5 ms·

My conception is that in the US big cars like SUVs are much more common than in Europe and these cars have a much higher consumption of gas. That's kind of Euro

• xeromal 11y ago
  You are correct, but it's not consumption of gas that kills the earth. It's the amount of pollutants released in the air. Some motorcycles release a shit ton of pollutants while actually consuming less gas.
  • geon 11y ago
    Well. More gas used = more CO2 released. Arguably, that's bad.
  • alkonaut 11y ago
    The narrative in the EU the last 10 years has been that if we don't release less CO2 we'll drown the dutch and the Seychelles by next year, so the plan seemed to be to quickly cut CO2 in half, no matter what. The EU-norms do put restrictions on many types of pollution, but only CO2 is ever discussed. Tax breaks and company purchase restrictions and so on on are normally based on the CO2 emissions alone. There has been little/no discussion about pollution other than greenhouse effect, and even among those pollutants, basically only CO2 is ever discussed in relation to cars (Methane sometimes when discussing meat). I don't see the EU5/EU6/... pollutions norms as being complete failures. They haven't only switched europe to diesels, they have brought all combustion engines down to very good consumption, even better when you factor in that the power has actually kept on increasing. Petrol enginess too have become very lean too, and people do buy them still. The latest VW Tiguan SUV is available with a 1.4L 150hp gasoline engine (In Europe that is, in the US it's only available with the 2.0Litre. Basically the US had the option to get 2 trims of Tiguan -- the lean one and the performance one, while still avoiding the diesels. But the lean one wasn't even an option apparently). As for Europe, this year will probably see 10% hybrids (for larger cars in the nordic/western market at least, I only know those markets), and within 3-5 years the hybrids will be competitive enough to replace diesels completely, especially if the subsidies are moved from diesels to hybrids.
• deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
• pwthornton 11y ago
  The US is also much more concerned with air pollution that affects human health. The EU has been much more concerned with gas mileage Diesel is great for gas mileage, but much, much worse for human health because of particulate pollution. It causes heart attacks, strokes and cancer. The US is in the right here. Diesel should be phased out, and I look forward to a day when diesel is no longer used.
  • deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
    • deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
  • jacquesm 11y ago
    > The US is also much more concerned with air pollution that affects human health. What makes you say that? The EU has made plenty of decisions that are aimed at improving air quality which has a direct impact on health, I don't see the US taking the lead here, in fact there are quite a few cases where the EU has lead and the US has definitely not followed. There is a strong push from US automotive companies against diesel simply because they don't really have the engines, the ones they do sell are quite often sourced from other companies (such as Cummins, which is definitely a fine engine). In the US diesel is for trucks and tractors and gas for light vehicles with only some pick-ups and large SUVs available with both fuel options from domestic manufacturers. The VW scandal is definitely very bad for the diesel engine but it's not the engines per se that are the problem here, diesel can run clean, it's just that VW decided to cut corners and then cheat on the tests when they found that their corner cutting made it impossible to comply (what amazes me about the whole thing is that it took this long to find out they cheated so massively).
    • Niten 11y ago
      The Euro 6 standard allows 0.08 g/km of NOx emissions for passenger diesel; the EPA allows a fleet average of 0.04. The U.S. certainly is ahead of Europe on the regulation of toxic emissions, and European cities are much more likely than American ones to have dangerous levels of pollution: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/31/upshot/pollution-around-the-world-a-matter-of-choices.html?referer= http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/31/upshot/pollution-around-th...
• bossrat 11y ago
  Europe is more densely populated and the cultures tend to be less "mobile", so people don't need to transport as much stuff as far, and Europe has more old infrastructure with narrow streets, so larger vehicles are not practical; the US has space galore, and was a generally wealthier place during the period of highway and suburb construction. people need to stop thinking that Americans are so different than Europeans, and especially that there is so much superego-tic morality attached to everything we each do.
  • hugh4 11y ago
    But how can Americans socially signal their sophistication and enlightenment without talking about how much better things are in Europe?
    • csours 11y ago
      Edit to add to the actual conversation: I guess this goes to show that even Europe suffers from regulatory capture. Listen here boy, I'm from Texas [1] and them's fighten words! /s? 1. Actually am from Texas.
    • dang 11y ago
      Please stop posting unsubstantive comments to Hacker News.
  • tomp 11y ago
    You didn't really answer the question. It seems a bit ironic that the US is criticising diesel cars when US petrol cars are (I'm guessing because they're bigger) much less efficient than EU petrol cars.
    • bossrat 11y ago
      "the US" is not criticising diesel cars, that is one article on vox.com Of course, it was in the US where the widespread European diesel cheating was discovered :) but again, that was a small number of Americans measuring, and they don't speak for the whole country either. And I did pretty much answer the question, it was asked if there are more big cars in the US as rumored, and I didn't say "no", I said "...it's because of these reasons"
• dghughes 11y ago
  I'd say yes efficiency since Diesel engines are also about twice as efficient as gasoline engines. But also diesel engines have so much more torque you don't have to wring the piss out of the engine to get moving. With diesel you get most torque at 1500 rpm but for a gasoline engine you're revving it to 5000 rpm to get any torque, and burning more fuel. Less rpm less engine wear too but most diesel engines are built very well to handle the compression ignition. Diesel are also better in wet weather compared to gasoline engines although gas engines are better than the used to be. I think people in the US still imagine a diesel with visible exhaust spewing out soot something from 30 years ago.
  • playworker 11y ago
    Twice as efficient, really? From what I can see you might get a few MPG more from a diesel but there's not that much difference. Modern petrol cars are returning 50-60 mpg, diesels maybe 70, both when driven with care obviously. Diesels better in wet weather, really? I've never owned one, but neither have I ever had to leave my petrol car at home because it was raining, and I've owned some fairly old cars :)
    • usaar333 11y ago
      50+ mpg? What non-hybrid is that fuel efficient? I've seen almost none that beat even 40 combined city/highway
      • playworker 11y ago
        I know there's some sort of VW reputation issue with fuel economy these days ;) but something like the latest Golf as an example of a "normal" car (you need to expand the Fuel Consumption category to see the numbers: http://www.volkswagen.co.uk/new/golf-vii/which-model/engines/overview http://www.volkswagen.co.uk/new/golf-vii/which-model/engines...
      • andrewaylett 11y ago
        US vs. Imperial gallons? That gets you 20%.
• dogma1138 11y ago
  While we like to make quite a bit of fun of the big cares American drive there's quite a good reason behind it. The US has bigger families, the UK has currently the biggest family size at slightly over 2.4 and more 3/4 kid families than all of mainland Europe combined due to immigration. Most households in the EU do not have children, only 21% of the households in the EU with 2 adults have children (31% of all total households have children, in the US even tho the number have dropped in half in some sectors since the 70's it's still 47% of all households), and that number drops to single digits for households with 1 or 3 or more adults. The US driving distances are also quite larger, while you can drive from France to Germany most people do not, in the US driving 100's and even 1000's of miles isn't unheard off, and it's not unheard off having to drive 50 miles or more to get to work in each direction these days. And while it's true that the SUV isn't that popular, the station wagon is pretty much the SUV of Europe, I've never seen Audi S3 SWG's and i didn't thought any one would even make those until I spent some time in the Netherlands and then seen pretty much every car model in SWG form including sporterized models like the S3/S5 which i never though anyone would ever want to make yet alone buy. But in general if Europe would fuck a bit more, and actually have kids and not sustain it's population growth entirely through immigration (because "native" EU population has been shrinking rapidly since the 80's with 1.2-1.9 population growth factors which are below sustainability) SUV's and minivan's would've been much more popular here too.
  • hugh4 11y ago
    This is true. In fact I'd put the causality the other way -- Europeans are going slowly extinct precisely because of the unavailiability to the regular family of things they take for granted in America: big cars and big houses. It's hard to have a second kid when you live in an apartment and drive a Fiesta, and it's really hard to justify a third. A fourth? Forget it.
    • dogma1138 11y ago
      Well WW2 did drove allot of Europe's population out of the country and into the big cities but we can take this chicken and egg game for a long ride. But considering that even countries like Iceland that do culturally were having big families, and living in big houses including split houses where the parents and grand-parents live in connected houses also is suffering from a similar fate I might not be as simple as that. I would say it's a "natural" development of of current life styles, the US managed to delay it maybe because for a long long time and especially after the war the concept of the American dream, a big house, a hot housewife, and 3 kids was in full gear. Now with the American Dream being less relevant, and much less attainable to many Americans we see a switch to less children, less marriages, and more adults living alone.
• ArkyBeagle 11y ago
  The Clean Air and mileage requirements meant the traditional station wagon went extinct. So people bought SUVs, minivans and now "crossovers" to haul kids and stuff. Then, of course, they became status symbols.