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What Would It Take for YOU to buy a diesel car?
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Again, I have nothing against RUG/ PUG drivers paying 40-60 % more per mile driven, LIKE for LIKE. I just like the choice to NOT.
COST PER MILE is much more appropriate to compare Gasoline, Diesel, Hy bred, Nuclear ... or any other mode of transportation.
Like others have said... I will stick with my $0.09 per mile on my 2003 TDI. The cost of Diesel would have to more than DOUBLE to just be even with many gasoline-powered vehicles of similar quality, performance and luxury.
(I record EVERY drop of fuel pumped into my tank and use a spreadsheet to track COST PER MILE)
Lifetime mpg is 21.58.
Seems like your running cost should be a bit less.
What's really amazing is to see that I've burned almost 8,000 gallons in the van - around $20,000 worth of gas. Yikes.
TCO for everything - repairs, insurance, tags, depreciation, etc. is running around .33 a mile.
if we suddenly legally and democratically erased the office of President, and it disappeared, the US economy wouldn't even react. The POTUS is a leadership role, not a power role. The office has very little control over gas prices or the economy in general. The movers and shakers are in Congress.
It was the presidents that did the 700 B in tarp monies. It was also the fed with the app of the POTUS that lent secretly 7.7 T to the big banks !?
Silly me, I just assumed Shifty was referring to the PACs and lobbyists when he referred to the "movers and shakers in Congress". :P
I don't agree. Cost per mile is variable. It can change at every fill-up. So historical comparisons wouldn't work. I look in my history and see "oh, I used to get 10 cents per mile in my car last summer," and that obviously can't be compared to what I'll be getting this summer (since gas will have a different price).
I'm not sure what the big hoopla is about mpg and how it fails. I've read the explanations and I still don't get it. I suspect I must view it differently than most people.
I mean, I see 30 mpg vs 20 mpg and think "50% increase." So how is that different than (fuel only at $3.29/gal) saying 10.967 cents per mile vs 16.45 cents per mile? It is still a 50% increase.
'11 GMC Sierra 1500; '98 Alfa 156 2.0TS; '08 Maser QP; '67 Coronet R/T; '13 Fiat 500c; '20 S90 T6; '22 MB Sprinter 2500 4x4 diesel; '97 Suzuki R Wagon; '96 Opel Astra; '11 Mini Cooper S
I am not sure what you disagree with? Most folks either by choice, rule of crowd or defacto chose the greater cost per mile fuel: rug to start and PUG for even higher cost per mile driven OVER a lower cost fuel per mile driven like D2. I have read the gassers are 95% of the passenger vehicle population with 9% being PUG. D2 is less than 5%
'11 GMC Sierra 1500; '98 Alfa 156 2.0TS; '08 Maser QP; '67 Coronet R/T; '13 Fiat 500c; '20 S90 T6; '22 MB Sprinter 2500 4x4 diesel; '97 Suzuki R Wagon; '96 Opel Astra; '11 Mini Cooper S
So lets range this a bit. 50 mpg with 4.09 per gal (diesel) is more expensive than 50 mpg @ 3.79.(RUG) 50 mpg @ 3.89 (PUG) is more expensive than RUG and is less expensive than D2.
Anyway, personally, I still do the math. So mpg works just fine for me. I was responding to the comment that mpg has outlived its usefulness. I guess for those who can't do math, it has. Cost/mile just doesn't work for me because it excludes historial data. For instance, how could you compare your car's mileage 3 years ago to a new car you are looking at today if you only had cost/mile? You can't. You'd have to know how many mpg and then calculate the cost/mile of both vehicles to a set price. That extra calculation isn't necessary if you know the mpg of both.
For some reason, the mags seems to think gallons/100 miles is somehow better?? I don't understand that one either. What is the difference between that and mpg other than the ability to multiply in one's head?
'11 GMC Sierra 1500; '98 Alfa 156 2.0TS; '08 Maser QP; '67 Coronet R/T; '13 Fiat 500c; '20 S90 T6; '22 MB Sprinter 2500 4x4 diesel; '97 Suzuki R Wagon; '96 Opel Astra; '11 Mini Cooper S
Let's take your car for example. You said ... well, I don't remember... let's say 8 cents per mile. Now, I want to compare that to my car at 14 cents per mile.
Did we just successfully compare our cars' efficiency? Nope. I don't need to explain why, right?
'11 GMC Sierra 1500; '98 Alfa 156 2.0TS; '08 Maser QP; '67 Coronet R/T; '13 Fiat 500c; '20 S90 T6; '22 MB Sprinter 2500 4x4 diesel; '97 Suzuki R Wagon; '96 Opel Astra; '11 Mini Cooper S
EVERYONE is of course free to shop all three independently at ANY station. How many folks actually do that?
Besides, the Prez will approve the pipeline after the 2012 elections are over. This is just politics, to appease environmentalists. I'm surprised you didn't pick that up.
Did we successfully compare our car's efficiency on cost per mile driven fuel? Yes. No you don't have to explain. The scientific method procedure does. So if you are not following that or not using that as an assumption, then yes anyone can blather on. But like I said I am ok with you paying more, just as long as I have the option to pay LESS (per mile driven: fuel) The real issue is the powers that be on almost all levels want to limit that.
So for example, I LOVE my 50 mpg. .088 cent (current) per mile driven fuel scenario. I have so for 177,000 miles and going on 9 MY's
I HATE it in the context of 60-75 mpg TDI's that have been/are/remain banned from US entry AND the situations that artificially keep us from having less than 1.50 per gal d2 fuel (even at 1.50 it is exorbitantly HIGH), for example.
Now years ago, this was NOT the writing on the wall, even as the perceptive deduced it so. IT was and remains BILLBOARD sized advertising. It is an environmental John Cougar Mellancamp's "Hurts So Good".
Warren Buffet knows we are the middle east (FAR better actually) of COAL. He has long since bought rail road interests. The Clinton Administration secretly and not so secretly paved the way.
As "the great one" has said, skate to where the puck will BE. (not to where it has gone)
I still want to own that McDonald's in (Bakersfield or Fresno?) with working oil derrick pump in the McDonalds parking lot next to the garbage cans.
Still the USA is better off than other rich countries regarding energy resources, taken all together. I would never discount the USA in an energy race into the 21st century.
Possibly focusing on the control of methane emissions and soot will placate the need to address climate change issues. thus giving other types of emissions some slack.
USA oil companies could do that too, if all the drilling restrictions were eliminated.
And oil (and diesel) would get cheaper, meaning more diesel cars on the roads.
Vote 'Publican !!!
Why? Well---The more you use of a limited resource (no matter how plentiful it might be), the more you drive up the cost of the remaining amounts.
Since dinosaurs and plants are no longer dying in large numbers under volcanoes, anything you drill is a limited resource.
and in the case of shale oil, when it interferes with another very limited resource (water), you will have a storm of protest that defies imagining. People will fight for water much harder than for oil. Without oil, you stand still. Without water, you die.
The only financial winners from unlimited drilling will be oil companies. They'll just charge more as their supplies dwindle. And we, being oil junkies, just pay up.
I myself would nationalize the oil industry ( at least temporarily) and make us all the owners of natural resources, but that's not gonna happen either. :P
So the future? Biz as usual--give and take, push and pull, same-o same-o.
The USA has no energy policy, so nothing's going to change because no one has a plan for it. Everyone will just dig in and struggle with each other.
I am really not sure I understand. What we have now IS THE energy policy !! ??
Or do you have designs on being the energy CZAR, so you can nationalized the energy sector?
We have more resources than the EU, or Russia, more infrastructure and stability than India, and we are still way ahead of China in per capita standard of living.
But without political health, we could just fritter away the whole game.
If that was true, I don't believe we would be wasting our precious water supply growing corn as a substitute for oil. That is part of our screwed up energy policy.
No one will sell me a high MPG diesel SUV, so have to save money somewhere.
If I install a home charging unit ($2000+ and labor) for EV's I need a permit. That "improvement" will raise the assessed value of my house. There is no exemption for EV electrical consumption, so I will draw it at .29518 cents per Kwh, a 130% increase over baseline. This is not a universal unit so if the car is sold there is a repeat of the process.
It is literally against the law to put up a solar power installation where I am. I am in a 10 mile radius of that solar panel company, formerly known as ... Solyndra.
Putting up solar in San Diego has gotten to be a real hassle. My neighbor had his installed around Thanksgiving. Finally got the Electric company to come out and transfer two months later. Big fine if you do it yourself. Also $500 permit. I am skeptical of the warranty. These companies do not stay in business long. Most of them that lease can put a lien against your home if you don't pay. No recourse if they fail in 10 years, which is about the minimum break even point.
'11 GMC Sierra 1500; '98 Alfa 156 2.0TS; '08 Maser QP; '67 Coronet R/T; '13 Fiat 500c; '20 S90 T6; '22 MB Sprinter 2500 4x4 diesel; '97 Suzuki R Wagon; '96 Opel Astra; '11 Mini Cooper S
Now we all know that a) should read "no LOCAL emissions"
As for b), seems to me this would depend entirely on what you pay for a Kw and when you use that Kw
As for c) I have no freakin' idea if this is even remotely true or not.
To be fair, I have no idea if c) is even true for a diesel vs. a gas car.
I have run item B. It indicates that miles per gal equivalent is more, and substantially. The problem is of course even the oems that make the products do not publish mpg equivalents. It makes you wonder WHY, as it would tend to benefit the EV oems !!! I have NOT run an EV 176,000 miles and documented the results. So in that sense again I have data for two (04 Civic 03 VW Jetta TDI) and no real world data for the EV.
The other thing, I am reminded of the Bru ha ha for the PR disaster Toyota went through with the 2004 Prius 50/60 mpg car getting substantially LESS mpg (25% less). I think they KNEW the realities. They pulled in their legislative chits. The EPA standards were politically reworked (despite being perfectly fine and duplicable) to favor hybrids and Toyota did published "minor" redesigns but were really MASSIVE RE DESIGNS and all is "PRETTY" again.
Currently, I watch with interest the (latest gen)Honda Civic Hybrid suit in a small claims court. Again, surprise/ surprise the hybrid is alleged to post far less mpg than advertised.
To be fair item C is a projection. There are very few EV's that have 175,000 miles plus. and 9 my's on the road. This is to do a anecdotal real life comparison.
To be fair NONE of these things are deal breakers. So for example:
1. the EV oem can give me a utility voucher for the difference in vol and rate per Kwh.
2. They can pay for the installation and removal of charging stations.
3. They can off set the cost of permits and reassessments.
4. They can warranty the car 2 times a gasser.
5. etc.
One thing I had on my mind is the frightening prospect of a Nissan Leaf completely out of warranty. Not only is it sobering to think of the cost of repairing one (ever take your laptop in to be fixed--well scale that up...), but also sobering to think about WHO will fix it.
You have heard that joke? (Unrelated to the above paragraph) Why do the English like warm beer? English (and German) electronics.
I used to hear that joke a lot years ago, when MGs and Triumphs were sold here, back in the 1960-70's. The punch line was slightly different, though...
Because Lucas makes British refrigerators...
Anyone who ever worked on Lucas ignition/electrical systems understands perfectly...
From Wikipedia's reference on Lucas History...
Joseph Lucas, the founder of Lucas Industries was humorously known as the Prince of Darkness in North America, because of the electrical problems common in Lucas-equipped cars, especially British Leyland products.