The other thing that is (WAY MORE) compelling are the states like the (ever increasing) taxation burden levied on each new and USED car sales.
So for example, on new cars sales in CA, TAX, LICENSE and Documentation fees approach 10%. So per 10k that is app $1,000. The finance companies get in on the act also (the devil's in perpetual debt?) . They also finance the taxation? Insurance is also THE highest on new cars. I am sure that if you are not careful the insurance companies insure the value PLUS the taxation? So naturally the state/s are not going to send you a GROSS WASTER letter, if you buy "NEW every TWO !!?? Shoot for that matter, buy a new one EVERY YEAR !!???
So for example anyone can do the sales taxes on $1,000 per 10 k.
So using one cars example: if I keep it 400,000 miles and paid $1,162.16 sales tax, that would be sales taxation of .0029054 cents per mile driven.
For the length of a 4 year loan and do 12,000 to 15,000 miles (average AM drivers yearly mileage: 48,000 to 60,000 miles: my example) it is now between .0242 to .01937 cents per mile driven. That is 833% to 667% more ?
900 miles and a NAV that offers fuel prices on the fly and you can pick your stations on a long trip. It is not as much the 900 miles as it is finding a station. I cannot tell you how many times I had to fill up the Sequoia at 200 miles because the next town of any size may be 200 miles away. I always take the roads less traveled if possible. It would be nice to just top off the tank every evening after my average 500 mile day driving.
PS the lines seem much cleaner to me. I hate all the lumps too many vehicles have in their styling. Also notice the have the CD value down to 0.32. That is not my old Suburban brick. The RX440h has a CD value of 0.36.
I looked at what I might save trading into the MB. Not enough, unfortunately. I'd love to have one !!!
But sadly, for people getting 32 MPG already, the 39 MPG MB would only save a little bit per tank, considering the gas/diesel fuel prices right now.
I did the math for a 958 mile drive in each vehicle, my 2007 TCH versus the MB:
Amount saved in driving 958 miles by changing to the MB from the TCH:
$16.38 cents
Now, you project that over 100,000 miles, or more, and that's a significant savings in fuel costs. A little over $1709 saved in 100K miles.
But the TCH costs $27K. The MB might cost what, double that? Then $700 to change the urea every xxx miles?
So, as the story goes from when people compare an Elantra to the Prius - if you have to pay more for the car, the gas savings really don't mean as much.
This marvelous diesel car is only targeted at people for whom cost is no object.
That is why the regulations (balance of trade is one of the issues here not saving the customer money) are stacked against like model diesels.
An easy example is the 04 Civic. As good as 38-42 mpg is, I would have much preferred that same Civic with a TDI engine. Research indicates 52-56 mpg or app 37% better fuel mileage.
I think the only thing "stacked" against diesel is buyer attitudes and automaker lack of courage.
They are afraid to spend money marketing a new engine, only to have it fail. They can't see the $$$ at the end being guaranteed, while they can see the profit of the smaller gasoline cars with their own two eyes.
Buyer additudes, ah, .... no !! Again I would buy a TDI Civic. Again what is the big deal? Honda made limited numbers of hybrids and even more LIMITED numbers of natural gas models (4,000 per year) Judas Priest there is little to NONE infrastructure to support natural gas refueling. Natural gas as you know has the POTENTIAL to be DANGEROUS beyond belief. Even though I like the concept of natural gas, I would hardly call it a current success!?
Why would any oem sell cars for a loss? GM and Chrysler did that and for years. !!!!! Was it or was it not wonderful that YOU bailed them out? :sick: :lemon:
Having said that, (as a consumer) I was lucky in buying an 03 Jetta TDI where marketing forces (did conspire- in hopefully a NON illegal way) let VWA lose what 2 B that year?
Now TDI sales I am lead to belive were app 4% of total production. (9,000 units). If we FF to the so called later models 09-2011, the percentage is way up and from 25 to 22% of total productions. We have of course seen the JSW is more like 84% TDI. VWA is and has been posting profits.
developing a new engine is bone-crushing expensive. I can understand why a company that's not "into diesels" wouldn't pony up for that--the market is too small in America and it's not likely to get that much bigger anytime soon. The European diesel car market is what..maybe TEN times the size of ours?
Absolutely. However, it is pretty opaque to the consuming public. A llot of unseen copyright, franchise fees, per unit royalties, etc., goes on, which obviously increases the costs.
Americans don't do good diesel car engines. We really suck at this, at least so far. As sturdy as they are, nobody wants a Cummins diesel in their luxury SUV and certainly not in their Chevy Cruze. I can't say that the Japanese are all that hot at it either, at least not for this market. The Swedes make good marine diesels, however.
My dentist and lawyer neighbors seem to think jacked up 4X4 F250 diesels make great single person commuter vehicles. Maybe it is because they can't get a diesel Cruze?
I think the over all truth: neither do Americans do gasser engines well either. :sick: This really is a FAR FAR greater "failure" than on the diesel side (being as how the policy mikes out to 98% gassers with recent diesels going to 5% of the passenger vehicle fleet). The ones that they do well; such as (gasser) V-8's are on environmental hit lists. This is funny as the cops LOVE EM !!! It would seem that an American (small block 5.8 L, 327 to 350 cu in)V8 turbo diesel is literally verboten. This to me would be an almost perfect blend, if done well and bullet proof.
The so called "sterling I 4's I 6's and V6's" are normally from Japanese and European oems. Now I have to admit I like the 6 speed manual transmissions such as T-56 and 6066's.
Well if you exclude the concept of efficiency, the old Iron Duke 4-cylinder wasn't too bad, ,and the venerable GM V-6s were pretty good on power, as long as your intake manifold didn't melt. (picky, picky).
GM did to diesels what the designers of the Aztek did to automobile styling.
If memory serves it took Izusu to show GM how to build a truck diesel engine, the Duramax. Why they don't build a 4 cylinder Duramax for the 1/2 ton is a mystery to me. It would be plenty of power and should get over 30 MPG on the HWY.
I think Americans buy 1/2 pickups as commuter vehicles rather than as haulers so that does make a certain kind of sense, but really, you can buy a cheapo Ranger 4 cylinder gas truck for not a lot of money---$20K out the door and 27 mpg.
Problem with the Ranger 4 banger it does not have enough power to get out of it's own way. My V6 Ranger was a total dog. Could not pull my little utility trailer loaded up a medium sized hill. No comparison to the V6 in my Nissan Frontier. A 3.0L 4 cylinder diesel would probably have more torque than the GM 5.7L V8 engine sold in most of their PU trucks. My Nissan serves me well. Just cannot get over 17 MPG on average. A 4 cylinder diesel would pull as much and get at least a third better mileage. If you remember when I first started on Edmund's in 1998 I was looking for a Ranger diesel like I saw in Alaska. Two young men drove it from the tip of So America to the Arctic ocean. They claimed they got 45 MPG on the trip. It was a perfect vehicle and not available in the land of the free.
Well that's no doubt all for the better in the long run because it was probably a dirty engine. I don't know if you remember Athens in the 1990s--it wasn't fun trying to breathe there. Diesel particulate in old diesels, if inhaled in large quantities, is pretty unwelcome in most people's lungs.
In the 90s Greece had high sulfur diesel along with most of the World. This is the 21st century. We have very clean diesel and very clean running diesel vehicles. It is mostly the US wasting fuel sticking with RUG. The only other country as backward as the USA is Japan. They think they can solve the problem with EVs and Hybrids. They better get to building some new Nuclear reactors or they will be suffering from blackouts with all the battery powered vehicles choking the grid. Same would happen here if EVs were viable.
Well you were talking about the 90s, so that's why I brought up the idea of dirty diesels.
Many of the new EVs will be either coal-powered or natural gas powered. They may end up polluting less than a regular gas car, just by the fact that they may consume less coal/gas, but no less than a Prius, and perhaps even more polluting than a Prius or a gas car in some parts of the country. How ironic.
I would expect the dirty diesels from the 1990s to be much cleaner with ULSD sold today. I see older diesel PU trucks everywhere around here. No black soot pouring out. It was the fuel pure and simple. If the Warmers were really serious about using less fuel they would be promoting diesels. There are no better alternatives right today.
If Ford would have sold this truck here I would still be driving it and saved how many barrels of oil over the last 13 years.
Hmmm....probably not though, because while you are quite right that that modern diesels will emit perhaps 10% less CO2, quite a few studies show that diesel car owners (at least in Europe) merely increase the amount they drive because they perceive that they are getting better mileage. So it cancels itself out.
Not sure how this would work in the USA, since diesel fuel does not enjoy the price advantage it enjoys in some parts of Europe, but there's no reason to think that our psychological make-up would be so different as to not tempt us to drive an extra 10%, since we're getting that 40+ mpg on our little diesel Golf.
I personally find no sound basis to advocate diesel as a solution to global warming, or I should say a mitigation to it, even though I'm a fan of diesel cars anyway for other appealing reasons.
This is the real spin off! It is certainly much cleaner and the fact of the matter is it is less damaging to smog emissions equipment also. (smog regulators might paradoxically hate that the smog emissions equipment can structurally last much longer !)
LSD (pre Oct 2006) coult be up to 500 ppm sulfur. ULSD can not be greater than 15 ppm sulfur. That literally is a 97% reduction in sulfur related emissions. If one looks at it the other way LSD was 33.3 TIMES dirtier. On a personal point of view it was infinitely frustrating to have to use LSD when the 03 TDI I had was actually designed to use ULSD !!! So to me the blame was squarely on the legislative and regulatory bodies.
However, the two real spin off that are opaque to most folks including anti diesel folks: ULSD is delivered nominally to the pumps @ between 5 ppm to 10 ppm. So practically and really that is a 99% to 98% reduction. Part of the reason is the so called "safety factor" any ULSD found to be OVER 15 ppm is subject to MASSIVE FINES. This is unlike RUG to PUG which can be mitigated up to 90 ppm by off line fee mitigation.
The other spin off is ULSD is a portal to up to B-100, aka, biodiesel. Most biodiesel is ZERO ppm sulfur. For conversational and calculation purposes, let's call it 1 ppm sulfur. Biodiesel (in ALL its permutations) is literally "manufacture able", and infinitely fungible. This is both figuratively and literally an overwhelming exponential difference from oil which has to be "found" and believed by some to be a ZERO SUM GAME vs infinitely renewable, efficient, sustainable and consumes carbon dioxide in the process. etc etc. !!!
In contrast RUG to PUG can nominally be delivered at the pump up to 90 ppm sulfur (with off line fee mitigation) The standard is of course 30 ppm. Again RUG to PUG is 2 times to 18 times DIRTIER than ULSD.
The refineries would like us to use more diesel, as it's significantly easier to make than gasoline. Most gas stations now have diesel pumps and I am confident more would be added if there were more consumer demand for diesels.
Therefore my conclusion is that US emissions laws regarding diesel vehicles and the costs of producing them are the key issue to solve. There is a strong reason why all of the brands have diesels in Europe but only VW, Mercedes, BMW and Audi have diesel cars in the US and very few of them at that.
It is *not* that people won't buy them because of performance or reliability. They buy hybrids, and a diesel offers a much more engaging drive than most hybrids.
This is an open secret in plain sight. With (updated figures) 5% of the passenger vehicle fleet 2008 figures 258.4 M) being diesel (12.92 M) the retail market/s has literally too many diesel fuel outlets. Not that this is a bad thing, from this anecdotal,op/ed view. I have literally in 188,000 miles NEVER had to wait for a diesel pump. I waited even less (if that is possible) when passenger diesel cars were at less than one half of one percent, aka 1.272 M diesel vehicles. The flip side is no one is waiting for me to get the HELL out of the way.
Indeed a diesel passenger car population of 26% (67.184 M diesel vehicles) and UP has with in it the structural ability to cut our oil consumption, by easily... 26%. When you add the fact those vehicles will be getting anywhere from 20-60% better fuel mileage it is obvious that EVEN less fuel is being consumed. Anything less than that is a SERIOUS signal of NON seriousness about the issue of decreased consumption.
I think that is why oems are loathed to match VW in the durability department. They are really set up to use and reuse "rust able" metals. In effect, they want folks to buy on the lowest life cycle as possible.
I truly hope the Passat, the new American made and assembled product (Chattanooga, TN plant) does not drop the use of galvanized metals.
"I personally find no sound basis to advocate diesel as a solution to global warming, or I should say a mitigation to it, even though I'm a fan of diesel cars anyway for other appealing reasons."
Personally I'm not of the belief that vehicle emissions have anything to do with global warming. That said, I agree we must be much better custodians of our planet, and as such it would be an advantage to us all if the pumping, refining, and consumption of fossil fuels was reduced to a mere fraction of what it is now.
With the above in mind, if we were to gradually convert our transportation vehicles to diesel, the door would then be much more open to a similar gradual increase in the use of algae-diesel (I hate the term "bio-diesel" as that can run the gamut from fry grease to recycled petroleum products). The problem with algae-diesel (as I see it) is that it solves way too many problems; consider the following: -- The production of algae-diesel, if set up properly, can consume vast quantities of carbon based emissions from sources such as fossil fuel fired power plants. -- The production of algae-diesel, if set up properly, can consume vast quantities of municipal, industrial, and agricultural waste. -- Some of the best places for algae-diesel production are areas that are relatively arid and have no arable land or agriculture in current operation. -- The relatively low yield of fuel grade oil with open-air algae ponds is still easily five times that of ethanol production (5,000 gallons per acre per year versus ~900 gallons per acre per year). Current enclosed production systems yield roughly 20,000 gallons per acre per year, and some estimates (wildly optimistic IMHO) suggest we will be able to approach the 100,000 gallon mark sometime down the road. -- In addition to the fuel oil yield of algae production, there is also a yield of biomass which can be used as fertilizer and feed for live-stock. -- Algae-diesel can be distributed and dispensed with zero changes to our current infrastructure.
Is algae-diesel cost effective at this point? If all one is doing is growing algae and extracting the fuel oil then no, however, if bio-mass sales and waste and carbon remediation are also put into the equation, then I believe algae-diesel is very near at break-even (if not already beyond it). If the U.S. was to engage in a concerted effort to move toward algae-diesel for all of our vehicular fuel, I believe the price would drop to a per gallon price rather lower than what we have now, and then stabilize for a good number of decades.
Whoops, noticed last night gas was actually $3.94 at the closest station to my house, so the savings from having a big tank and 450 miles of range or more are nearly double what I had estimated.
Well since cars emit C02, it would be scientifically implausible to suggest that they don't contribute to global warming, although we could not say they caused global warming; nor can we say that global warming is here to stay--it might just go away naturally in the future, as a cycle. Perhaps it's like people pouring gasoline on a forest fire started by lightning? :P
RE: The Iron Duke....oh, yeah, that. Well if you match up the # that caught fire vs. the number that didn't, and if you weren't in the car that did--it's really not a big deal.
I am with you on algae to diesel as a great alternative. If the Feds spent a fraction on R&D they do on all kinds of Pie in the Sky alternatives we would probably be there already. Also the rest of the world is ahead of US on GTL. Gas to Liquid diesel is the finest grade diesel you can buy. We have an abundance of Natural Gas, making it into diesel seems so much smarter than the problematic LNG/CNG vehicles. For any kind of good alternative to work we need to get the Feds out of the picture. All they do is muddy it up with subsidizing idiocy.
I would have thought that with those engineering degrees and those nifty pocket protectors slide rules and thick glasses those guys would have *thought* about cooling the engine back then....silly me....
We need the EPA, just not so *much* EPA. You know that if we didn't keep an eye on things they would deteriorate rapidly. I never saw an example of completely unregulated pollution making a *better* world.
I always wondered what cars would be like if emissions regulations never existed, or never had to exist....would cars be huge belching monsters? Possibly so. :confuse:
Well airlines are motivated to use efficient engines due to fuel costs...automakers don't really care how much gas you burn after they sell you the car, because they don't own or operate it anymore.
We also don't have very many diesel engine airplanes (I think a few made it up and down).
There's no tax on jet fuel last I heard, and fuel taxes on general aviation fuel is usually less than on the stuff for cars. And general and commercial aviation is heavily subsidized. Bush tried to clean it up some but don't know how much he got accomplished.
There is a growing trend toward diesel aircraft due to the efficiencies; you can currently buy a retrofit kit for your small Cessna or Piper, and you can buy new aircraft with a diesel engine or engines from the likes of Diamond. As new engines make it to market, there will be a significant migration to diesel engines in the fleet.
Funny thing though, Jet-A and diesel fuel are close enough in their properties to be considered one and the same from the perspective of reciprocating aero-diesel engines. Fuel your aircraft with ULSD or Jet-A, makes no difference, the engines are certified to burn both.
From my understanding the only reason Jet aircraft use JetA (Number one diesel/Kerosene) is the gel factor is much lower. It is -40 degrees when they get to cruising altitude many times.
In the Arctic they only use Number 1 diesel to avoid gelling. It does not get the mileage you get with number 2 diesel. Alaska was given a waiver on ULSD. Not sure if that is still in effect.
Perhaps that is another disconnect that automaker oems should be held accountable (for). Instead they (their presidents anyway) are doing idiotic stuff like advocating excessive taxation for folks gulible enough to buy their fuel guzzlers. Especially after bailing out two automakers, this is just insult to injury. I think the American public is starting to see why the unions clash so much against these "suits", that act literally like American royalty. This is not to say the unions are blameless either.
I found the history of Ford interesting in that he wanted his cars to run on alcohol. Rockefeller was dumping all this petroleum waste product we call gasoline today. Rockefeller figured out how to make Ford's engines run on gas and manipulated the Women's movement to begin Prohibition against alcohol. At that time diesel was too valuable for heating to use in a motor car. Not sure how much diesel was used in farm tractors.
"What a lot of folks also don't realize is AV GAS has both higher octane and higher LEAD components."
The second begets the first. The Tetraethyl Lead (TEL) is the component in AvGas (and other leaded gasolines) which imbues said gasolines with higher anti-detonation ratings.
Comments
So for example, on new cars sales in CA, TAX, LICENSE and Documentation fees approach 10%. So per 10k that is app $1,000. The finance companies get in on the act also (the devil's in perpetual debt?) . They also finance the taxation? Insurance is also THE highest on new cars. I am sure that if you are not careful the insurance companies insure the value PLUS the taxation? So naturally the state/s are not going to send you a GROSS WASTER letter, if you buy "NEW every TWO !!?? Shoot for that matter, buy a new one EVERY YEAR !!???
So for example anyone can do the sales taxes on $1,000 per 10 k.
So using one cars example: if I keep it 400,000 miles and paid $1,162.16 sales tax, that would be sales taxation of .0029054 cents per mile driven.
For the length of a 4 year loan and do 12,000 to 15,000 miles (average AM drivers yearly mileage: 48,000 to 60,000 miles: my example) it is now between .0242 to .01937 cents per mile driven. That is 833% to 667% more ?
Blame the driver, not the car.
Al Gore Junior proved a Prius can break 100mph, LOL.
Is it really a new generation? Because it looks a lot like the old one. Seems more like an update.
Any how, 900 mile range - SWEET!
PS the lines seem much cleaner to me. I hate all the lumps too many vehicles have in their styling. Also notice the have the CD value down to 0.32. That is not my old Suburban brick. The RX440h has a CD value of 0.36.
But sadly, for people getting 32 MPG already, the 39 MPG MB would only save a little bit per tank, considering the gas/diesel fuel prices right now.
I did the math for a 958 mile drive in each vehicle, my 2007 TCH versus the MB:
Amount saved in driving 958 miles by changing to the MB from the TCH:
$16.38 cents
Now, you project that over 100,000 miles, or more, and that's a significant savings in fuel costs. A little over $1709 saved in 100K miles.
But the TCH costs $27K. The MB might cost what, double that? Then $700 to change the urea every xxx miles?
So, as the story goes from when people compare an Elantra to the Prius - if you have to pay more for the car, the gas savings really don't mean as much.
This marvelous diesel car is only targeted at people for whom cost is no object.
An easy example is the 04 Civic. As good as 38-42 mpg is, I would have much preferred that same Civic with a TDI engine. Research indicates 52-56 mpg or app 37% better fuel mileage.
I think the only thing "stacked" against diesel is buyer attitudes and automaker lack of courage.
They are afraid to spend money marketing a new engine, only to have it fail. They can't see the $$$ at the end being guaranteed, while they can see the profit of the smaller gasoline cars with their own two eyes.
Why would any oem sell cars for a loss? GM and Chrysler did that and for years. !!!!! Was it or was it not wonderful that YOU bailed them out? :sick: :lemon:
Having said that, (as a consumer) I was lucky in buying an 03 Jetta TDI where marketing forces (did conspire- in hopefully a NON illegal way) let VWA lose what 2 B that year?
Now TDI sales I am lead to belive were app 4% of total production. (9,000 units). If we FF to the so called later models 09-2011, the percentage is way up and from 25 to 22% of total productions. We have of course seen the JSW is more like 84% TDI. VWA is and has been posting profits.
I'm the same way with gas - my van goes 400-500 miles between fill-ups.
Here in Potomac has is $3.79, but my beach condo has fuel all over the place for $3.59.
The good thing about having 450+ miles worth of range is that I usually only fill up at the beach.
20 cents may not sound like much, but over 100,000 miles that would amount to roughly $800 savings.
Enough to buy a GPS that includes gas prices. LOL
The so called "sterling I 4's I 6's and V6's" are normally from Japanese and European oems. Now I have to admit I like the 6 speed manual transmissions such as T-56 and 6066's.
GM did to diesels what the designers of the Aztek did to automobile styling.
Many of the new EVs will be either coal-powered or natural gas powered. They may end up polluting less than a regular gas car, just by the fact that they may consume less coal/gas, but no less than a Prius, and perhaps even more polluting than a Prius or a gas car in some parts of the country. How ironic.
If Ford would have sold this truck here I would still be driving it and saved how many barrels of oil over the last 13 years.
Not sure how this would work in the USA, since diesel fuel does not enjoy the price advantage it enjoys in some parts of Europe, but there's no reason to think that our psychological make-up would be so different as to not tempt us to drive an extra 10%, since we're getting that 40+ mpg on our little diesel Golf.
I personally find no sound basis to advocate diesel as a solution to global warming, or I should say a mitigation to it, even though I'm a fan of diesel cars anyway for other appealing reasons.
LSD (pre Oct 2006) coult be up to 500 ppm sulfur. ULSD can not be greater than 15 ppm sulfur. That literally is a 97% reduction in sulfur related emissions. If one looks at it the other way LSD was 33.3 TIMES dirtier. On a personal point of view it was infinitely frustrating to have to use LSD when the 03 TDI I had was actually designed to use ULSD !!! So to me the blame was squarely on the legislative and regulatory bodies.
However, the two real spin off that are opaque to most folks including anti diesel folks: ULSD is delivered nominally to the pumps @ between 5 ppm to 10 ppm. So practically and really that is a 99% to 98% reduction. Part of the reason is the so called "safety factor" any ULSD found to be OVER 15 ppm is subject to MASSIVE FINES. This is unlike RUG to PUG which can be mitigated up to 90 ppm by off line fee mitigation.
The other spin off is ULSD is a portal to up to B-100, aka, biodiesel. Most biodiesel is ZERO ppm sulfur. For conversational and calculation purposes, let's call it 1 ppm sulfur. Biodiesel (in ALL its permutations) is literally "manufacture able", and infinitely fungible. This is both figuratively and literally an overwhelming exponential difference from oil which has to be "found" and believed by some to be a ZERO SUM GAME vs infinitely renewable, efficient, sustainable and consumes carbon dioxide in the process. etc etc. !!!
In contrast RUG to PUG can nominally be delivered at the pump up to 90 ppm sulfur (with off line fee mitigation) The standard is of course 30 ppm. Again RUG to PUG is 2 times to 18 times DIRTIER than ULSD.
Therefore my conclusion is that US emissions laws regarding diesel vehicles and the costs of producing them are the key issue to solve. There is a strong reason why all of the brands have diesels in Europe but only VW, Mercedes, BMW and Audi have diesel cars in the US and very few of them at that.
It is *not* that people won't buy them because of performance or reliability. They buy hybrids, and a diesel offers a much more engaging drive than most hybrids.
Indeed a diesel passenger car population of 26% (67.184 M diesel vehicles) and UP has with in it the structural ability to cut our oil consumption, by easily... 26%. When you add the fact those vehicles will be getting anywhere from 20-60% better fuel mileage it is obvious that EVEN less fuel is being consumed. Anything less than that is a SERIOUS signal of NON seriousness about the issue of decreased consumption.
I truly hope the Passat, the new American made and assembled product (Chattanooga, TN plant) does not drop the use of galvanized metals.
Personally I'm not of the belief that vehicle emissions have anything to do with global warming. That said, I agree we must be much better custodians of our planet, and as such it would be an advantage to us all if the pumping, refining, and consumption of fossil fuels was reduced to a mere fraction of what it is now.
With the above in mind, if we were to gradually convert our transportation vehicles to diesel, the door would then be much more open to a similar gradual increase in the use of algae-diesel (I hate the term "bio-diesel" as that can run the gamut from fry grease to recycled petroleum products). The problem with algae-diesel (as I see it) is that it solves way too many problems; consider the following:
-- The production of algae-diesel, if set up properly, can consume vast quantities of carbon based emissions from sources such as fossil fuel fired power plants.
-- The production of algae-diesel, if set up properly, can consume vast quantities of municipal, industrial, and agricultural waste.
-- Some of the best places for algae-diesel production are areas that are relatively arid and have no arable land or agriculture in current operation.
-- The relatively low yield of fuel grade oil with open-air algae ponds is still easily five times that of ethanol production (5,000 gallons per acre per year versus ~900 gallons per acre per year). Current enclosed production systems yield roughly 20,000 gallons per acre per year, and some estimates (wildly optimistic IMHO) suggest we will be able to approach the 100,000 gallon mark sometime down the road.
-- In addition to the fuel oil yield of algae production, there is also a yield of biomass which can be used as fertilizer and feed for live-stock.
-- Algae-diesel can be distributed and dispensed with zero changes to our current infrastructure.
Is algae-diesel cost effective at this point? If all one is doing is growing algae and extracting the fuel oil then no, however, if bio-mass sales and waste and carbon remediation are also put into the equation, then I believe algae-diesel is very near at break-even (if not already beyond it). If the U.S. was to engage in a concerted effort to move toward algae-diesel for all of our vehicular fuel, I believe the price would drop to a per gallon price rather lower than what we have now, and then stabilize for a good number of decades.
What's not to like?
Except when they'd set themselves on fire in Fieros.
RE: The Iron Duke....oh, yeah, that. Well if you match up the # that caught fire vs. the number that didn't, and if you weren't in the car that did--it's really not a big deal.
Start by cutting funding to this bunch of losers.
I always wondered what cars would be like if emissions regulations never existed, or never had to exist....would cars be huge belching monsters? Possibly so. :confuse:
Do you know all aviation products are not required to have "emissions controls"?
I can go on........... :sick: :lemon:
We also don't have very many diesel engine airplanes (I think a few made it up and down).
But that's a rant for another discussion I guess.
Funny thing though, Jet-A and diesel fuel are close enough in their properties to be considered one and the same from the perspective of reciprocating aero-diesel engines. Fuel your aircraft with ULSD or Jet-A, makes no difference, the engines are certified to burn both.
In the Arctic they only use Number 1 diesel to avoid gelling. It does not get the mileage you get with number 2 diesel. Alaska was given a waiver on ULSD. Not sure if that is still in effect.
It's quite interesting how the cost of fuel drives design isn't it?
The second begets the first. The Tetraethyl Lead (TEL) is the component in AvGas (and other leaded gasolines) which imbues said gasolines with higher anti-detonation ratings.