Where are the diesels?

The US is way behind on low-sulfur diesel fuels.

Er...

The US is way behind the times on low-sulfur diesel fuel. Europe had it considerably earlier.

They have quite a few vehicles in Brasil, with a population in the order of the same as the USA They manufacture cars there.

Given, the USA has more cars, to be sure.

Brasil had a problem, when I lived there in the 70's, of having almost no oil production to speak of. Their production has increased, but they also now are moving to flexifuel cars capable of buring ethanol, gasoline, or compressed natural gas or propane.

Their approach to becoming independent of fuel imports was multifaced, and has worked for them.

Their ethanol comes mostly from sugar cane, not corn. Potatoes, mandioca, etc could be pressed into service if need be.

I couldnt quote specifications, but have no doubt that this is true.

In fact, the USA is behind in many areas compared with other parts of the world. We have achieved 20/20 tunnelvision ;>)

That must mean the analysis that oil companies are losing money by bringing oil out of the ground must be true also since plenty of people are grousing about the cost of gasoline. How does somebody grousing make ethanol production inefficient?

Well it should. 40 years ago milk cost 4 times as much as gasoline did.

which goes to show you that technical community knows squat about farming.

Negative for who? Why do you think farmers are the only people in the world not allowed to make a profit.

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Looks like EC is ahead of US

I was curious about cost comparisons. Is diesel more expensive than gas in EC as in US?

I have heard that in Brazil there are cars using both. Of course, Brazil is a warmer climate, so pure methanol would work better there (methanol has cold starting problems). My understanding is that cars must have considerably modified fuel systems, but it is doable. I don't think methanol use is nearly as wide as ethanol, but I have heard that there ARE vehicles using it.

For that matter, it certainly isn't rocket science to convert a car to run on methanol. Has anyone done a study on energy requirements and greenhouse gas emissions for use of methanol in US? Last time I bought methanol for my race car it was two bucks a gallon, but of course the car burns a lot more of it than if it were running on gasoline.

That's a point people don't think about when discussing the low price of E85. Here it's usually about 50-60 cents per gallon cheaper than gasoline, but you get what, about three blocks per gallon from it?

But the margin of improved fuel is just not that compelling. I can find a Toyota or Honda standard fuel car that will get in the high

30's mpg on substantially cheaper fuel and have more room than the oft- mentioned VW diesel. When the pollution from even the updated diesel motor is also added in I just do not see the attraction for buyers in the USA.

I dont know that methanol is readily available for fuel in Brasil, but I would not doubt that it could be used in their flex fuel cars.

Methanol is made, generally, from natural gas and that might be a poor choice in Brasil. Brasil uses a lot of natural gas from Bolivia and neighboring countries and it goes to home cooking,perhaps industry, etc but it would not, to me, make sense to convert it to methanol as a fuel when the cars there can already operate on the compressed natural gas.It would be more expensive, and you would lose part of the energy in the natural gas (methane, actually).

Brasil has been developing these methods since I lived there in the 70's, and has made great strides. The materials problems encountered in dealing with alcoholic fuels were essentially solved long ago.

Some areas of Brasil are not always so warm. I have seen ice in Sao Paulo, but for the most of the country you comment is true.

In Norway, where I have lived and can speak with a little bit of authority, diesel is cheaper than gasoline. Maybe 10% cheaper.. BUT gasoline there may run near to US$8 per US gallon. Obviously the tax is quite high.

With prices that high, you have to have cars that are economical, and the diesels are, at present, the way to go.

I expect hydrogen fuel to be commercially available there on a pilot or commercial basis long before it would be possible in the USA.

But the margin of improved fuel is just not that compelling. I can find a Toyota or Honda standard fuel car that will get in the high

30's mpg on substantially cheaper fuel and have more room than the oft- mentioned VW diesel. When the pollution from even the updated diesel motor is also added in I just do not see the attraction for buyers in the USA.

It has been cited that the average fuel mileage in Europe, because of the higher efficiency diesels, is something like 42 miles per gallon, and that if we in America averaged this sort of economy, we could essentially be free of foreign oil imports. That would be a good goal, I think.

It is not all about our personal driving whims...I think it is becoming far more serious than that.

The use of American biodiesel and ethanol are, as much as anything, ways to offset the foreign oil importations, which really DO hold us hostage.

The ethanol program using corn as the source is, IMO, a pork laden boondoggle but that does not mean that the concept is bad. It can be made to work, in the greater scheme of things, as can the biodiesel. But the government and ADM cant solve it in the way they have started out.

The emissions problems can, to some extent, be solved satisfactorily. The only real intrinsic emission, AFAIK, that is peculiarly related to the diesel is NOx. Carbon, particulates, etc can be dealt with.

Mercedes has cobbled up a system to reduce NOx on their rather high performance diesels, but it is a PITA. I have extreme faith that NOx emissions can be brought into reasonably acceptable limits, on more mundate motors, without too much trouble.

Buyers may not be able, in the foreseeable future, to base their buying decisions on the traditional factors of size, power, chrome, etc. I feel that we may be forced to become a lot more responsible and economy minded than we have been.

Head on over to your local area libraries.Popular Mechanics, or Popular Science magazines, a few years ago,about new improved European diesel car engines.

No body knows to this day yet what happened to Rudolph Diesel, when he disappeared off of that Ship between New York and Europe. cuhulin

In Brazil, they are using ethanol not methanol. Brazil due to a lack of oil resources used its sugar cane as the primary source of ethanol.

But it can also be made from wood (it is frequently referred to as "wood alcohol"). I had heard there were some folks making it from forest trimmings rather than just burning the wood scraps in bonfires. I thought there was a big deforestation process in Brazil, which is where I assumed they were making the methanol.

Even in this country, it seems like it would be a lot cheaper to make alcohol from wood scraps than from corn.

PetroBras, I believe, had some projects to make fuel out of quick growing trees like the eucalyptus and possibly even the gmelina trees. These were forestry projects. As far as I know, there are no significant wood distillation projects going on at present, but I could be wrong.

The deforestation of the rain forest areas is a lot of slash and burn agriculture, etc. and certainly some logging.

No doubt you have heard of Kudzu before.A few years ago, I read somewhere somebody was experimenting with converting Kudzu into fuel.That Kudzu grows in many places around here. cuhulin

A lot of organic material can be converted into fuel.

What we need is a sound, workable energy policy.. We need a direction.

And we havent had that.

In the UK where I live, fuel prices are horrendous: unleaded petrol (gasoline) is around 1.08/litre ($7.80/US gallon) and diesel is about

1.14/litre ($8.20/US gallon). Both these prices are for low-sulphur fuels which were introduced a couple of year ago.

Consequently, as HLS describes for Norway, there is a great incentive for cars to be as economical as possible - and using a diesel engine is one way of doing this. My 1993 1.8 petrol VW Golf averaged about 35 mpg (UK gallon) and my 1999 2.0 diesel Peugeot 306 averages about 50 mpg.

I can remember 30 years ago diesel fuel used to be considerably cheaper than (leaded) petrol - typically half the price. Then as prices went up and also as diesel-engined cars became more common, the price of diesel went up much more than petrol did, to the point where it was typically a couple of pence/litre cheaper than petrol. But in the last few years, the situation has reversed and diesel is now more expensive (1.14 versus 1.08 typically). The gap widened a lot when prices rose dramatically in the middle of last year due to the rise in the cost of crude oil.

My Peugeot is still a lot cheaper to run than my Golf was, but the difference is less than it was. The other big benefit is that diesel-engined cars (in my opinion) are a lot easier to drive: much greater torque at low engine speed which results in not having to change down so far to negotiate roundabouts (rotaries, traffic circles). And diesel engines run more slowly: on a motorway, my Peugeot runs a lot quieter at 2,500 rpm than the 1.8 petrol version which I borrowed when my car was being serviced which screamed away at nearly 4000 rpm. And the petrol engine ran out of puff at about 60: its 50-70 acceleration was very poor compared with that of the diesel - and 50-70 is what counts when you come up behind a slow lorry and have to accelerate to overtake it.