Edmunds.com | Inside Line | Auto Observer Your Account | Help | Directory
You are here:
![[F]](http://a332.g.akamai.net/f/332/936/12h/www.edmunds.com/media/townhall/webxicons/site.gif){kind=small}
Forums
Automotive News & Views What Would It Take for YOU to buy a diesel car?
1503 messages, Last post on Nov 14, 2009 at 1:11 PM
You are in the Automotive News & Views Forum. Your Hosts are steve_ & claires
|
Replying to: lilengineerboy (Jan 26, 2009 4:30 am) While the Tahoe hybrid may offer a slight improvement over the non hybrid. It is in no way worth the higher price. GM could have had a real hit by putting a 6 cylinder diesel into the Tahoe class SUV. They could have easily made 25 MPG highway and not neutered the vehicle for towing. I got as high as 22 MPG on the highway with my old GMC hybrid PU truck. No thanks to the hybrid. In town it was the same old 15-16 MPG as all the other trucks I have owned. The Tahoe with 5.3L V8 gets 20 MPG on the highway and will tow 2500 lbs more than the hybrid. So that is only a 10% improvement over the non hybrid Tahoe. I think that all the Domestics and most of the Asians have missed the mark on large SUV power. They need to look at the German offerings to see where true economy resides. Within the next few months, VW and Audi will join BMW and Mercedes with 6 cylinder diesels that will blow the socks off anything offered in the USA. The BMW X5 diesel does the 0-60 MPH in 6.5 seconds. Try keeping up with any of the gas guzzling GM Hybrid SUVs. Then knock out 26-30 MPG on the highway. |
|
|
Americans Owe Five Months of Their Lives to Cleaner Air Let's not hammer the guvmint for wanting clean diesels. It helps us to live longer. Are you a city dweller? The cleaner air of this "going green" era may actually be increasing your lifespan. A new study by researchers at Brigham Young University and Harvard School of Public Health shows that average life expectancy in 51 U.S. cities increased nearly three years over recent decades, and approximately five months of that increase came thanks to cleaner air. "Such a significant increase in life expectancy attributable to reducing air pollution is remarkable," said C. Arden Pope III, a BYU epidemiologist and lead author on the study in the Jan. 22 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. "We find that we're getting a substantial return on our investments in improving our air quality. Not only are we getting cleaner air that improves our environment, but it is improving our public health." The research matched two sets of data from 51 cities across the nation: changes in air pollution between about 1980 and about 2000; and residents' life expectancies during those years. The scientists applied advanced statistical models to account for other factors that could affect average life spans, such as changes in population, income, education, migration, demographics and cigarette smoking. In cities that had previously been the most polluted and cleaned up the most, the cleaner air added approximately 10 months to the average resident's life. On average, Americans were living 2.72 years longer at the end of the two-decade study period; up to five months, or 15 percent, of that increase came because of reduced air pollution.
|
|
|
Replying to: larsb (Jan 26, 2009 7:08 am) And that makes the same guvmint social programs less sustainable. We are living too long in retirement as it is. Not sure what that all has to do with wanting a clean diesel that saves fossil fuel for future generations. Life is a compromise. |
|
Dynas, "GM and the Diesel-Like Gasoline Engine" #21, 27 Jan 2009 12:50 am
|
|
|
Replying to: steve_ (Jan 27, 2009 3:37 am) |
|
|
|
|
For more diesels to be offered by more manufacturers. Clean diesel is not an oxymoron like clean coal. It's not perfect, but it could be a short-term solution to just gasoline. A diesel electric hybrid would offer quite a bit of performance and even more economy. The the new ultra-low sulfur diesel fuel and new engine designs, you cannot tell a diesel is a diesel now except by looking at the engine itself or the tachometer (diesels run lower rpm then gas). Yes, diesel is more expensive, but you still burn less fuel. Plus, the more diesels they build and the more diesel refined, the more the cost is defrayed, eventually lowering the cost for consumers. Unfortunately, gas is cheap again,making everyone forget last summer. I guess it's kinds of a good thing, since more people(like me) are losing their jobs everyday. Imagine the trouble we'd be in if gas was still $4.00/gal. |
|
 -- hehe don't care to much about the smell as long as it is clean it can stink so to say. What I complained about was the smell of unburnt hydro carbons (pore combustion), particles (and you don't need to bike to suffer from that one).... in other words the nasty stuff not the smell it self. Na it's right we might never get 100% green, as everything will require some sort of energy to make. However I think it's will go less energy to produce a bike of 20 lbs than a car of 2000 lbs. Grin nope will not go into the toss about the energy it takes to get the food to the store etc.. and thats more than it takes to get the gas to the gas tank so to say. So how would you get around in a densely created city like, NY or London? Take the car? Don't think so, it take 2 hours to get to the city center in a car and 45 min with bike, train and sneakers .. Cheers Dyna PS: I'm a she
|
|
|
Replying to: Dynas (Jan 27, 2009 7:40 am) Of course it would not be rocket science to project what that would do to the economy of London UK, as we know it, and the others. While I can not speak for others, nor even the examples I cite, CA is experiencing a trend exodus. But then politicians spend all their energies making the environments down right hostile to business (people also) then when they move out, wonder why they all moved !!!! This is exactly what is happening in the municipality where I live. The local councilperson did everything under the powers to drive folks and business out. Now as mayor, wonders what can be done to attract business and people.  
|
|
|
Replying to: Dynas (Jan 27, 2009 7:40 am) So you are a lady in London that does not like the exhaust blowing in your face while riding your bike. I suppose if I could put myself in your situation I might feel as you do. I always picture London as it is in Lovejoy, one of my favorite series. I do imagine much of the diesel smell that you are getting in the city comes from delivery trucks, many of which don't have much in the way of particulate traps. All the recent diesels sold in the USA are very clean compared to those sold in the 1980s. The biggest issue was the fuel being cleaned of sulfur. That is where the nasty smell came from. I am just getting ready for the alternatives to become available for diesel. Such as biodiesel made from algae. Nothing much being worked on that will directly replace gasoline. So what ever you are burning now will be the same in 10-20 years. Unless someone comes up with a viable substitute for unleaded gas. We don't want to run you off. We like to hear what is going on in other parts of the world.
|
|
|
Replying to: gagrice (Jan 27, 2009 1:23 pm) |
|
You are here:
Forums
Automotive News & Views What Would It Take for YOU to buy a diesel car?
