A diesel Subaru is on its way...finally

Problem with Diesel in the US is that it now costs more than gasoline due to taxes in a lot of areas. Don't get me wrong, I owned a diesel and like them. I just recognize that the cost advantage has been heavily reduced by increased state taxes and diesel fuel requirements and higher maintenance schedule.

Do not get your hopes up,

Diesel is very different in Japan and in Europe.

In Japan and Euroipe, they have an extremly low sulphure content

Here, despite making HUGE profits, the petrolium industry still doesn't remove the sulphure from the diesel.

The result is that there is also no diesel cars imported... and we all know tghe reliability issues of the VW diesel compared to other engine.

I went to Europe a few years back and almost all of the compact cars had a

2.0L diesel engine available. Here, despite being the #1 market in the world, we do not get them and we only get a fraction of the engine selection available in europe.

Also, Toyota and Nissan have direct injection petrolium engine in europe and there is about 7 engine choices for the Mazda3 in europe.

Here we get 5000lbs trucks with 300bhp engine and also 300hp family sedan.

Charles Leblanc Impreza 2.2L

Any idea how the allowed sulphur content in California compares to that in Europe? I know the standard is different in my state, requiring special refining, driving the cost up when it should be lower than galoline.

There is hope. Soon there will be low sulphur diesel fuel available in the States and with it, I presume, a flood of imported diesel cars.

The only obstacle I see is if somehow, by some cabal, the big interests in Detroit decide to back hybrid electric to the detriment of diesel. GM has 20% stake in Subaru, so they can probably kill-veto bringing to US any Subaru diesel if they only wanted to. Same goes for other brands they control or have a big stake in, Opel, Saab, Volvo (?). Likewise with Ford and its web of influence spanning Mazda, Jaguar, and other makes.

DaimlerChrysler seemed to have already decided to go for diesel, they are selling a European engine in the US in their Jeep Liberty (CRD model- Common Rail Diesel).

Things appear to be set for a change.

Federal tax deduction (or I think it is some cut), is already here! Maximum will be $2400, or something like that, depending on vehicle/engine size. Individual states will likely follow suit with tax breaks/incentives of their own, once the Feds get going.

It is true that diesel in US. is not cheaper than gasoline but if tax breaks eliminate the added cost of a diesel engine purchase, the better milage will provide continuous savings and popular demand. Maintenance costs for a diesel I think are not much different than for a gasoline engine, there are no spark plugs/wires to change, fewer tune-ups (anything else?).

Here is an EPA link and quote:

In January 2001 and in June 2004, EPA finalized the Clean Diesel Trucks and Buses Rule and the Clean Nonroad Diesel Rule, respectively, with more stringent standards for new diesel engines and fuels. The rules require the use of lower sulfur fuels beginning in 2006 for highway diesel fuel, and

2007 for nonroad diesel fuel. These fuels will enable the use of aftertreatment technologies for new diesel engines, which can reduce harmful emissions by 90 percent or more. Aftertreatment technologies will start phasing into the diesel sector beginning in 2007 for highway and 2011 for nonroad. These programs will yield enormous long-term benefits for public health and the environment.

------------------------------

MN

Here's an article from the Driving section of our newspaper that sheds some light on diesel fuel costs.

Fuel for thought: It may not be time to buy a diesel car

BY MICHAEL D.TUSIANI

WASHINGTON . Automakers are eager to sell you a diesel-powered vehicle. One of their responses to the rising price of gasoline has been to tell motorists they can keep their large, powerful vehicles and at the same time save on fuel by buying a car or truck that bums diesel instead of gasoline.

Meantime, a new U.S. energy bill establishes a tax credit as large as $3,400 for diesels, matching the break the U.S. will allow for hybrids.

Diesel-fuelled vehicles do afford somewhat better mileage and may not require as much maintenance as gasoline-burners. But now and for years to come, the refining industry simply cannot produce enough diesel fuel to accommodate a significant increase in the number of vehicles that burn it.

At this year's auto show in New York, a DaimlerChrysler executive responsible for research and technology cited the success of diesel-engine automobiles in Europe while suggesting these vehicles could gain a five to

10 percent share of the U.S. market. His comments came with the introduction of a Mercedes-Benz station wagon scheduled to land in the U.S. in 2006. He did not mention, however, that the popularity of diesel-powered autos are pushing up diesel oil prices in Europe as demand pushes past supply.

European governments, working with automakers, have persuaded their citizens to replace gasoline-powered cars with diesel. They set tax rates to render diesel fuel cheaper than gasoline. But oil companies had no reason to invest in additional equipment for diesel production. Demand for diesel therefore bumps against the limit of supply. The marketplace will remedy such a situation, but it will be slow (because building new refining equipment takes time) and painful (because high cost fuel hurts the financially weak the most).

Refineries can make either a high yield of diesel or a high yield of gasoline, but hot both. European refiners built their equipment before governments started manipulating the fuel market. To date, they have declined to scrap money-making gasoline production units worth billions of dollars and replace them with more expensive diesel hardware.

But the market flirts with inducing such reinvestment. On a pretax basis, diesel has become much more expensive than gasoline in Europe. In five years, European refineries may complete the construction of equipment to significantly increase diesel oil output.

In the meantime, Europe will have to import ever larger quantities of diesel - that is, if it can find supply. Europe has raised its diesel quality standards to such a high level that few re-fineries in the world can manufacture an acceptable product. Interestingly, the United States can. During a few months last winter, U.S. refiners quietly shipped diesel to Europe. Because of U.S. demand, that could not continue.

These exports undoubtedly raised prices in North America while they lasted. The U.S. burns diesel mostly for commercial transportation. As the economy expands, more will be needed for trucks and locomotives to transport goods. In 2004 trucks and other diesel-burning vehicles required about 150,000 barrels per day more than in 2003 - a one-year increase of almost five per cent.

Like their European counter-parts, North American refiners have not seen any reason to invest in greater diesel production. In fact, they have a strong disincentive to build diesel-making equipment: Unless refiners can increase crude oil processing capacity, which seems unlikely, making more diesel will reduce gasoline production. Furthermore, they have gasoline production hardware that has only recently started to make solid profits for them as the price of gasoline rose this spring and summer.

In Canada, refiners produce a higher ratio of diesel to gasoline, and export high-quality diesel to the U.S. If Canadian motorists increased purchases of diesel autos, the country could supply their fuel needs to some extent by reducing exports. But the ability to do that depends on which country would pay the highest price for the fuel.

For diesel-powered autos and light trucks to achieve a market share of five to 10 per cent, U.S. motorists must be compelled to buy 800,000 to 1.7 million of them per year. We do not have the spare diesel production capacity to cope with the additional demand that would produce, and we will not have it for quite some time.

Give North American refiners about 10 years and they might significantly increase diesel production capacity. It would take about that long to plan new projects and run the regulatory and litigation gantlet. Until then, a motorist buying one will have to compete for expensive diesel fuel in an increasingly tight market.

In the meantime, diesels do not increase motorists' practical choices. If the U.S. energy bill had provided new sources of diesel fuel, it might have done some good. As it is, that $3,400 tax credit could just tempt drivers to make a mistake.

MICHAEL D. TUSIANI provides brokerage and consulting services to the oil, gas and maritime industries.

He is a senior fellow at Columbia University's Center for Energy, Marine Transportation and Public Policy.

This column originally appeared in the Washington Post.

I want a diesel wrangler unlimited

You might also factor in that the US gov't has passed new restrictions on diesel fuel that rival Europe's. We have not built a new refinery in around 20 years because the legal costs exceed the actual cost of building the plant. So the refiners are supposed to produce cleaner diesel with old plants already running at capacity. AFAIK this will also impact jet fuel and home heating oil as they all come out of the same process.

BTW, for the biodiesel folks you also need to figure out how many customers micky feeds with that 20 gals of oil every week. That will let you approximate the availability per customer.

Reality 1 is that the owner or his brother in law will get the oil and the rest of us won't.

Reallity 2 is that interupting the used grease stream will have other unexpected results. Right now it's an industrial commodity like used motor oil. It's bought and recycled into numerous other products we use in everyday life.

Just pointing out that life is not as simple as some folks like to tell us it is.

;-)

I don't know about Volvo, don't think so. However, Isuzu is part GM hence the engine envolvement.

Ok. That got my attention. I've got two years before I think about buying a new car. I'll keep my hopes high.

the absolute consumption of diesel engines (liters per miles) can be smaller than gas engines. european values: gas engine avg. of 8-9 liters per 100km (95 octane), diesel from 6-9, depending on car mass of course.

do the big concerns think that people in the US want a car that is saving lots of fuel?

modern diesel engines are as faulty as gas engines. they are full of electronic devices, sensors etc. just like gas engines. additionally there are the high-pressure injection parts (common rail: up to 1600 bar pressure). so, yes, that will be not much different.

btw. i think that the diesel fuel will be an obstacle even in future. the high-pressure parts of the engine rely on that. you only have to drive to the wrong gas station _one_time_ and half of your engine is broken... it is questionable if the big concerns really put their european/japanese diesel engines on US market unaltered.

MH

That's interesting... How will this happen ?

it is questionable if the big concerns really put their

Traditional diesel injection pumps use the fuel for the lubrication of their moving parts. I had a '92 VW Jetta with diesel engine, and it had

2 minor damages of the pump due to bad fuel within 4 years and 120.000 km.

The problem is that the sulfur in the diesel is good for lubrication but produces toxic emissions. Therefore the sulfur content is restricted e.g. in Europe, but additives must be given to the diesel to keep the lubrication effect.

As there are only few traditional gaskets in such injection pumps but many precision metal-to-metal bearings the lubrication is essential for the pump's life.

Of course, after taking bad fuel one time, your engine is not really broken, but the pump may have damages that cause some power loss and very reduced lifetime. This time lag is the tricky thing...

Measured on the european prices of spare parts, the pump for the Jetta was half the price of a new motor (only motor, without aggregats and pump).

In Common Rail engines, the need for lubrication is not as high as in VW systems (unit-injection), but proper operation still relies on several properties of the fuel.

MH

Well, there are plenty of VW diesels around doing fairly well in US. I hope they resolve the fuel issue, and market forces will do the rest, on the long run of course. By the way, you can mistakenly pour gasoline into a diesel in Europe too. I think it doesn't happen that often and won't necessarily damage the engine right away, it'll just stall I guess.

As a side issue, when I lived in Eastern Europe (Poland) in the mid 1980s, I had a 1985 Fiat Regata Diesel 1.7L. The engine was great (Fiat has a long diesel history and makes superb diesel engines). It was loud but the interior of the car was fairly well insulated.

Diesel fuel was low quality then and for better lubrication and to make it run a bit quieter, I used to mix small amounts of 2-cycle oil with diesel. It worked beautifully and burned surprisingly clean. I guess the higher temps in the diesel engine made it possible. Of course this was before catalytic converters, and multiple electronic sensors, so there was no danger of doing damage to these.

MN

"MN" wrote: =20

I didnt mean taking gas instead of diesel, only the lubrication ;)

You can mix 10% to 20% of gas into diesel to make it winter-proof (you know, below -20=B0C) if it isnt. =20

interesting. what amounts did you mix? i would guess, something about

1:100.

MH

Approximately 1/4 liter of oil (poured from a 1 litre container) to more or less 50 liters of diesel fuel (the modest sized Fiat had an unusually big tank 56+ liter). This makes 1:200 concentration. I forgot to mention it helped fuel economy too.

MN

What a shame. I guess its the way a decentralized government works. The taxes on fuel are mainly local affair and source of county/state revenue.

When I came to US. in 1987 (from Poland) I could not believe diesel cost almost as much as gasoline. In Poland diesel was about 40% cheaper than gasoline, and was not rationed like gas was (these were the communist days of shortages of all sorts, combined with Western sanctions on Polish government of General Jaruzelski).

It may be difficult indeed, as the culture of taxing fuel seems well entranched and local/state governments rely on these revenues badly.

With electric hybrids its a different story at least for the time being, as it seems culturally, and practically, far more difficult to tax these heavily. So far local goverments seem very supportive towards hybrids. I've heard San Francisco lets you park free at any city parking meter. Car-pool lanes are made available in most states.

It might be that hybrids will have an upper hand over diesels.

MN

Hi,

In my mind, "performance" and "diesel" never seemed to fit in the same sentence, but I recently found a story about a test M-B did on a new diesel that might change my mind. For years I've had a "bug" about finding a really nice old classic M-B 240D, certainly a poster car for "sluggish" (if not worse!) Once in a while I surf a bit to see what's out there, and last time I did, this story surfaced. I believe the cars involved were E-series (one of the bigger ones?), and they put several of them thru a test track regimen of 100,000 miles each at an average speed of ~238 kph/149 mph (seems the engineers decided on a test speed of 245 kph/153 mph though the drivers liked the feel of the cars at 265 kph/166 mph better.) The "fleet" average fuel economy for the entire test was just over 18 mpg!

All in all, I was impressed! Wonder how they'd do at average US speeds of maybe 65-75 mph? M-B's also reputedly working on a diesel mini-van,

140 hp, 70 mpg! If we Americans would ever get over our stupid "bigger is better" mentality, with the attendant horsepower (and fuel thirst!) race, I'd think diesels still hold a lot of promise.

Rick

I don't see why properly refined diesel should be lower cost that gasoline. Modern diesel fuel is no longer left over fuel, that was also sold as furnace fuel. Also it has about 15% more energy per unit. Modern diesel should cost more than regular gasoline.