5 ms·

> though diesel engines spit out a bunch of bad stuff. Exactly. The noxious tailpipe emissions in a city are usually from diesel trucks, small vehicles like mo

by Aurornis 11mo ago

> though diesel engines spit out a bunch of bad stuff. Exactly. The noxious tailpipe emissions in a city are usually from diesel trucks, small vehicles like motorcycles (small or absent catalytic converters), modified vehicles (catalytic converter removed or diesel reprogrammed to smoke), but not modern gasoline ICE vehicles. The love for diesel engines in many European countries was always confusing to me. PM2.5 is also a broad category of particulates that come from many sources. The PM2.5 levels in the air depend on many sources, with wind being a major factor in changing PM2.5 levels. It’s hard to draw conclusions when a number depends on the weather and a lot of other inputs.

stetrain 11mo ago
Diesel looks good if you are focusing primarily on fuel economy (mpg / L/100km), and when companies cheat the tests on other emissions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_emissions_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_emissions_scandal When you remove the cheating and give adequate weight to those emissions, diesel for passenger vehicles makes a lot less sense.
- cool_dude85 11mo ago
  Diesel is less fuel efficient than regular gasoline except when you measure by volume. It gets fewer miles per unit of energy in the fuel.
  - stetrain 11mo ago
    Yes, but measuring miles per volume of fuel and setting increasing targets was a big focus of reducing petroleum dependency since the 70s. The focus has more recently shifted to reducing overall emissions of CO2 and other harmful gases and particulates, which makes diesel much less appealing.
  - deleted 11mo ago
    [deleted]
  - SECProto 11mo ago
    Fuel is sold by volume, which is why volumetric fuel efficiency is desirable to the consumer
    - saalweachter 11mo ago
      Fuel is sold by volume and fuel type; diesel is about 25% more expensive per gallon than regular gasoline where I am.
      - andruby 11mo ago
        And it is 10% cheaper than gasoline where I am (South-Africa)
      - SECProto 11mo ago
        Correct - where I am it is cheaper most of the year, a bit more expensive in the winter.
  - quasse 11mo ago
    Can you source that? Diesel is only 13% more energy dense than gasoline [1] so the difference between the two fuels isn't huge. I suspect that modern (last five years) turbocharged gasoline engines are probably approaching diesel thermal efficiency, but I don't think that it's correct to say that they generally surpass it. The gasoline Ford EcoBoost is 33% thermally efficient while a BMW N47 turbo-diesel is 42% thermally efficient, as an example [2]. [1] https://afdc.energy.gov/fuels/properties https://afdc.energy.gov/fuels/properties [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brake-specific_fuel_consumption https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brake-specific_fuel_consumptio...
    - potato3732842 11mo ago
      The fundamental difference in how the engine operates by throttling fuel only instead of air and fuel accounts for a large fuel economy savings
  - dghlsakjg 11mo ago
    I don't think any car buyer has ever looked at Calories per litre of fuel as a relevant metric for purchasing. People that buy cars almost exclusively care about cost of fuel to move between A and B.
- rdm_blackhole 11mo ago
  Not only that, in France for example the liter of Diesel fuel was always 10 to 15 euro cents cheaper at the petrol station due to how regular gasoline and diesel fuel was taxed. That's why before EVs started to show up on the market en masse if you walked into a dealership they would always recommend that you pick the diesel engine if you wanted to save money of fuel costs. That was actually the reason why the Yellow vest protests started in 2018 when the French government announced that the taxation gap between diesel and regular gasoline was going to disappear gradually. Small edit to add to the context: By that point, when the protests started in 2018, the governments(right and left) of France and the many French automakers had been pushing diesel engines as THE solution to alleviate rising fuel costs and so justifiably, the protesters thought that someone had just pulled the rug from underneath them. Also this measure was in direct contradiction to Macron's campaign promise which was that he was going to reduce the tax burden or at least not increase it on the middle class, especially the rural middle-class that basically cannot get a job without having a car as public transport is almost non-existent in rural France. That and many other things which I won't get into since it is not relevant for this discussion really riled people up.
  - mikepurvis 11mo ago
    In Canada, diesel fuel is priced around mid-grade gasoline (89). So it's slightly more expensive than regular, but slightly cheaper than premium (91/93). Based on this, I've always thought of diesel as "more expensive", like you better get 15% more power/miles out of it if it's going to cost more! However, I suspect that most people purchasing diesel vehicles have as their other choice a car that would slurp premium, so for those buyers perhaps diesel is still a discount, even in Canada.
efaref 11mo ago
The love for diesel came from a catastrophic misunderstanding and the resulting belief that CO2 must be reduced at all costs. Diesel engines of the past produced slightly less CO2 per km than petrol engines in exchange for much worse overall emissions. The fact that they were slightly more efficient in terms of fuel consumption helped with the sales pitch, too.
- potato3732842 11mo ago
  Nobody was even thinking about CO2 when the policies that got Europe where they are were enacted. Europe began embracing diesels 40yr ago when they were noisy and stinky and they did it because they taxed the crap out of fuel so people rightfully prioritized buying vehicles that got better fuel economy. Giving a crap about CO2 is a recent thing.
  - hollerith 11mo ago
    Interesting. If not to reduce CO2 emissions, what was the rationale presented to the voters for having high taxes on fuel 40 yr ago? In the US, Federal lawmakers would be voted out of office (even now after the science of climate change has settled) if they imposed taxes on fuels anywhere near as high as European lawmakers do.
    - potato3732842 11mo ago
      >Interesting. If not to reduce CO2 emissions, what was the rationale presented to the voters for having high taxes on fuel 40 yr ago? Energy security. They didn't have north sea oil back then. Buying from Russia or the ME was fraught with political peril. And of course the .gov is never gonna pass up a chance to increase revenue.
  - efaref 11mo ago
    I don't know about mainland Europe, but in the UK it really was exclusively about CO2 emissions per distance travelled, to the extent that Vehicle Excise Duty (the annual tax you pay on a car) was defined in terms of g/km of CO2 emitted. This happened in 2001 and wasn't changed until the wake of the emissions cheating scandals [1]. [1] https://www.gov.uk/vehicle-tax-rate-tables/rates-for-cars-registered-on-or-after-1-march-2001 https://www.gov.uk/vehicle-tax-rate-tables/rates-for-cars-re...
awongh 11mo ago
> The love for diesel engines in many European countries was always confusing to me. And turns out the whole thing was a lie. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel_emissions_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel_emissions_scandal It's unfortunate that so much rhetoric around environmentalism is based on faulty claims. It's starting to make me sceptical of environmental claims in general. The latest one is AI data center water use- the extreme numbers like 5 liters of water per ChatGPT image just makes me feel sad that we can't have a civil discussion based on the facts. Everything is so polarized.
- wiether 11mo ago
  I'm confused by your comment. You link an article that talks about how manufacturers lied on their emission figures. But later you seem to imply that the actual lie was about how bad emissions are for humans/environment?
  - awongh 11mo ago
    My point was that misinformation makes it impossible or nearly impossible to evaluate "is this environmental or not". Best effort is not enough to guarantee a good outcome- for example, this car is diesel and has lower emissions, therefore I will buy it and I will be reducing my own emissions turns out to not be true all the time. Just like congestion pricing might or might not actually affect pollution in the way that it's claimed. The obvious point being that the city loves the new revenue, no matter what the level of impact it actually has. I'm actually in favor of congestion pricing in principle (whether or not pm2.5 is reduced or not). I'm just sad that often times it's impossible to figure out what's true.
- pixl97 11mo ago
  >It's starting to make me sceptical of environmental claims in general. What does that even mean? Honestly whatever it means it sounds like you would be the kind of person that would fall for the firehose of falsehood rather than look for the truth behind the actual claims.
  - 11mo ago
GuB-42 11mo ago
I believe the popularity of diesel car in Europe is actually a tax-related hack. The idea is that diesel is the "work" fuel, for shipping, construction, etc... While gasoline is the "consumer" fuel, for personal use, motorsports, etc... Make the former expensive and it will affect the entire economy, everything will become more expensive and less competitive. Making gasoline more expensive will not have the same impact. So, put high taxes on gasoline. The result was an increase in popularity of diesel cars, that cost less to run because of taxes. Now, the situation is changing. Diesel, at least the one that is legal to use on the road is taxed at a level closer to gasoline. Diesel cars are also becoming less and less welcome with regards to low emission zones and green taxes, so many people are going back to gasoline.
- rdm_blackhole 11mo ago
  Yes, in France as I pointed out in my other comment, the diesel fuel was always cheaper than regular gasoline. The re-alignment of the tax was (amongst other things) what sparked the massive yellow vest protests in France in 2018.
SoftTalker 11mo ago
Modern diesel engines with DPF and DEF are pretty clean from a particulate and NOx standpoint. Of course there are still older diesels on the road, mainly buses and trucks. In the USA, diesel is so unpopular as a passenger car engine that it's not even worth worrying about.
- SR2Z 11mo ago
  I don't think you can just say diesel is less popular in the US without bringing up the emissions scandals. It genuinely seems to me like companies can't deliver clean emissions and efficiency gains at the same time for it.
  - SoftTalker 11mo ago
    The scandals don't matter. The number of people in the USA who buy diesel passenger cars rounds off to "nobody." There's just no point in even bothering. Supposing you could make an ultra-low emission diesel (without cheating), you'd still sell almost none.
- two_handfuls 11mo ago
  We would believe that except that car companies are known for lying about diesel emissions.
niemandhier 11mo ago
When I was at the military they told us that in case of war the government would start appropriating diesel cars, since those are compatible with the fuel the military uses and that there were ancient incentives to buy this type of car to make sure there were enough of them.
- bumby 11mo ago
  The Marine Corps has/had KLR 650 dirt bikes converted to run on diesel, kerosene, or JP8.
Tade0 11mo ago
> The love for diesel engines in many European countries was always confusing to me. That's a thing of the past as as early as in 2023 diesels were already a smaller percentage of new cars than non-hybrid EVs: https://www.acea.auto/figure/fuel-types-of-new-passenger-cars-in-eu/ https://www.acea.auto/figure/fuel-types-of-new-passenger-car... To add to what others said: diesels always had a reputation of reliability. The cast-iron TDI 1.9 is legendary but even Italian cars fitted with the JTD line would just work and not require maintenance. I recall making light of a friend who was driving an Alfa Romeo until he mentioned that actually it's been more reliable than anything else he's driven - at least in terms of powertrain issues.
Angostura 11mo ago
Diesel was promoted in the UK when we were worried about CO2 emissions. There was a subsequent back-pedal when particulates became a prominent issue
potato3732842 11mo ago
>The love for diesel engines in many European countries was always confusing to me. It's expressly incentivized by their tax system. Imagine the year is 1988 and you're some snooty jerk in Europe about to buy a Mercedes. Why on earth would you go with the noisy, smelly diesel option if not to save A TON of money over the life of the vehicle?

stetrain 11mo ago

Diesel looks good if you are focusing primarily on fuel economy (mpg / L/100km), and when companies cheat the tests on other emissions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_emissions_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_emissions_scandal When you remove the cheating and give adequate weight to those emissions, diesel for passenger vehicles makes a lot less sense.

cool_dude85 11mo ago
Diesel is less fuel efficient than regular gasoline except when you measure by volume. It gets fewer miles per unit of energy in the fuel.
- stetrain 11mo ago
  Yes, but measuring miles per volume of fuel and setting increasing targets was a big focus of reducing petroleum dependency since the 70s. The focus has more recently shifted to reducing overall emissions of CO2 and other harmful gases and particulates, which makes diesel much less appealing.
- deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]
- SECProto 11mo ago
  Fuel is sold by volume, which is why volumetric fuel efficiency is desirable to the consumer
  - saalweachter 11mo ago
    Fuel is sold by volume and fuel type; diesel is about 25% more expensive per gallon than regular gasoline where I am.
    - andruby 11mo ago
      And it is 10% cheaper than gasoline where I am (South-Africa)
    - SECProto 11mo ago
      Correct - where I am it is cheaper most of the year, a bit more expensive in the winter.
- quasse 11mo ago
  Can you source that? Diesel is only 13% more energy dense than gasoline [1] so the difference between the two fuels isn't huge. I suspect that modern (last five years) turbocharged gasoline engines are probably approaching diesel thermal efficiency, but I don't think that it's correct to say that they generally surpass it. The gasoline Ford EcoBoost is 33% thermally efficient while a BMW N47 turbo-diesel is 42% thermally efficient, as an example [2]. [1] https://afdc.energy.gov/fuels/properties https://afdc.energy.gov/fuels/properties [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brake-specific_fuel_consumption https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brake-specific_fuel_consumptio...
  - potato3732842 11mo ago
    The fundamental difference in how the engine operates by throttling fuel only instead of air and fuel accounts for a large fuel economy savings
- dghlsakjg 11mo ago
  I don't think any car buyer has ever looked at Calories per litre of fuel as a relevant metric for purchasing. People that buy cars almost exclusively care about cost of fuel to move between A and B.
rdm_blackhole 11mo ago
Not only that, in France for example the liter of Diesel fuel was always 10 to 15 euro cents cheaper at the petrol station due to how regular gasoline and diesel fuel was taxed. That's why before EVs started to show up on the market en masse if you walked into a dealership they would always recommend that you pick the diesel engine if you wanted to save money of fuel costs. That was actually the reason why the Yellow vest protests started in 2018 when the French government announced that the taxation gap between diesel and regular gasoline was going to disappear gradually. Small edit to add to the context: By that point, when the protests started in 2018, the governments(right and left) of France and the many French automakers had been pushing diesel engines as THE solution to alleviate rising fuel costs and so justifiably, the protesters thought that someone had just pulled the rug from underneath them. Also this measure was in direct contradiction to Macron's campaign promise which was that he was going to reduce the tax burden or at least not increase it on the middle class, especially the rural middle-class that basically cannot get a job without having a car as public transport is almost non-existent in rural France. That and many other things which I won't get into since it is not relevant for this discussion really riled people up.
- mikepurvis 11mo ago
  In Canada, diesel fuel is priced around mid-grade gasoline (89). So it's slightly more expensive than regular, but slightly cheaper than premium (91/93). Based on this, I've always thought of diesel as "more expensive", like you better get 15% more power/miles out of it if it's going to cost more! However, I suspect that most people purchasing diesel vehicles have as their other choice a car that would slurp premium, so for those buyers perhaps diesel is still a discount, even in Canada.

efaref 11mo ago

The love for diesel came from a catastrophic misunderstanding and the resulting belief that CO2 must be reduced at all costs. Diesel engines of the past produced slightly less CO2 per km than petrol engines in exchange for much worse overall emissions. The fact that they were slightly more efficient in terms of fuel consumption helped with the sales pitch, too.

potato3732842 11mo ago
Nobody was even thinking about CO2 when the policies that got Europe where they are were enacted. Europe began embracing diesels 40yr ago when they were noisy and stinky and they did it because they taxed the crap out of fuel so people rightfully prioritized buying vehicles that got better fuel economy. Giving a crap about CO2 is a recent thing.
- hollerith 11mo ago
  Interesting. If not to reduce CO2 emissions, what was the rationale presented to the voters for having high taxes on fuel 40 yr ago? In the US, Federal lawmakers would be voted out of office (even now after the science of climate change has settled) if they imposed taxes on fuels anywhere near as high as European lawmakers do.
  - potato3732842 11mo ago
    >Interesting. If not to reduce CO2 emissions, what was the rationale presented to the voters for having high taxes on fuel 40 yr ago? Energy security. They didn't have north sea oil back then. Buying from Russia or the ME was fraught with political peril. And of course the .gov is never gonna pass up a chance to increase revenue.
- efaref 11mo ago
  I don't know about mainland Europe, but in the UK it really was exclusively about CO2 emissions per distance travelled, to the extent that Vehicle Excise Duty (the annual tax you pay on a car) was defined in terms of g/km of CO2 emitted. This happened in 2001 and wasn't changed until the wake of the emissions cheating scandals [1]. [1] https://www.gov.uk/vehicle-tax-rate-tables/rates-for-cars-registered-on-or-after-1-march-2001 https://www.gov.uk/vehicle-tax-rate-tables/rates-for-cars-re...

awongh 11mo ago

> The love for diesel engines in many European countries was always confusing to me. And turns out the whole thing was a lie. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel_emissions_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel_emissions_scandal It's unfortunate that so much rhetoric around environmentalism is based on faulty claims. It's starting to make me sceptical of environmental claims in general. The latest one is AI data center water use- the extreme numbers like 5 liters of water per ChatGPT image just makes me feel sad that we can't have a civil discussion based on the facts. Everything is so polarized.

wiether 11mo ago
I'm confused by your comment. You link an article that talks about how manufacturers lied on their emission figures. But later you seem to imply that the actual lie was about how bad emissions are for humans/environment?
- awongh 11mo ago
  My point was that misinformation makes it impossible or nearly impossible to evaluate "is this environmental or not". Best effort is not enough to guarantee a good outcome- for example, this car is diesel and has lower emissions, therefore I will buy it and I will be reducing my own emissions turns out to not be true all the time. Just like congestion pricing might or might not actually affect pollution in the way that it's claimed. The obvious point being that the city loves the new revenue, no matter what the level of impact it actually has. I'm actually in favor of congestion pricing in principle (whether or not pm2.5 is reduced or not). I'm just sad that often times it's impossible to figure out what's true.
pixl97 11mo ago
>It's starting to make me sceptical of environmental claims in general. What does that even mean? Honestly whatever it means it sounds like you would be the kind of person that would fall for the firehose of falsehood rather than look for the truth behind the actual claims.
- 11mo ago

GuB-42 11mo ago

I believe the popularity of diesel car in Europe is actually a tax-related hack. The idea is that diesel is the "work" fuel, for shipping, construction, etc... While gasoline is the "consumer" fuel, for personal use, motorsports, etc... Make the former expensive and it will affect the entire economy, everything will become more expensive and less competitive. Making gasoline more expensive will not have the same impact. So, put high taxes on gasoline. The result was an increase in popularity of diesel cars, that cost less to run because of taxes. Now, the situation is changing. Diesel, at least the one that is legal to use on the road is taxed at a level closer to gasoline. Diesel cars are also becoming less and less welcome with regards to low emission zones and green taxes, so many people are going back to gasoline.

rdm_blackhole 11mo ago
Yes, in France as I pointed out in my other comment, the diesel fuel was always cheaper than regular gasoline. The re-alignment of the tax was (amongst other things) what sparked the massive yellow vest protests in France in 2018.

SoftTalker 11mo ago

Modern diesel engines with DPF and DEF are pretty clean from a particulate and NOx standpoint. Of course there are still older diesels on the road, mainly buses and trucks. In the USA, diesel is so unpopular as a passenger car engine that it's not even worth worrying about.

SR2Z 11mo ago
I don't think you can just say diesel is less popular in the US without bringing up the emissions scandals. It genuinely seems to me like companies can't deliver clean emissions and efficiency gains at the same time for it.
- SoftTalker 11mo ago
  The scandals don't matter. The number of people in the USA who buy diesel passenger cars rounds off to "nobody." There's just no point in even bothering. Supposing you could make an ultra-low emission diesel (without cheating), you'd still sell almost none.
two_handfuls 11mo ago
We would believe that except that car companies are known for lying about diesel emissions.

niemandhier 11mo ago

When I was at the military they told us that in case of war the government would start appropriating diesel cars, since those are compatible with the fuel the military uses and that there were ancient incentives to buy this type of car to make sure there were enough of them.

bumby 11mo ago
The Marine Corps has/had KLR 650 dirt bikes converted to run on diesel, kerosene, or JP8.

Tade0 11mo ago

> The love for diesel engines in many European countries was always confusing to me. That's a thing of the past as as early as in 2023 diesels were already a smaller percentage of new cars than non-hybrid EVs: https://www.acea.auto/figure/fuel-types-of-new-passenger-cars-in-eu/ https://www.acea.auto/figure/fuel-types-of-new-passenger-car... To add to what others said: diesels always had a reputation of reliability. The cast-iron TDI 1.9 is legendary but even Italian cars fitted with the JTD line would just work and not require maintenance. I recall making light of a friend who was driving an Alfa Romeo until he mentioned that actually it's been more reliable than anything else he's driven - at least in terms of powertrain issues.

Angostura 11mo ago

Diesel was promoted in the UK when we were worried about CO2 emissions. There was a subsequent back-pedal when particulates became a prominent issue

potato3732842 11mo ago

>The love for diesel engines in many European countries was always confusing to me. It's expressly incentivized by their tax system. Imagine the year is 1988 and you're some snooty jerk in Europe about to buy a Mercedes. Why on earth would you go with the noisy, smelly diesel option if not to save A TON of money over the life of the vehicle?