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Some diesel cars are giving the much-hyped hybrids a run for their money when it comes to fuel efficiency.
The sporty BMW 320ed, for example, achieves 64.2 miles to the gallon, while Toyota's petrol-electric Prius manages 61.4mpg, according to consumer watchdogs.
Now if we convert most of the fleet with hybrids with diesel engines what happens to fuel sales? Who would care if diesel fuel cost $10 per gallon if a car went 100 miles on that gallon?
Rather than Calling the Website "This is Money," maybe they should try "This is All Rather Daffy."
The Prius was designed to be a Cleaner Air car -- not a fuel sipper. Back when the Prius was designed and released, few cared about mileage, as gas was relatively cheap. It burns less gasoline, so that it will put less pollution in the air. Toyota did that so they could build more of the high profit Road Hog SUVs.
IF you wanted a REALLY better fuel mileage Prius, they need to put a larger electric motor, larger battery pack, and a wall plug . . . . and then it could run without Oil/Gas . . . . and would be -- a Chevy Volt.
Everyone as a 18wheeler or any heavy equipment, farm tractors, trains and ships all use diesel fuel.
The price of everything would sky rocket.
Do some homework.
Ask why we are not seeing these diesel driven cars, suv in the U.S.?
Quote:
Originally Posted by GregW
Now if we convert most of the fleet with hybrids with diesel engines what happens to fuel sales? Who would care if diesel fuel cost $10 per gallon if a car went 100 miles on that gallon?
We don't allow the same sort of diesel fuel in the States that they do in Europe. That difference accounts for a portion of the mpg gap. Diesel can be created from green plants, as opposed to gasoline engines. Diesels also don't rely on coal, which is different than a large percentage of the power plants in cities where you might find electric/hybrid vehicles.
We don't allow the same sort of diesel fuel in the States that they do in Europe. That difference accounts for a portion of the mpg gap. Diesel can be created from green plants, as opposed to gasoline engines. Diesels also don't rely on coal, which is different than a large percentage of the power plants in cities where you might find electric/hybrid vehicles.
On a good note, Coal is down and heading downer.
For years over half of US power was generated by Coal. As of last year, it was down to 45% and looks to be heading further down as various renewable is coming out of the woodwork from everywhere -- in spite of this being The Great Recession, and overall electricity use being down.
Coal is likely to keep going down and renewables are still climbing. A way to get even more renewables on-line quicker is electric ground transportation.
A couple of nasty parts with Diesels are:
1. The particulates they spit out -- various carbon chains that bind together, and make the air and area around dirty and harm real world things like people and animals for breathing.
2. NOx (Nitrous Oxides) -- any time air is compressed and burned at high temperatures NOx tends to be produced, because air is mostly Nitrogen, and it does not burn. Diesel engines run rather high compression and high temps so they are very good at making NOx.
Add on top of that -- If we stick with most transportation being done with Internal Combustion Engines -- even if fueled in part by various "bio" sources, most fuel for those ICEs will still be fossil. Diesels are still Oil, even if with better mileage. The world is not making any more Oil -- at least in league with the way we are burning it, and at this point we are still sending troops around the world to kill for it. What kind of future is there in that?
At the end of the day, we will still run low, and die in the dark from the addiction. As far as Oil and our addiction, that was one thing (probably just the one thing) I match with GW Bush on. When he called the US behavior with Oil an addiction I think he was totally correct. Or at least his speechwriter was.
And GW has the personal background in addiction areas to know that one drink is too many, and one thousand is never enough. Same with Oil. Even at 100 mpg, we would Still Be Addicted.
At this point there are so many better options. Besides poisoning the air, even the best Diesel is only around 30% efficient, and the worse electric motor is better than 80% efficient. And you can sit in a closed garage all day with an electric motor running and not be harmed. We are short on Oil, but have surplus electricity . . . hmmm, just how hard is this puzzler to figure out?
So just how long is the mental Flash-to-Bang time for America to have the Ah-ha! moment?
They will if there is a huge demand for it or if gasoline continues to rise, you can make diesel from coal and the cost per barrel for conventional oil only needs to exceed about $50. The reason there is no private investment is the volatile oil market. There is other benefits too, it's cleaner than regular diesel and in a co generation facility you could make diesel and use the "waste" heat to generate electricity making it a super efficient use of the fuel. Last but not least this could be done 100% domestically.
For years over half of US power was generated by Coal. As of last year, it was down to 45% and looks to be heading further down as various renewable is coming out of the woodwork from everywhere
They have been building a lot of natural gas facilities, coal plant construction has been on hold for a variety of reasons including concerns over cap and trade policy. That trend is being reversed, as of late 2010:
Last edited by thecoalman; 08-01-2020 at 05:30 PM..
For years over half of US power was generated by Coal. As of last year, it was down to 45% and looks to be heading further down as various renewable is coming out of the woodwork from everywhere -- in spite of this being The Great Recession, and overall electricity use being down.
Coal is likely to keep going down and renewables are still climbing. A way to get even more renewables on-line quicker is electric ground transportation.
A couple of nasty parts with Diesels are:
1. The particulates they spit out -- various carbon chains that bind together, and make the air and area around dirty and harm real world things like people and animals for breathing.
2. NOx (Nitrous Oxides) -- any time air is compressed and burned at high temperatures NOx tends to be produced, because air is mostly Nitrogen, and it does not burn. Diesel engines run rather high compression and high temps so they are very good at making NOx.
Add on top of that -- If we stick with most transportation being done with Internal Combustion Engines -- even if fueled in part by various "bio" sources, most fuel for those ICEs will still be fossil. Diesels are still Oil, even if with better mileage. The world is not making any more Oil -- at least in league with the way we are burning it, and at this point we are still sending troops around the world to kill for it. What kind of future is there in that?
At the end of the day, we will still run low, and die in the dark from the addiction. As far as Oil and our addiction, that was one thing (probably just the one thing) I match with GW Bush on. When he called the US behavior with Oil an addiction I think he was totally correct. Or at least his speechwriter was.
And GW has the personal background in addiction areas to know that one drink is too many, and one thousand is never enough. Same with Oil. Even at 100 mpg, we would Still Be Addicted.
At this point there are so many better options. Besides poisoning the air, even the best Diesel is only around 30% efficient, and the worse electric motor is better than 80% efficient. And you can sit in a closed garage all day with an electric motor running and not be harmed. We are short on Oil, but have surplus electricity . . . hmmm, just how hard is this puzzler to figure out?
So just how long is the mental Flash-to-Bang time for America to have the Ah-ha! moment?
You're really good at citing diesel emissions concerns from about the 1985 era.
The fact is that current USA diesel emissions are cleaner than gasoline motors with all the latest technology and low-sulfur diesel fuel. Further, recent tests of bio-diesel emissions show them to be even cleaner than petroleum base refined diesel fuel ... although the mpg is lesser on bio-diesel. Similarly, tests on Jet A bio-fuels show cleaner emissions in aviation use.
It's not necessarily automatic that a car burning "less gasoline" creates fewer emissions, per your comments re the Prius. I've owned and worked on quite a few cars that got excellent fuel economy all the way back to the 1960's that most certainly would not meet current emissions specs ... many of those cars delivered 30-40 mpg on gasoline. In the late 1970's, we saw diesel cars that delivered fuel economy of high 30's to around 50 mpg (VW, Audi, Peugeot, MB, just to cite a few).
While a fair number of new coal fired power plants have recently been cancelled due to political uncertainty/economics of the current administration, I believe that it's quite likely ... contrary to your assertion that coal use will be reduced ... that coal will be the mainstay base power generation in the USA for many decades to come. It's cheap, it's available, and with latest emissions controls/scrubbers ... it's clean, reliable, and it doesn't have major adverse consequences seen in nuclear energy. It's uptime is almost 100% ... which cannot be matched by localized solar production, nor for that matter, wind energy.
As I live in an area that has some of the highest average wind energy densities in the USA, and see that the uptime is only in the low 20% range ... it's not reliable or capable of delivering power without a base generation support system. In our area, that's coal-fired.
Your comments re running an electric motor being so clean ignores where the electricity comes from. Even if your source is totally solar, you've got to have the room to install the panels to generate the power. You're not going to do that at night, and you're not going to have enough power to re-charge transportation batteries in a reasonable time frame without a lot of square footage of panels ... far more than you'd have available from your garage roof, for example.
You can talk gloom and doom about the demise of combustion sourced power, but with the renewables from many forms of bio mass, algae, and similar sources ... combustion is going to be around for a long time to come.
FWIW ... we currently have enough proven coal reserves in the USA to be quite independent from foreign energy sources for many decades, although I've seen projections which asssert that to be sufficient to go for well over a century. Just the deposits of coal in Wyoming are enough to last us for quite a few decades.
FWIW ... we currently have enough proven coal reserves in the USA to be quite independent from foreign energy sources for many decades, although I've seen projections which asssert that to be sufficient to go for well over a century. Just the deposits of coal in Wyoming are enough to last us for quite a few decades.
"Estimated Recoverable Reserves" include only the coal that can be mined with today’s mining technology, after accessibility constraints and recovery factors are considered. EIA estimates there are 263 billion short tons of U.S. recoverable coal reserves, about 54% of the Demonstrated Reserve Base.
Based on U.S. coal consumption for 2008, the U.S. recoverable coal reserves represent enough coal to last 234 years. However, EIA projects in the most recent Annual Energy Outlook (April 2009) that U.S. coal consumption will increase at about 0.6% per year for the period 2007-2030. If that growth rate continues into the future, U.S. recoverable coal reserves would be exhausted in about 146 years if no new reserves are added.
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