Maine bans sales of new VW Disels

big brutish V8s in those American SUVs, which are legal in Cali/Maine..... >>

It's been my understanding that large/heavy trucks and SUVs don't have to comply to the same standards that light trucks and passenger cars do.

Reply to
Steve Grauman
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You've got to think like a large corporation. In the long run, it's far cheaper for them to pay off a few key politicians now than it is to switch to better/more expensive fuels. Doing so could cost them millions of dollars more, on a consistant basis, every single year than what they're spending now. Trucking companies don't give a crap about air pollution as long as they can protect their bottom line. That is, unless a public group of some sort puts a particular company out for everyone to see, and then community pressure can often force them to make changes. But that's the way most large corporations are. Our air, water, etc... would be far more polluted with waste than it is if environmental laws didn't exist to restrict the ways companies dump waste.

Reply to
Steve Grauman

I knew that large/heavy trucks and SUVs aren't held to the same saftey standard as passenger cars, but I had no idea that minivans were ever granted exception. Minivans such as the Toyota Sienna and Honda Odyssey (as opposed to heavy work vans such as the Ford Econoline series-there's even a Superduty variant of the Econoline!) are car based, so it doesn't make any sense to exempt them from the safety standards passenger cars have to meet. I'll have to ask my father (he handles all the registration stuff at my house) but my Mother's RX300 is car based. I wonder if it gets registered as an SUV, a light truck, or a car?

Reply to
Steve Grauman

Here, here.

Reply to
Numan

This is old news. Maine, New York, Connecticut and Massachusetts are all banning 2004 and newer diesel passenger cars. In 2006 the cleaner diesel fuel becomes mandatory, so maybe this will allow TDIs into these states again.

Reply to
Ken Sternberg

It *has* been regulated! By June '06, diesel in the US will have a sulfur limit of 15ppm. US diesel now averages about 350ppm. BTW, the current European standard is 50ppm, and California already has low sulfur diesel too.

The diesel car ban is nothing but a trade barrier -- no American car company makes diesel cars, only trucks. Keeping diesel cars out under the banner of air quality is simple protectionism.

For example, the Jetta is the third best selling small car in the US. If the TDI were for sale in CA, which has the most expensive fuel and longest commutes, Ford could lose a lot of Focus sales! The same potential exists all over the country. And not only do US automakers not have any diesel product to offer, they have none in the works, either. So if diesels suddenly became popular, US automakers could lose significant market share, especially to the Europeans.

Matt O.

Reply to
Matt O'Toole

Exactly. I did not mean to suggest the trucking companies and unions were dumb. It is simply a money issue to them.

Reply to
Joseph Meehan

Cali/Maine..... >>

Reply to
skydivertu

Yup, you can blame it on all the Mass-holes who moved to Maine and liberalized the gov't. Now living in Maine is like living in Kennedy's back yard. Sad, very sad.

Reply to
dukecola

Ha ha, it the election laws introduced by the founding fathers and never updated. Hence the winner takes it all system that makes it really easy for interest groups to buy one. Change the system and include the possibilities of the voting computer and things will be different.

Reply to
Baudolino

Who says they do? US automakers don't seem to mind outsourcing their engines - GM is buying engines from Honda and Toyota, and Chrysler has had a long-standing relationship with Mitsubishi. What's to stop them from buying TDI engines from VW, as well?

-- Mike Smith

Reply to
Mike Smith

You haven't seen the people claiming they lost votes with the new computer systems??

Reply to
DWebber711

Oh, yeah, just what we need - proprietary voting machines that can be hacked by any 16-year-old script kiddie. Until they embrace open source, electronic/internet voting is a *bad* idea.

-- Mike Smith

Reply to
Mike Smith

Chrysler bought many engine/trans from VW for their Omni line.

Reply to
DWebber711

In Ontario, Chrysler builds the Dodge Caravan in Brampton. VW Canada supplies the Chrysler plant with TDI diesel engines. However, these vehicles are shipped abroad and we don't get them in Canada...

It would make sense, to me...I mean, look at the number of minivans....why isn't there a TDI available in a Minivan?

- Pete

Reply to
Pete Cressman

I haven't forgotten this. Maybe you missed my post talking about how the trucking companies have been paying off politicians for years because it's cheaper than being reamed with higher fuel costs.

Car companies build big cars because American consumers want big cars. The high fuel consumption is just an added bonus being reaped by the major American oil providers.

You don't seem to have a firm grasp of supply and demand. The compact hatchback has never had a major presence in North America, but it has in Europe. Why? American consumers don't respond as well to them as European consumers do, and the auto makers aren't going to import large numbers of cars that don't sell well here. Station wagons dissappeared for similar reasons. Americans stopped buying them and started buying Minivans, so manufacturers began down-sizing the number of wagons they were building and up-sizing the number of minivans they were building. When the minivan craze slowed down, the SUV craze picked up, and guess what happened? The fact that station wagons are even still sold in the U.S. is a miracle, it's a market segment kept alive by the few people left who refuse to needlessly buy SUVs.

Sadly, this is right on. Japanese cars never would've been able to push their way into mass popularity in this country if the gas crisis hadn't made it nearly impossible for the "average Joe" to continue driving the same old gass-guzling, V8-powered American vehicles of the day. Europeans started buying compacts the way they do largly because fuel is so expensive in most European countries.

Bah, auto manufacturers will build whatever they think they can sell. If the American public started demanding more diesel powered passenger cars, they'd get here. MB, BMW, Audi, and countless other companies are already building them for several European markets.

B.S., the Focus is Ford's biggest revenue earner as far as Passenger cars go. It's not hard to see either, count the number of Focus you see in a day Vs. the number of Taurus you see in a day.

Ford has at least one quite popular diesel variant of the Focus selling in the U.K. as we speak. I'm sure that GM's Opel/Vauxhall divisions have at least one diesel as well. It's as easy as switching the position of the steering wheel and slapping on new badges more often than not. Look at what GM has done with the Holden Monaro, it's now also our "new" GTO.

California has more cars in it than any other state in the union by a large percentage. If you include the county, Los Angeles is the biggest city in the country by leaps and bounds, and the average L.A. family owns 2 cars. It's in our best interest to regulate the fuel, otherwise we'll end up with even worse air quality that what we've already got. Do you realize that air quality in this city has actually gotten *better* since 1960? Thanks to the regulations.

Reply to
Steve Grauman

And the Sprinter is powered by a MB diesel.

Reply to
Steve Grauman

Reply to
Rob Guenther

Why would Chrysler put VW diesel engines in its vans when it can get Mercedes-Benz diesel engines from within the same company?

Reply to
Timothy J. Lee

Well, I don't know...this was about 2 years ago, so things might have changed since then...

- Pete

Reply to
Pete Cressman

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