Please...Toyota... gimmee a small turbo-diesel!

Yaris or Corolla 1.4 is not small enough for you?

Hans

In the US market, you can only get them with a gasoline engine. In Europe, for example, there are several Toyota turbo-diesels that get astounding fuel economy...

-jeff

I happen to be so lucky to live in Europe. :-) It is not only Toyota that has really impressive Diesels nowadays, most European manufacturers have very advanced Diesels. Technically they are great engines but I still prefer a gasoline since Diesels get high taxes here in NL.

Someone once told me that you can get every model from a manufacturer at any dealer anywhere in the world. I'm not sure if that is correct and I can hardly believe that it is automatically legal to drive and register. Maybe you can try to find out, maybe even someone else in this group can enlighten us.

Hans

No, it's very expensive/hard to bring a car into the US.

-jeff

Hence Toyota limit the amount they put through testing to the ones they know will sell well i s'pose.

Why does the NL tax diesels highly?

That does not sound logical (but politicians worldwide don't make much sense ).

It's because our diesel fuel was so dirty up until recently. So diesel cars won't pass the California CARB standards, and NY follows those standards, so anyone bringing a diesel car into the the US couldn't sell into the Cali or NY markets- obviously a huge problem. Now that our fuel is cleaning up, you'll see small turbo diesels from the Japanese.

It's a shame, because I think it's a superior way to get 50 mpg than a hybrid! A hybrid is very complex, while a diesel engine is very simple and time-proven.

-jeff

It does not really make sense but I think it is because Diesel engines used to be more pollutive than gasolines. As always rules are a bit behind the developments in technology since modern Common-rail Turbo Diesels with sooth-filters are a big improvement over the old Diesel-engines.

Although fuel-taxes turn it around: ?0.67/l gas and ?0.36/l Diesel. All-in-prices are about ?1.30 vs ?1.00.

Hans

We're going to assume you mean Euro 1.30 per litre for gasoline and Euro

1.00 per litre for diesel. Or just shy of $5.00/gal for gas and $3.78 for diesel.

Charles of Schaumburg

Try a newsreader with Unicode-support. ;-)

Google tells me it's about $6.30/gal and $4.85/gal:

That's quite a difference, are these the same gallons?

Hans

A bit behind huh ? right.. You believe that yourself ? Just like the "kwartje van Kok" was supposed to be temporary... Trust me, we're talking about a socialist government here and they will never ever do something that will reduce taxes in any form. The above mentioned "kwartje van kok" was supposed to be a temporary increase of 25 guilder/cents many years ago... temporary , yet it is still being charged. If they ever get rid of the higher taxes on a diesel car, the fuel taxes will be the same as for gasoline. They'll get you one way or the other. The above mentioned theory doesn't make sense at all since diesels are/were only attractive to people who drive many kilometers to take advantage of the cheaper variable cost versus the higher fixed cost of a diesel per year.. so , the people who would drive most kilometers would also be in the most polluting cars ? Doubt that reasoning.

yes, Modern diesels are very clean with the right fuel.

Problem in the US is that Fuel is still too cheap to make a big difference. Although a good hype like with hybrids could do it. Too bad diesels have a bad rep in the US.