Personal View site logo
Make sure to join PV on Telegram or Facebook! Perfect to keep up with community on your smartphone.
Dieselgate starts to produce intended results
  • image

    Quite fancy way to guide people out of very efficient cars. But it seems like efforts are due to shortages of oil needed to produce diesel fuel.

    sa2188.jpg
    753 x 488 - 62K
  • 7 Replies sorted by
  • @Vitaliy_Kiselev

    I'm watching this "war against diesel engines" for some time now, but I can't figure out the reason for it.

    Simple question: Who makes a profit/more profit with less diesel powered cars?

    • Oil-Industrie: Doesn't matter, as diesel is easier to produce than gasoline. More cars, more fuel needed. So, less (diesel) cars = bad thing. Might even push some customers to electrical powered cars (or even worse).

    • Car-Industrie: Maybe, because when diesels are banned people buy new cars - but why diesel? Very risky as some people might buy no new car. Also diesel cars can be sold at higher price/profit margin (because "you will save on fuel cost later"). And does that mean after some years hate-talk about gasoline cars will start and everyone has to buy a diesel car? Does not sound very likely.

    This is definitely enforced bullshit, so someone makes quite a profit from that...who? Any ideas?

  • @Psyco In the USA,, in the 90's the Big 3 car makers (GM, Chrysler & Ford) tried to keep the original VW TDI engines out of the USA. With all the diesel trucks rolling on the roads, why would this matter?

    In the 80's Oldsmobile had a diesel passenger car engine, that was so bad, it tainted the idea the Big 3 could produce a reliable small diesel engine, so they all gave up on developing new designs.

    As a result of the TDI success in the USA, Chevy started offering a small car (the "Cruze") with a diesel option a 3-4 years ago, while keeping out all kinds of other diesels from the Asian car makers, citing environmental reasons. The Gov't never gives a crap about the environment when there are big business lobbying for drilling rights, carbon foot prints, etc.

    In some states like Pennsylvania, they want to be friendly to the trucking industry, so there are no emissions checks on diesel engines, at all for the life of the vehicle. In others like Calif, and NY they have much tougher regulations.

    IMHO, in the USA it seems it's about protecting the lagging domestic car maker's local market.

    The environmental issues are there, with particulate matter in the the exhaust, and as I understand it, only with the new vehicles with urea (add blue) systems, is the issue of soot in the exhaust, negated and there fire the new models are truly "cleaner", but, Dieselgate had killed the perception that clean diesel can exist at all.

    As for the oil companies, gas engines use more volume of fuel, so it makes them happy too.

    As for me, I drive a VW MK4 TDI wagon w/5speed manual trans and love it. No plans on getting rid of it anytime soon!

  • Good move from a petrochemical point of view, since gasoline is expensive cos additives that must be used are extra cost, and in a way ineficient. Diesel is better all rounder and you can run diesel engine on fried potatoes oil... So.. Get rid of them, before electric fuck all up.

    That's why the trend now is low displacement turbo, biturbo or compressor turbo engines, like wolkswagen 1.4tfsi. You can get 220hp from that stock just ecu change. With fitter internals 400hp easy. Gasoline has more versatility and is "cleaner" if you understand. Diesel in cars is not a need, industries need dueles, trucks need diesel, heavy machinery need diesel, heavy industries round diesel trains boats, transatlantics. So don't worry for diesel, about diesel cars well they will become extinction

  • @CFreak I live in Germany and there is really no reason for the push to gasoline cars over here, as all big companys have there diesel cars in place (the chart above is for Europe). Also the new diesel cars are quite "clean" and its not about selling new cars, its about getting rid of diesel cars at all.

    @endotoxic Why get away from diesel if its cheaper to produce? "Electric fuck all up"...what?! Gasoline is not "cleaner"! ... Sorry, your post doesn't make much sense.

  • My post is double edged

  • @Psyco I agree with you and I lived in Europe in the 00's and saw lot's of great diesel passenger cars, but, after dieselgate, hasn't the perception that Diesel can be "clean" been damaged by VW? As part of the settlement they announced pouring lots of money into the research and development of electric vehicles, so I presume that shifts some funding away from petrol engine development and most likely away from future "clean diesel" systems.

  • Euro4 and 5, dirty but reliable and efficient. Euro6 efficient, cleaner but all that extra tech can be unreliable if you don't go big mileage.