Hacker News Reader

Comment by MisterTea | Hacker News Reader

The US wasn't suspicious of Diesel. People here associated them with being too dirty, noisey and high vibration. They didn't want to drive something that ran like a truck or bus. Of course this was in the 70's/80's when there were barely any emission controls and engines were all mechanically controlled. Unfortunately that image stuck with them well into the "clean" diesel era. Shame as my friend had a diesel Passat with manual transmission and it was amazing on fuel and fun to drive.

View on HN

We learned when VW's diesel cheating scandal came to light that your friend's Passat probably wasn't as clean as the company claimed. It was fun to drive because VW made it run dirty when not on the test stand. This doesn't seem like a good argument for diesel vehicles.

Try following a diesel versus a petrol as a cyclist. There are estimates that the push for diesel is directly responsible for tens of thousands of excess deaths in the UK, for example.

Are you referring to a modern clean diesel with DPF/SCR or the old mechanical smoke belching rattlers? My friends Passat was a 2009 model I believe.

The 2009 model year is when VW started to program their diesels to cheat on emissions tests.

Diesels from 2009 produce 5-10x higher emissions than the regulatory limits when used in real world conditions. Even diesels built this year vastly exceed the required emissions. They actually had to include a fudge factor which they’re slowly decreasing because diesels were so much worse than they were supposed to be.

Are you referring to a modern clean diesel...

"...or my friend's 2009 VW?" When speaking of emissions output, I find it amusing that your anecdata involves a Volkswagen diesel.

I don't know how true this is but I've heard the older diesels (2000 era) actually had lower NOx emissions than the newer models due to them running at lower temperatures as they weren't trying to hit newer regulations on particulate emissions.

This also then led to newer models emitting finer particulate which was more easily picked up by the wind and could travel into the lungs more easily instead of denser particulate which fell to the roadside.

This is definitely my experience - breathing diesel exhaust now makes my lungs immediately tighten up in a way that didn't used to happen. Perhaps I'm just getting old though.

> "Unfortunately that image stuck with them well into the "clean" diesel era."

Or, fortunately as it turned out. "Clean" diesel is a public health disaster in Europe. The US dodged a bullet by not jumping on that bandwagon.

People everywhere associated them with being too dirty, noisy, and high vibration.

The US just didn't provide the incentives to push people to buy them due to their efficiency. We pretty much said "yeah, keep driving that F-150".

It turned out that fuel economy was not the only important thing to consider. You could say we lucked into not increasing diesel adoption.

(I own a diesel vehicle with SCR, and an petrol engined vehicle, and an EV)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com