40 mpg Prius vs 50 mpg European Diesel cars

There is more energy in diesel than in gas.

Reply to
Bill
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We get mid/upper 40s in our hybrid around this hilly mountain town even with short trips and cold weather. In Phoenix it is consistently over 50 mpg in town, running A/C in a car that carries 5 adults easily and has what is effectively a perfectly smooth automatic transmission. Sitting at lights it is dead quiet most of the time and on the road it's still on the quiet side of average. In all states in the US it has the SULEV emissions rating. The merging capability is better than any of our other cars, including our 1985 turbo Volvo (gotta hate that turbo lag!) Ours is the older, less efficient version - and represents a technology in its infancy.

I give diesel its due: it has undeniable advantages as an auto fuel.

Mike

Reply to
Michael Pardee

You bet - mileage that poor would disappoint any Prius owner. Ours has been that low on some 75 mph trips where the elevation increased a lot, or when plowing through snowy streets, but otherwise 40 is unacceptably low for a Prius.

Mike

Reply to
Michael Pardee

MB(Dodge/Freightliner) has been selling Sprinter Van for years now

It is the UPS Vans you see daily everywhere on the street. MPG is around 27-28.

Reply to
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz

No, it would be done the way the Prius does it: spin the engine up to speed before applying compression (that is, hold the valves open) and fuel.

Reply to
richard schumacher

That for a long time Diesel engines were more economical to operate than were gasoline engines, back when nobody gave a shit about emissions.

Reply to
richard schumacher

Same holds true with gas engines. When I spent some time in Vietnam the streets of Saigon were choked with smoke from motorbikes and trucks, many were two cycle gas engines. This was in the late sixties. I think we've cleaned up gas and diesel engines quite a bit from those days.

Reply to
The ambivalent dbu.

A lot of people used to be very sloppy and/or careless when they filled up and the next in line usually got some fuel on the bottom of their shoes, which meant tracking it inside the car. Gasoline without the scent added smells gross. I buy clear K-1 and though I'm very careful with it I do get some on my hands. It lingers like chlorine bleach. I don't care how clean diesel becomes in the future, the exhaust is typically very heavy and doesn't dissipate as easily as the fumes from burned gasoline. I don't know a single person who enjoys being behind a diesel, in slow traffic, on a hot summer day.

mark_

Reply to
mark digital

Diesel is cheaper than petrol in most of Europe too, in some places about two thirds the price of pertol, but in France at least the gap is narrowing.

In the UK diesel is slightly more expensive, but that is becuse of taxation differences. The rate of taxation on motor fuel is getting on for 400%!

Reply to
Martin Dixon

I would speculate that one problem with a diesel hybrid would be the extra power needed to crank the engine, remembering that this will happen quite frequently in a hybrid. This may mean more batteries (and hence weight) and a heavier engine anyway, meaning that the engine will need to run more frequently than it would in a petrol powered hybrid.

The hybrids that I have seen have clearly been designed to minimise weight, even perhaps compromising braking and cornering performance by fitting narrower tyres. With present technology, it is even possible that the extra weight required by a diesel engine would cancel out the gain in fuel economy compared to a petrol engine.

The one thing that would really make hybrids irresistable would be a means of charging the batteries from the mains. That way, even less fuel would be burned (at least by the car). But I doubt the oil companies would allow that to happen.

Reply to
Martin Dixon

I would expect a hybrid to do well in stop start driving, since regenerative braking saves fuel as does not running the engine when the car is stationary. For open road driving it won't be much better than any other petrol car, since the only saving comes from running the engine at optimal efficiency, and against this we have the losses in the generator and motor.

Reply to
Martin Dixon

Do people still beleive that propaganda. I understand a recent summary has shown that global warming stopped in 1998, and global temperature has been stable since then.

But the GW industry is now such a juggernaut that I doubt something like facts will derail it. They will still be hyping up GW when the ice age comes!

Reply to
Martin Dixon

covering the weaknesses of the other. There is no

and 80 mpg on the freeway, at least at 65 mph.

cranking torque, so you'd need more powerful motors

'bumped' as its low compression.

Nope. The VW diesel uses the same starter as the gasoline model, about 3 hp. A 20 to 50 kw motor will easily spin the diesel motor.

Lynn

Reply to
Lynn McGuire

Does the hybrid engine actually stop and restart then? I had always assumed that it simply dropped to a tick over when not required. Having to restart each time must be horrendous.

Reply to
Keith Willcocks

Yep. On rare occasions mine shudders slightly when shutting down but otherwise it's not noticeable. A common hybrid experience is sitting at a light listening to the folks around you wasting fuel for no good reason. I corrected the subject line.

Reply to
Bill

Actually, my Peugeot 406 HDI diesel (the common rail engine) averages 46mpg . This means that, to average 46, it must at times exceed 50 to counteract higher consumption in traffic. Bear in mind though that these averages are using the Imperial gallon, not the smaller US one. Factoring the US gallon into my spreadsheet shows an average of 35mpg(US). I assume that the figures quoted for the hybrid are US, not Imperial?

Reply to
Keith Willcocks

News out today (or, at least, reported today on BBC-tv) is that the very freshest scientific calculations suggest (a) that the probability of the changes we've seen so far being natural are somewhere around 1% and (b) by 2050 or so we can expect global temperature rises of 3 degC. Maybe the BBC website has more.

It gives me NO pleasure to pass on that news, FWIW. :-(

Reply to
Andrew Stephenson

As you seem to realise but shrug off, the energy to charge the batteries would still have to come from somewhere. Needing to seek out a mains socket would involve some energy wastage, to which add those occasions when you are caught short with a flat battery, to which add the energy used in hauling around the much larger (and heavier) batteries required to give a decent range.

Sorry but TANSTAAFL (There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch). And I doubt the oil companies would have much say in the matter.

Reply to
Andrew Stephenson

Martin Dixon wrote: snip

Why not?, what they'd lose in fuel sales they'd make up in hydro charges!...

And this facility would be very easy to implement too I'd think, you wouldn't need much amperage because the charge time can be made long...most cars sit for hours in your driveway or garage.

I wonder if you could have one winding of a transformer buried in the floor of a garage and carry the other (secondary) winding on the bottom of the car?...then just park somewhat carefully and no need to 'plug-er-in'... :)

Remember you heard it first here from me!...

Reply to
Gord Beaman

Your understanding is in error.

Facts support it. Moreso now than ever.

Reply to
Michelle Steiner

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