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Today's diesel engines are virtually indistinguishable from gasoline (petrol) engines... except you get much better fuel economy and surprising torque. My 3.0L Q5 diesel is a mid-size SUV, and it just got 4.84 L/100 km (= 48.6 MPG US = 58.4 MPG UK) going from Canada to Florida! And that's with the A/C on all the way. Or I can do 0-60 MPH in 6.5 seconds if I floor it. Even the sound is close to a gasoline engine's (no diesel clatter). By comparison, a woman I'm seeing drives a smaller Honda SUV with a 2.2L gasoline engine, and she gets much worse fuel economy... brisk starts, 15mph above posted limits, foot on throttle until the last second then foot on brake... pretty much anti-fuelly driving technique. Driving technique is HUGE for fuel economy, but you have to want to get great economy to "play the game" all the time. I do. She doesn't. |
I came across this interesting article on Jalopnik this morning and will post it in this thread since it's also related to US fuel economy regulations, particularly of heavy-duty pickup trucks:
It's Time To Call Bull**** On The Biggest Cover-Up In All Of Pickup Trucks Quote:
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Next morning, yet another article I found cited on Jalopnik regarding our terrible US fuel economy standards, taking issue with CAFE:
https://www.autonews.com/article/2016...ng-cars-bigger Quote:
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I wonder how many of those big, heavy, clumsy inefficient trucks would pass "real World" emissions tests for C02/N0X and all the other crud that gets pumped out those huge exhausts? Still, easier to fine a multibillion dollar firm like VW for cheating than actually testing the biggest suspects of pollution out there. I found it very difficult to find any emission data for trucks due to their commercial nature when I did some research, passenger cars you can find every pollutant, emission and chemical to the nearest gram going, but trucks, it's near impossible.
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At the other end of the scale, it always bugged me that quadricycles and 3 wheelers don't need to publish figures. Reliants and Aixams (especially the 2 cyl diesel!) could have some of the best fuel economy stats, but you just have to hope someone on Fuelly has one. True, our published figures are a joke - but a comparative joke! The manufacturers don't seem to provide any.
Re: big polluting trucks, there's no surprise the old "one rule for them, one rule for everybody else" is in effect. |
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Mazda and Honda could compete if they got over their unwillingness to use SCR to meet emissions. Though Mazda might be waiting to fix the diesel in the crankcase issue first. Quote:
https://www3.epa.gov/otaq/crttst.htm I don't think anyone has shown an interest in parsing out the heavy light duty truck data from those spread sheets for an easier read yet. US vehicle emissions are like the CAFE for fuel economy. A manufacturer has to have a fleet average of bin 5 under tier 2 rules. For each dirtier HLDT sold, they have to sell a car that is cleaner than T2B5, or pay fines for that model year. https://www.dieselnet.com/standards/us/ld_t2.php We will be moving to Tier 3 rules with the lower sulfur gasoline becoming available. Quote:
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We're going through 1980s all over again. The goal then was 27 mpg by "so and so date". Manufacturers began producing and marketing trucks to the masses instead of just the contractor and tradesman. These pickups averaged around 14-15; they were gradually making them more efficient, but they applied the efficiency gains to horsepower, weight and duty (1/2-ton suddenly didn't mean 1/2-ton), off-road capability that few really use or need; and they're still doing it today. A 400 horsepower capable pickup today can get 18 mpg. In 1985, a 150 horsepower pickup could get 18 mpg, so it's not that technology was not and is not moving. It's just that those gains are misapplied.
Also, as a means to topple the CAFE standard at that time, the manufacturers expanded on a new type of vehicle that added a huge cargo and passenger space to a fully-capable-half-ton truck to make big vehicles appealing to more consumers. Those with larger families, etc. We already had the full-size van that could do everything this new vehicle could do and more, but it was stale and lacked appeal to the masses; so they upsized and luxurized the, then called RVs to a full-size platform for mass appeal and called it an SUV. Previous to the SUV, we had Broncos, Suburbans, and a Dodge Ram with a full body, but those were little more than toppers added to a pickup truck with some extra seats. The new SUVs were more purpose engineered from the platform beginning design to serve as pickups and SUVs. For some reason, we suddenly had to have these huge vehicles for minimum space, comfort, luxury, and capability, but it was probably more about status symbols as it always is in autos. We also started to grow in to them--literally! Soon these new vehicles were the status symbols of success in America: Explorer, Cherokee, Suburban, Tahoe, Expedition. We even had to make SUVs out of HD trucks: Excursion and Suburban HDs. By the 90s, Cadillac, Toyota, and Nissan joined in with their own versions of these monster trucks and SUVs born out of 1/2-ton duty. Power wars ensued. Gas prices raised it's ugly head in the next millennium and we start all over again. People can't figure out why fuel economy hasn't improved over all this time. Technology has done its part. Consumers though like to stop and put lots of gas in their vehicles during periods of low gas prices. That way there is a bigger chance more people will see them with their vehicle due to the time it takes to pump in 30 U.S. gallons. Wonder if fledgling gas prices have anything to do with the threat of lower fuel use in America via CAFE standards and the gas price drop has anything to do with the market response to such a proposition? I wouldn't think so, but it's happened twice this way...During a period of CAFE mandates, gas price fall outs have come in to ruin the chances of success. Maybe just a coincidence. |
Once they had to meet tighter fuel economy and emission standards, the full size station wagon started to full out of favor. During the transitional period of improved emission technology, they lost the power output people were use too, but they could still get it from a SUV or minivan. There is also perception factor, but SUVs allowed the manufacturer to sell people what they wanted.
Saudi Arabia is flooding the market with oil for several reasons. It hurts Iran and ISIS. It hurts non-tradition petroleum developement, like the tar sands and slate oil. And it hurts alternate fuels, for whatever use. It also hurts them to a degree. So they will cut back on supply, and prices will rise again in the not so distant future. |
Does anyone recall US President George Bush Jr. giving subsidies to stimulate SUV sales, and at the same time CAFE was attempting to legislate better fuel economy?
When gasoline (petrol) is cheap in the USA, hybrid and fuel-efficient vehicle sales plummet, and Americans turn to the big, gas-guzzling SUVs, pickup trucks, and full-sized cars. When pump prices go up, the same people cry to the government to "fix" their problem. |
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