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Comment by geoka9 | Hacker News Reader

I wonder if the author realizes what a waste it is to drive a big car (let alone a fire truck) to the grocery store.

We all love nature. We go out of our way to live in a place where it is more spectacular. And yet we do our best to shit on it with the damn gas guzzlers. Because, you know, it's fun!

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The grocery store is perhaps a mile away, and he perhaps goes twice a week? So that's 100 miles/year, two orders of magnitude away from the national average. It's also substantially less co2 production than a flight from SFO to Hawaii.

Catalytic converters have a minutes long warm-up period beforce they approach a narrow interpretation of "effectiveness".

Oh, and since we are talking about diesels, they produce diesel particulate matter, ultrafine particles that can cause anything from cancer to nausea. Even modern diesel engines can't completely filter them.

If your point is that it's possible to do things that produce more egregious emissions, that's obviously the case. But that doesn't really justify anything. Billions of people, each making what they consider to be minor environmental indiscretions, adds up -- if we can speak in general terms about the math for the time being.

It sounds like he's not stealing his fuel or evading taxation on the vehicle, so any problem you have with it is a problem with your local tax structure. Take it up with the government, not HN.

(I think people are upset that clean energy costs more than dirty energy. But I'm guessing I pay a lot less to ride my bike to the grocery store than he pays to drive his fire truck there. So perhaps things are working as intended.)

It'll be slightly offset by the fact that it has a diesel engine. Not enough to make it equivalent to car, but it's something...

I've always wondered: why aren't there more diesel cars in the US?

Early on they earned a reputation for being expensive, slow, powerless, dirty, junk; thanks mostly to GM. GM for whatever reason, didn't want to invest much in a diesel engine, so they cobbled one together from gasoline engine plans, with different heads, crank, cams, etc. The engines were terrible, and it was a well known failure. Maybe it will be forgotten with the death or dementia of the last baby-boomer.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oldsmobile_Diesel_engine

Doubtful, even today's kids are wary of diesels, and I say that as a 24 year old...

1) They developed a negative reputation as being stinky, noisy, and complete dogs when it comes to performance.

2) Something to do with the sulfur in US diesel. Up until somewhere around 2005, US diesel had more sulfur than, for example, Europe. I think the issue was that diesel passenger cars would have trouble passing emissions requirements due to the fuel. (Trucks generally have more relaxed requirements)

Edit: Ah, here we go:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra-low-sulfur_diesel#United_...

Start at the paragraph beginning with "The allowable sulfur content..."

From what I gathered from a quick look at Wikipedia, probably the biggest factor is that diesel engines are best used for high-torque, low-speed applications.

This.

In Sweden 90% of the cars are diesel because they need the high-torque and low-speed in the snow, plus Sweden is big and there's only 9 million of them so most journeys are pretty long.

The 90% number is not true. Although the percentage of diesel cars has gone up dramatically, it is not that high. In 2011 only 17% of cars were diesel driven[1]. During the first two months of 2013, 63% of new cars were diesel[2].

[1] http://www.scb.se/Statistik/TK/TK1001/2011A01B/FORDON_2011_v... [2] http://www.scb.se/Statistik/TK/TK1001/2013M02/Trafikanalys_1...

With, of course, the usual "exception that proves the rule":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audi_R10_TDI

Because they used to stink and rattle.

The capital expense of a turbo diesel engine is unattractive given low U.S. fuel taxes. If fuel costs approached European levels, Americans would go nuts buying them.

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