261 MPG Volkswagen XL1 diesel plug-in hybrid
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What I'm saying is I would really like VW to come out with a Diesel Hybrid. Given how they push their diesel cars as 'Clean Diesel' I'm surprised they haven't already released one.
A few drawbacks, though:
* The DSG transmission has a weird bug that causes some lurching at low speeds, like the transmission suddenly up & down-shifts repeatedly. Many drivers report this same issue but my dealership won't acknowledge the problem. They have been unable to reproduce it. I can reproduce it every morning when leaving the parking garage.
* Diesel is an oily fuel that does not evaporate. Most pumps I use have a nice layer of diesel coating the handle that never goes away. I now have to wash my hands after every fueling.
* The TDI engine adds a bunch to the price of the car. Hopefully the claims that the engine needs less maintenance will be true and will help offset the initial extra cost. I easily get 32 mpg with combined city and brief highway every day. On long trips it's easy to get up to 42-46 mpg, so that should help offset the extra cost too.
* Diesel is currently more expensive than gasoline, but I'm betting on that changing in the future. Diesel powers industry which should have a more constant and predictable demand curve. It shouldn't be subject to the drastic price fluctuations that gasoline sees. We'll see how that works out.
The savings don't add up to a great deal compared to the cost of the car either ;) - the savings on fuel cover repairs and routine servicing on my second-hand diesel car, which works for me, but it doesn't actually add up to a huge amount per year. Maybe around £500, or $750. This is at UK fuel prices too, currently $8.20/US gallon for diesel and $7.80/US gallon for petrol, and I mainly drive my car round town, where diesels seem to be comparatively more efficient than petrol cars (though obviously it's not a great thing for either).
(Of course, if my car requires nothing doing one year, or less than £500 of stuff, then I'm quids in! - but this hasn't happened yet. Hmm... maybe next year?)
Disposable nitrile gloves.
When I have to fill up the portable tank for the lawn mower, I take some disposable latex gloves along. (Exposure is a short enough period of time that this seems to provide adequate protection for gasoline, at least based on the "smell test".)
It's slightly wasteful, I suppose. OTOH, a random piece of plastic packaging discarded may be more wasteful. And I'd prefer to keep that stuff out of my innards. And, since gas cans in the U.S. have all been redesigned to store the pouring spout internally, I haven't found one that does not force me to get gasoline all over my hands when I use it.
On sale, the latex gloves are something like US$3.50 for a box of 50 (25 pair). I think I've seen nitrile gloves for not a lot more.
Although its physical and chemical properties vary depending on the polymer’s composition of nitrile, this form of synthetic rubber is generally resistant to oil, fuel, and other chemicals (the more nitrile within the polymer, the higher the resistance to oils but the lower the flexibility of the material).
Sorry to hear about your issues with the DSG. It Just Worked for me. The 1-2 and 2-3 shifts were flawless and I could barely feel the loss in power as it shifted. Until the last few months before my accident, I never used the manual mode. But I discovered that switching to manual mode and leaving it in 4th gear kept the diesel in the perfect power range (3500-4000 rpm) for fun drives through the local mountains of northern Sydney. And even with the harder driving, I would still end up with an average of about 6.5-7 L/100km. Very, very impressive!
Here in Sydney, diesel is a bit more expensive than petrol (0.05-0.10 AUD/L). But I was shocked how much more diesel cost on a trip back to the US over Christmas. Differences of 1 USD were not uncommon. I still think that long-term even with that price difference the diesel would work out better.
The only draw back about the TDi was the lack of immediate power from a stop, while the turbo spinned up. I had forgotten what it was like to move immediately until I rented a petrol car (2012 Audi A1 - and clearly inferior to the VW Golf) for 6 weeks. You can't have everything I guess. :)
Not that I personally care about appeasing such people.
Of course, taxes per mile make for a more interesting comparison than taxes per gallon, so the higher per-gallon tax isn't necessarily the best metric to consider. But the higher taxation does mean that fluctuations in the price of oil has less of an impact percentage-wise.
[1] http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_taxes_in_the_United_Stat...
I would do the same with gasoline. In fact, I wash my hands after being in a car at all, just for good measure. There are quite a few poisons that accumulate in and around cars and roads.
That said, you can also do your fellow diesel drivers a favor and just wipe the handle on the pump with a paper towel, if there is one available.
Is it available in manual? If so, I want it.
1. I like manual transmissions. 2. The added maintenance costs for the DSG for factory service is around $1k at the 40k mile point.
Somehow I don't see that replicating my enjoyment of a true stick shift.
But a moped has a low top speed, and weights nothing compared to a car.
It's impossible for something that heavy to have better mileage than a moped.
Normal modern diesel engines are unthrottled [1] and control the power output of the engine by limiting the amount of fuel injected to the engine. The unthrottled bit is important--we'll come back to that. For now, just note that the engine computer can't regulate how much oxygen gets into the combustion chamber.
By comparison, modern gasoline engines use a throttle to control how much oxygen gets into the combustion chamber. On top of that, the fuel injection is computer-controlled to deliver enough gasoline to the engine so that all oxygen is consumed and there's some left-over gasoline from the combustion. That leftover gasoline plays an important role in temperature control--liquid matter tends to have much more specific heat than gaseous matter. The gasoline absorbs some of the heat released from the combustion such that combustion chamber temperatures don't spike, creating excessive NOx.
Back to diesel engines, because the basic design of diesels uses no throttle, the engine will have minimal post-combustion liquid droplets to absorb the excess energy (heat) that would cause massive NOx emissions.
There are workarounds:
I. Some diesel engines introduce throttles for this purpose [2], but adding a throttle to an engine introduces pumping losses to the engine. Being throttleless is one of many reasons why diesel engines tend to be more efficient than equivalently sized gasoline engines. This system tends to cost more because of the extra engineering involved.
II. Diesel exhaust fluid [3] can be sprayed into the exhaust stream of diesel engines. DEF is pretty much urea and purified water. The urea combines with NOx to form ammonia and CO2. A selective catalytic reducer (SCR) downstream converts the ammonia into water and N2. This system is somewhat simple and clean, but is open to lazy and cheap owners. I've been told that this system is disallowed in America for consumer vehicles. The DEF is consumed fairly quickly and needs to be refilled at least as frequently as oil changes. There's no reasonably cheap way to regulate that cars have adequate DEF, as the engines will run just fine without it. The only side effect to a diesel engine out of DEF is that it'll output NOx like your typical 1970's car in Los Angeles. Owners have little incentive (beyond moral obligation) to refill DEF according to a schedule. They might even be ignorant as to the side effects.
So long story short, producing consumer diesels that meet regulations is pretty hard. The freight industries are not as regulated regarding diesel (maybe land-shipping industries are more tightly regulated?...there are holes in my knowledge).
[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel_engine [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Throttle#Internal_combustion_en... [3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel_exhaust_fluid
The model they are now considering to build is based on a variation of the concept, that they showed in 2011. If I remember right the first concept was not a hybrid but only powered by a diesel.
The car is said to go into production in a small series and to sell for about 50k€. I guess it has been pushed by Piech himself who is famous for pushing out complex engineering concepts to production even tough the company will loose money on every sold product. (See also Bugatti Veyron)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_1-litre_car
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ein-Liter-Auto_von_VW
It says that they're planning a small production run of 100-1000, price expected in the € 30-50K range (not the $600 rumored), components are quite expensive, for example a carbon fibre body. My guess would be that they're limiting the production run because they're losing money even at those prices.
http://www.zeit.de/auto/2012-03/volkswagen-ein-liter-auto
On the other hand girlfriend's several year old Polo regularly gets 3L/100km, so around 78mpg. Every time we actually have to fuel up is a bit of a shock :-)
There is an electric equivalent mpg called mpg-e: http://www.edmunds.com/fuel-economy/decoding-electric-car-mp...
Mind you, it runs a little slower, but I choose the planet and my children's future over convenience and luxury.
A lot of US towns and cities are not really designed in a way that promotes non-automobile transportation.
Or maybe you're not actually better than everyone else. I can tell you that your fair trade coffee and quinoa sure didn't arrive from South America by foot.