Talking to a friend who works as an engineer designing modern diesels he said he wouldn't own a car he helped design outside of the warranty if it was a diesel.
Shows a serious lack of trust in their capabilities, and that of their team.
A bridge should last "forever", which is to say that it will be clear when it needs to be replaced before it actually fails. Car engines are routinely used until they break, then repaired and used until they break again, and this continues until it's no longer financially viable.
To meet the increasingly stringent emissions controls, and people's desire for a car that is reasonably cheap and accelerates at a decent rate, the cars seem to have become rather complicated, and reliability has been affected.
Common points of failure seem to be:
- dual mass flywheel (presumably the regular swift ramping-up of torque doesn't help)
- turbo charger (obviously spins very quickly and unlike a petrol engine it comes on from about 1500rpm so it's used a lot)
- diesel injectors (high precision components operating under pressure)
- diesel particulate filter (can clog and require expensive replacement if car is not regularly driven hard)
- random engine/ECU "thing" that nobody can figure out (who knows what the root cause of this might be)
You might have better luck with a pre-common rail diesel car, but the fuel economy is unlikely to be very good and the performance - at least by modern standards - looks to be terrible.
What engines are you referring to in particular? Any brand in mind? Some manufacturers have been making diesels for a long time despite the emergence of common rail I'd suspect they would have most of this resolved now unless it's planned obsolescence
http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2012/mar/02/turbo-charged-co...
http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/cars/article-2332107/Petr...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/news/9407960/The-hidden-...
http://www.which.co.uk/news/2012/07/petrol-cars-cheaper-to-r...
What's with the turbocharger FUD in here today? BTW 1500 RPM is 1/2 or 2/3 the way to the redline on many diesels, so it's not really used more than it would be on a gasoline engine.
>- diesel injectors (high precision components operating under pressure)
Really simple devices in principle, can get expensive for some vehicles when the engineers have gone around the bend with new features (Mercedes Sprinter, I'm looking at you).
>- diesel particulate filter (can clog and require expensive replacement if car is not regularly driven hard)
No experience with them.
>- random engine/ECU "thing" that nobody can figure out (who knows what the root cause of this might be)
Nonsense. This is a mechanic/technician training issue. Diesel ECU's are no more complicated than for a gasoline engine. I'm really surprised to see anyone on HN play the "Dang them fancy computers is too complicated fer me." card.
diesel injectors: direct gasoline injectors are very similar.
turbo: common in modern gasoline engines due to downsizing and direct injection.
particulate filter: while I respect the following statement: "The cheapest, fastest and most reliable components are those that aren’t there." (Gordon Bell), thermal efficiency of a diesel cycle may make it worth.
ECU faults: those actually help with solving problems before they are serious. Please go to qualified workshops! Computers are no longer a dark magic.
As for the problems I describe, I am merely relaying issues I have heard people complain about! If people take their car to a non-franchised garage, or do things themselves, ECU errors tend to get them going to the official garage because only they have the appropriate equipment. But this always seems to be a bit hit or miss, requiring multiple visits.
People's suggestions that diesel engines are extra-reliable seem to be somewhat wide of the mark. Ye olde diesel engine of yore was simple, slow, noisy, dirty, and would run forever; thanks to modern technology, that all seems to have changed...
The reality is that cars have never been more reliable:
http://www.aei-ideas.org/2013/02/when-it-comes-to-new-vehicl...
> “The long-term dependability of three-year-old models has improved year-over-year, according to the J.D. Power and Associates 2013 U.S. Vehicle Dependability Study.
> “In 2013, overall vehicle dependability averages 126 PP100–a five percent improvement from the 2012 average of 132 PP100–and is the lowest problem count since the inception of the study in 1989.”
Simplicity makes engines easier to work on for the layman, but it doesn't necessarily make them more reliable.
I'm a total gear head. My love affair with cars started really early. At 3, I figured out how to use a screw driver by taking the tail lights off my dad's VW Beetle. At age 7, I helped my dad tear a VW Beetle's 4-cylinder boxer engine down to the case halves, then put it back together. I was infatuated with the process and the understanding that came with every part we removed and reassembled.
I often wonder whether my father and I could have accomplished the same with (just an example) the new Ford Ecoboost 1.0L 3-cylinder, but I recognize that giving up that simplicity has resulted in an overall improvement in reliability and quality for the vast majority of drivers.