance of a local Linux user group I used to visit drives an old BMW which he has modified to run on vegetable oil. To be precise, oil which has been used for preparing french fries. You can easily recognize the smell. He was a car mechanic, I guess he knows quite well what he does.
The main issue with using alternative fuels in modern diesels is the injectors: unit injectors and common rail systems are high pressure, precision components that are very sensitive to fuel quality. Used frying oil is not clean.
So your mate's BMW either had some modifications to let it use vegetable oil reliably, or it's really old!
Nowadays with turbos, injectors, particle filters (required in Europe from 2007) and other fiddly bits, it's not clear that diesel engines have an advantage.
The particle filters are especially kludgy - most rely on having fuel injected down the exhaust pipe to burn the trapped cinders and regenerate the filter. If you don't run the engine long enough at 2000 rpm or so (to get the right temperature), you may clog the filter and need an expensive replacement.
(Worse yet, some designs just use the engine fuel injectors at the "wrong time" to get the piston to expel fuel down the exhaust pipe. This can contaminate the engine oil with diesel fuel and cost a few thousand in repairs, as a colleague learned the hard way ...)