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Comments
Mine was a 1978 Accord and a 1982 Escort. The trim piece around the grill on the Accord was over $100, so it did not get replaced. As a comparison a bigger chrome piece on the Escort was damaged and it was only $28 to replace. I know my son wrecked the 1994 Toyota PU and it was a lot of money to repair. Mostly covered by insurance. The body guy said Japanese parts were much higher than domestic.
I understand that VW parts are also high. I don't think that would be a reason to buy a gas Focus over a VW diesel. Diesels if maintained should get more miles than a gas engine. They do not run at the high RPMs required to get the same power with a gasoline engine. I never put high miles on a car so I am not really the one to debate this.
I think the Grand Cherokee with the Mercedes BluTec will hit the showrooms by the first of October. Followed by the ML320 CDI and GL320 CDI. All three good choices for diesel SUVs. Any of them should be capable of 30+ MPG on the highway. Better than any other SUV in their class. Will they be sold in CA? I think it will have to wait for the court to decide who is in charge, CARB or the EPA. That battle has gone on for several years.
The other model you mention, the Jeep GC will get the same engine but will not be Blue Tec equipped as far as I know. It will be 45 state legal and in the future may be equipped with Blue Tec. The Jeep has been rated in the low-20's highway by EPA. My CRD is rated for 26 mpg highway by EPA but I regularly get 29 - 31 mpg. So it is possible that the Jeep GC w/ diesel will do better in real world driving.
Same for the excellent A8 diesel.
http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/oog/info/gdu/gasdiesel.asp
On Friday, I purchased S15 (ULSD) diesel for 2.899/gallon. Gasoline, unleaded regular, was 3.159 at the same station. The fuel brand is Chevron. Up the road at Free State, diesel was 2.819 while gasoline was 3.099.
If this trend continues, will it still make sense to buy a hybrid, especially when the fuel being used is more expensive and basic cost of the car is more expensive? :confuse:
Of course it will, until diesel gets cleaner and the PM filters.
You pro-diesel guys (Gary and ruking1) can type "just wait until... and just wait until.... and just wait until..." until your fingers bleed, but until:
1. ULSD is ubiquitous and
2. the PM filter technology is applied and
3. the CARB states start allowing diesel car sales and
4. the EPA rates a diesel cleaner than the cleanest hybrid and
5. someone besides MB and VW offer clean diesel cars,
then for environmental reasons, the hybrids are STILL the best idea.
If we had applied the same standard 30 years ago and said you can't use gasoline until we have the futuristic Prius...... in the best case we would have never had something like... THE PRIUS !!! Do you think our civilization would be anything like what it is without the expenditure of oil!!??? You've been raised for "argumentation purposes" (not pejorative or personal) too much on the Hollywood back to the future diet. Reality as it REALLY happened is much more gritty.The smart thing to have done was regulate the sulfur content in diesel as it was regulated in unleaded regular. Incremental technologies would/should have kicked in to narrow any gap in emissions issues.
In so far as the hard sell going forward, someone pointed to the production of 100,000 (per year) to 200,000 hybrids as a badge of pride. Not for me to rain on anybodys parade, but starting with a population of less than 1/2 of 1 percent hybrids with a 235.4 M passenger vehicle fleet and a 7 to 7.5% salvage rate (17.7 M) per year how long do you think it will take to get to (any % of the passenger vehicle fleet?) say 50% . OK per year that is .0056641 % PERCENT of the fleet!! Help me out here, any number I use you will say is foolish, and I would probably agree!
Not even the government's(at any and all levels) are buying passenger vehicle hybrids!!?? But then again they do not have to comply with, pay for, or even worry about passing emissions standards!!??
There is also NO statistically correlated study as to how the 100,000 per year hybrids in service have positively or negatively affected effected air quality. Those very same bureaucrates entitiies that say this is so wonderful have no problem letting in a container ship that is the equivalent of 12,000 passenger cars. Disingenuous? Nah, business as usual.
Au Contraire my diesel-sniffing amigo.....
Many Many cities and towns and govt agencies are buying and have bought hybrids for fleet usage.
Google for yourself and see....
And, one of the earliest tests of the hybrid technology was a govt fleet analysis done on several first gen Priuses and HCH-I vehicles, which proved the batteries viable and worry-free for over 100K miles.
http://www1.eere.energy.gov/vehiclesandfuels/avta/light_duty/hev/hev_reports.htm- l
Why should it be cleaner than the cleanest hybrid? Right now the cleanest hybrid is the Honda Civic Hybrid and the Civic GX is cleaner yet. When they start selling diesel from natural gas it will be cleaner than the cleanest hybrid. PM filters are already in use. When used with crappy diesel they have to be replaced or cleaned regularly or the vehicle runs poorly. The major problem with the Liberty diesel is dirty fuel.
From environmentalists view point, they question how clean a hybrid is from inception to the junkyard recycler. There are unresolved issues that you would like to just go away.
Further more no one on this forum has come up with emissions results from the current VW diesel using ULSD. It may very well be cleaner than the cleanest hybrid. There have been several demonstrations of PZEV diesel engines for the EPA to assess. It just takes them a long time to figure out ways to test new things.
Because diesel exhaust is inherenty deadliest. If you are going to say "diesel is the best option" then it needs to be:
1. highest mileage
2. lowest pollution
That's simple. Right now the best hybrid beats the best diesel in both categories.
They are not unresolved to me. If Toyota and Honda say their hybrids are 85-90% recyclable, then that's good enough for me because that is a higher percentage than the diesels or the other gassers.
Point well taken. Government figures unless so noted were from then available #2 diesel. North Am standards allow up to 500 ppm. CA is reputed to be at 140 ppm. Low sulfur in Europe is 50 ppm. As noted the new USLD will be 15 ppm which will make the old standards 33.3x, 9.33x and 3.33x higher. Also at the time # 2 diesel had higher ppm of sulfur in 49 states vs lower in CA. Funny how there is little to no discussion of the sulfur content in unleaded regular.
Saying that something is recyclable means little. Cars have been recycled as long as I can remember. I worked in a wrecking yard during high school. What we did not sell as used parts was sent to the crusher. That was when we had a steel industry in this country. What will we do with all the cars in the future? Ship them to China for disposal. I am curious what 15% is not recyclable. Is it the batteries or some other hazardous waste in the hybrid? A 1949 Ford was 100% recyclable.
Does Honda & Toyota say they will take the responsibility for recycling the hybrid toxic waste? Maybe they expect the tax payers of the USA to cover the cost of shipping to some place for recycling.
You tell me you are the one that has used that story from Toyota:
1. Who, where and when will all the broken hybrids be recycled?
2. What 15% is not recyclable?
What are u smoking? Plenty of auto junk still ends up in landfills.
No one ever recycled seats, dashboards, etc. etc., even during WWII
There are thousands of legal diesels bought every year in every state. Have you wondered why the distinction between a 6.6L DuraMax legal diesel PU truck and a 1.9L illegal VW TDI? I have, that was the main thing that brought me to Edmund's back in 1999. I was looking for answers. So far I have gotten very few. I guess I am a loser for hanging around waiting.
I see much misinformation and many misinformed members of this forum. I also see hope in the fact that we are finally going to come into the 21st century here in America. Gas is king because that is what the Oil companies want to sell us. Gas was at one time a discarded part of the crude oil distillation process. It was only natural that someone in 1864 would build an engine to run on this worthless product. Kerosene or number one diesel is the product most widely sought after, until the gasoline engine was built. Gas was a cheap fuel as a byproduct of kerosene. We've been stuck with the nasty stuff ever since.
As ruking has pointed out numerous times. If we had spent 1/10th money on cleaning up diesel that was spent on gasoline we would not be having this discussion. The Germans have always known diesel was the superior fuel and kept pursuing even when no one cared about conserving our oil supplies. I believe they will get their day in the Sun very shortly.
It's too hot for this here in the East folks :P
Can we please NOT turn this into a life and death struggle between the forces of good and evil this time??
Better yet... come to the chat and we can toss it around there. All things automotive are fair game!
I think you need to do a little more research. I for one have torn every part off of just about every year car up to 1960 models. If it was working it was sold. If it needed rebuilding we rebuilt it. I have rebuilt more manual transmissions than I could count. Dashboards were steel back then. It is only the plastic age of waste that does not recycle. The seats unless they were in good condition were crushed with the rest of the car and melted down in the smelter.
I did not say that today's cars were recycled. I asked what parts are going to be left in the landfill in this utopian view of the hybrids. We should be making cars that last longer not with built in "life expectancy" as Toyota has done with the Hybrids.
Some thought SUV's would take over the passenger vehicle fleet(world), yet NHTSA statistics show SUV's to be 12% of the passenger vehicle fleet (HO HUM). This of course took the better part of a generation (30 years).
As for my remaining SUV's, they are comfortably at the 11/13 year mark and I think they will drift into the 20 year mark before I will even think of selling them. Past a certain time and mileage even against an economy car like a new late model Honda Civic, I will have to do in excess of 15,000 miles per year (average USA drivers yearly mileage) to even BE against the SUV's. One that I gave to a relative does convenience duty in the Boston/Cambridge, MA area and is pushing 16 years old and 170,000 miles. (what a garage queen/king) Hopefully the relative is taking the 300/500 per month saved by not spending for a new car and investing it wisely.
What would wake me up is a diesel SUV that gets 30-37 mpg which might breathe new life into that marketsegment!? Watching paint dry waiting till that happens is an exciting sport in comparison.
That is a sizable chunk. Between 1,700,000 and 2 million per year. I don't think Toyota is even that optomistic.
But this issue is OT.
I am willing to listen re diesel (otherwise, why would I be here?). How long has it taken the Germans to develop tech that was clean enough to satisfy California air regulators? It's academic, now, but do you really think they'd be this far along if CARB had NOT banned diesel passenger cars?
It was early recycling that kept many cars running a long time. I am curious where the junked and worn out cars go today. When I was a kid here in San Diego there were 4 wrecking yards within 5 miles. Now there are none near me. Has anyone with a worn out Toyota given it back for recycling? I don't think any manufacturer does any recycling. That is why I and others have questioned the statement Toyota made about the Prius. It is a well known fact that most recycled goods are more expensive than buying new raw materials.
we've gotten better at internalizing externalities. Mining companies have to reclaim the mine area. Mining companies can't destroy watersheds as easily as they used to, at least not in the US. That drives prices up, but it is a good thing.
there are many ways to analyze the issue, and I've been rebuffed by the argument that says that you use more energy running that little power plant on wheels than is used to make the thing
now, that's not the only question, of course, since the delta between the energy used to run it for one more year and the energy used to replace the vehicle that you would take off the road, is a valuable number to have
and you also have to assess pollution costs - ie, is the old vehicle a polluter compared to the new vehicle
I've never been one to buy into the argument that it is good for our country and the global economy to dispose of old stuff and buy new stuff, but there is something to do the argument
the biggest battle western conservationists are facing may be economic dislocation, not LA Smog (or resource consumption)
hell, the biggest battle may be Al Qaeda
but we beat communism while being conservationists
I think we can beat al qaeda and not give up clean air
but can we coexist with China and not give up clean air? that is a very tough question
Gary, ruking and apl8,
I can only speak from local knowledge, but this is how most of the local scrap is taken care of.
In Tacoma, WA Schnitzer Steel (used to be General Metals) has a large facility that grinds car up into small pieces. The pieces go through a series of belts and other things that separates much of the plastic and glass from the steel. How this is done exactly and what happens to the waist I do not know.
A small amount of this chewed up metal is loaded on a barge and taken to a small smelter in Seattle. The bulk of it is loaded on ships, about one every 4 to 8 weeks, with a destination of either Korea, China or Japan.
The bulk of the junk cars that run through this facility come from Canada. At least two to four barges a week of scrap mostly in the form of cars are off loaded. Most appear to be parted out then crushed.
Hope this helps.
Gary, back to work. Home was better.
That makes sense. We send our scrap metals etc to the places that build our products. They also have lower standards for pollution for recycling. It is probably a lot cheaper to ship to the Pacific rim as the ships are mostly empty headed back. Smeltering with abundant coal in China is probably a lot cheaper. We will pay the price as alp8 has pointed out. Dirty air does not stay over the factory.
Actually the steel industry here is booming in profitability. It just looks different than it did25 yrs ago. The mini-mills cut the legs out from under the integrated mills and forced much imported steel to stay offshore because those integrated mills couldn't compete with the lower cost American steel.
All the mini's use recycled auto's as their main feedstock since scrap is the primary source of metal in a mini as opposed to iron ore in an integrated mill.
Google 'recycling NiMH batteries', I've posted the link here in this forum before, and you'll see that one of the key benefits of this battery is that it is not made from toxic materials like a lead acid battery is. Actually since the 12v lead acid battery in a Prius is somewhat smaller than a normal vehicle the toxic materials are less.
There is a $200 bounty paid by Toyota on every NiMH battery returned.
here is another link:
recycling NiMH batteries
1. ULSD is ubiquitous
This will happen by end of September and has occurred in many places already.
2. the PM filter technology is applied
Already available on large domestic trucks. Will be here with MY 2007 cars from MB and DC.
3. the CARB states start allowing diesel car sales
Diesel cars with 7501 or more miles can be bought in CARB states.
4. the EPA rates a diesel cleaner than the cleanest hybrid
That is something you want. Diesel is already cleaner in a few respects than the Prius. First, no unburned HC is emitted. Second, CO emission 1/3 to 1/4 of what the Prius emits. GHG for VW diesels is very close to what a Prius emits sans the complexity.
5. someone besides MB and VW offer clean diesel cars
Unfortunately we will have to wait until MY 2008 for cars from Honda and Toyota that are diesel powered.
but we beat communism while being conservationists
I think we can beat al qaeda and not give up clean air
but can we coexist with China and not give up clean air? that is a very tough question "...
I would say your first three quotes are not germane to the issues. Quote #4 is something I have also addressed.
Well for sure it depends on the vehicle but I am really talking about the STRUCTURE and the tactical aspects such as "depends on the vehicle" will fall in line. I also gave some STRUCTURAL examples such as lower yearly salvage rate, build to last 9/10 years vs 5 years......
So for example; to address a tactical aspect such as pollution, that 13 year old vehicle (that I have) actually still passes with flying colors ( is still essentially not measure able (bad stuff)) on the latest technological measuring equipment. I suspect at the 15/20 year mark barring little problems it will be substantially the same. In fact the numbers are better now than earlier measurements when "NEW" This happens to be a Toyota Landcruiser, but other cars still have to meet the FED mandated longevity requirements in OEM of vehicles. So to make a long story short and upshot: not a real issue.
But I think in your response, you probably touched on the real issue and that is economic. I mean from a practical point of view, why do you really need the sheet metal (SEX) to change every year? So for example life cycles of certain models have actually DECREASED rather than increased. This is perplexing when giants such as GM and Renault/Nissan are seriously considering strategic alliances. One of the items considered of benefit (literally in the billions) is the sharing of say power trains, chassis, engines, etc. Why would you want to share them if you are running a "throw it away" product line?
I think Honda is a huge key...since they are really as "mainstream" as an auto manufacturer can be. Assuming the engine meets the standards of their 2.2L model, a V6 diesel Odyssey and Pilot would go a long way towards widespread market interest by the US public.
today's Land Cruiser must be much safer than the LandCruiser of your LC's vintage
so it's not just pollution and mpg
I would also think that today's LC performs better
so it's not just an image issue
yes, I think it would be better, generally, for cars to be more robust. But there are real downsides to having a very robust car. No air bags, no ABS, no stability control, worse emissions, lower mpg, lower HP
I kinda doubt Toyota's sincerity (they seem to be a very well-run company that usually handles PR very well), but there seems to be a least a small amount of sincerity in Honda's activities. I wish I had a link, but there is an article out there somewhere talking about Honda's big portfolio of strange environmental research projects. One of them concerned rice farming, if I remember rightly..
My understanding is that in 2008 EU emissions standards increase and will be on par with the US standards enacted for 2007.
If this is the case, then all auto manufactures have to meet the same standards for 2008 and all the development to clean up diesel engines is not just to enter the US market.
:confuse:
So, leading on from that, the UK government has now changed car tax such that although a diesel car produces the exact same co2 emissions as a petrol car, the diesel car owner will have to pay a higher tax. Again, profiting from the perception of diesel being dirtier than petrol.
So here comes my warning. If people in North America do start switching over in a big way to diesel for better mpg, the government will either increase diesel prices by adding more tax per volume, or increase diesel car taxation, or as in the UK, both. Also, if people instead shift over to petrol hybrids, then petrol prices will increase, and battery prices will not drop in proportion to hybrid take up due to companies profiting from the increased demand. It's the way it goes. You'll probably find that goverment will increase/create taxation on the batteries too.
Thank you from the UK. I wondered why diesel is more in the UK than gas (petrol). I think you are correct in your total analysis of both taxation and emissions. The politicians here are looking at ways to tax by the mile. California legislators see these thousands of hybrids getting off for about half the gas tax of a comparable car and want to change that. Oregon is testing a charge by mile system that uses GPS. Nebraska just adds a hybrid tax on your license tags. We get so much negative reaction to diesel here. It all goes back to the sooty smelly diesel cars from the 1980s. It will take a lot of time to educate the people. How long has the UK used Ultra Low Sulfur Diesel? Are you getting any of that super clean 0 PPM sulfur diesel made from Natural Gas? Have a good day. We are watching our Miss Marple & Poirot DVDs.
Americans need to be re-educated about diesels. The new ones from Europe are delightful. I have a 2005 Jeep Liberty CRD and it is great. It is still a diesel, but much quieter, cleaner and more powerful than the diesels of the 1980's.
Cleaning up diesel emissions started only a few years ago. NOx is the last big hurtle and MB has found a pretty good solution. Now that S15 is here, diesel will be much cleaner.
I agree, and wonder if the EPA will try to pull some other rabbit out of the hat to delay diesel cars. It is almost like the government is worried that diesel will take over as it is in Europe. If they lose 35% of their fuel tax revenue think of the impact. With a "no more taxes Congress" it would be easier to cut off the head of the snake that would steal the tax base.
If NoX is the real issue, why E85 that increases NoX over regular unleaded? If they could get E85 established it would increase fuel tax because it takes 25% more to get where you are going. Gas tax is based on gallons sold not percentage of the price. For every 100 miles you drive your Chevy FF PU truck using E85 it will take 3.5 additional gallons. Unless of course they start taxing by the mile.