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Interestingly though, Diesel popularity, at least in my peer group is going down. - Modern Diesel engines are very complicated due to their turbos, hence are m

Interestingly though, Diesel popularity, at least in my peer group is going down. - Modern Diesel engines are very complicated due to their turbos, hence are more brittle and expensive to repair. - Price advantage of Diesel is practically not there anymore, but the Diesel model is still more expensive. - Modern Gasoline engines have caught up with Diesels in terms of mpg. No one bought a Diesel because it's a Diesel. People were buying it cause the price at the pump was way lower and you could offset your initial higher costs after 50-80k kms. So, the US might just have skipped over Diesel. Happens in other tech as well, see 3g networks, etc.

thedrbrian 13y ago
Talking to a friend who works as an engineer designing modern diesels he said he wouldn't own a car he helped design outside of the warranty if it was a diesel.
- dpcx 13y ago
  That sounds like a terrible statement. Similar to a bridge engineer who wouldn't drive over a bridge he helped design. Shows a serious lack of trust in their capabilities, and that of their team.
  - tjgq 13y ago
    Or he could be referring to planned obsolescence.
  - mikeash 13y ago
    I disagree. A failing bridge is a major safety problem, while a failing car engine is merely a financial problem. A bridge should last "forever", which is to say that it will be clear when it needs to be replaced before it actually fails. Car engines are routinely used until they break, then repaired and used until they break again, and this continues until it's no longer financially viable.
  - to3m 13y ago
    It's not really very controversial. If you need your car, and you can't afford to buy a new engine if it breaks, as far as I can tell you'd be certainly well advised not run a modern diesel car without a warranty. I don't know anybody who's owned one who hasn't had various funny problems with it, requiring regular trips to the garage followed by shrugging shoulders all round and a succession of replacement of random electronic parts. To meet the increasingly stringent emissions controls, and people's desire for a car that is reasonably cheap and accelerates at a decent rate, the cars seem to have become rather complicated, and reliability has been affected. Common points of failure seem to be: - dual mass flywheel (presumably the regular swift ramping-up of torque doesn't help) - turbo charger (obviously spins very quickly and unlike a petrol engine it comes on from about 1500rpm so it's used a lot) - diesel injectors (high precision components operating under pressure) - diesel particulate filter (can clog and require expensive replacement if car is not regularly driven hard) - random engine/ECU "thing" that nobody can figure out (who knows what the root cause of this might be) You might have better luck with a pre-common rail diesel car, but the fuel economy is unlikely to be very good and the performance - at least by modern standards - looks to be terrible.
    - grumps 13y ago
      The more electronic "stuffs" the greater the chance of an issue with it. What engines are you referring to in particular? Any brand in mind? Some manufacturers have been making diesels for a long time despite the emergence of common rail I'd suspect they would have most of this resolved now unless it's planned obsolescence
      - to3m 13y ago
        VW, Mercedes Benz and BMW are the brands I have these anecdotes for specifically. But reading on forums, it seems people have a lot of problems with modern diesel cars them generally. This is not exactly scientific, but the issue crops up at times in UK motoring and not-so-motoring press. Sample links: http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2012/mar/02/turbo-charged-cost-of-diesel-cars http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2012/mar/02/turbo-charged-co... http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/cars/article-2332107/Petrol-vs-diesel-cars-Drivers-warned-diesel-filter-trap.html http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/cars/article-2332107/Petr... http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/news/9407960/The-hidden-cost-of-diesel-cars.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/news/9407960/The-hidden-... http://www.which.co.uk/news/2012/07/petrol-cars-cheaper-to-run-than-diesel-291241/ http://www.which.co.uk/news/2012/07/petrol-cars-cheaper-to-r...
- crististm 13y ago
  You've thrown a heavy statement without backing it up.
- discreteevent 13y ago
  I just scrapped a car with a 1.9 tdi. 260,000 miles on it. The engine was still running perfectly, never gave an ounce of trouble and was still really economical. In general diesels have a reputation for lasting longer. Would be interesting to know what kind of an outfit your friend works for. They would be worth avoiding.
  - davedx 13y ago
    Yup, our Seat Leon TDI is still going strong at 300,000 kms. It's an amazing car, we'll almost certainly be getting the same model when (if?) this one ever breaks.
  - thedrbrian 13y ago
    1.9 Vw? Sounds like an older car since the new ones have 2 litre engines. Older diesels are fantastic even the vw PD engines. My friend was talking about the newer Euro4 and Euro5 engines.
sehugg 13y ago
Also for the average person shopping for a new car the extra $7k is hard to swallow, regardless of fuel efficiency over the lifespan of the vehicle. Diesels are built heavier and tougher by necessity thus pricier.
Zigurd 13y ago
As in many pricing situations, e.g. flat rate internet, what gets ignored is the "insurance effect." In the case of flat rate internet, the insurance is against your bandwidth use going way up due to a new application you start to use, and because people are poor judges of future bandwidth needs. In the case of high mpg cars, it is insurance against price shocks. If the petrodollar goes bust, you can still get to your office at a price you can afford, while everyone else scrambles to carpool or buy a high-mpg car. So even if you only break even over the life of the vehicle, you get the potential value of driving to the very end of the Oil Age.
stonemetal 13y ago
Looking at the current VW passat the diesel version is rated more than 10MPG over the gas version. So I wouldn't say gas has caught up quite yet.
fnordfnordfnord 13y ago
>- Modern Diesel engines are very complicated due to their turbos, hence are more brittle and expensive to repair. This is nonsense. Especially the part about turbochargers. It's hard to find a diesel without one these days. The technology is mature, and so widely adopted that it is the default. >- Price advantage of Diesel is practically not there anymore, but the Diesel model is still more expensive. Yup, takes much longer to pay for itself, if ever. >- Modern Gasoline engines have caught up with Diesels in terms of mpg. No. With a gas engine you can have lots of power, or good economy, never both. If that were true, I'd expect to see at least some adoption in trucking. >No one bought a Diesel because it's a Diesel. Everyone who buys a diesel, buys it because it is a diesel. Nobody buys one on accident. I still maintain that diesels got their bad reputation in the US because of the awful Oldsmobile 350 diesel experiment. I expect the persistent lack of diesels in the US has more to do with shady trade shenanigans than anyone's fear of diesels, despite the price.
- pinaceae 13y ago
  all the mechanics over here disagree - incl. the statistics about failures. modern VWs, BMWs, Audis, etc. all have more issues with their advanced diesel models. talk to mechanics and they have a list of engines to avoid. part of the reason are the new emission standards, leading to ever higher injection pressure and higher temperatures. your counterpoints seem strange, of course all modern diesels have turbos. i am not talking about the TDIs of yore, my 2004 volvo D5 engine is awesome. it's the post 2008 generation that has started the issue trend. common rail engines, over-engineered to the brim.

thedrbrian 13y ago

Talking to a friend who works as an engineer designing modern diesels he said he wouldn't own a car he helped design outside of the warranty if it was a diesel.

dpcx 13y ago
That sounds like a terrible statement. Similar to a bridge engineer who wouldn't drive over a bridge he helped design. Shows a serious lack of trust in their capabilities, and that of their team.
- tjgq 13y ago
  Or he could be referring to planned obsolescence.
- mikeash 13y ago
  I disagree. A failing bridge is a major safety problem, while a failing car engine is merely a financial problem. A bridge should last "forever", which is to say that it will be clear when it needs to be replaced before it actually fails. Car engines are routinely used until they break, then repaired and used until they break again, and this continues until it's no longer financially viable.
- to3m 13y ago
  It's not really very controversial. If you need your car, and you can't afford to buy a new engine if it breaks, as far as I can tell you'd be certainly well advised not run a modern diesel car without a warranty. I don't know anybody who's owned one who hasn't had various funny problems with it, requiring regular trips to the garage followed by shrugging shoulders all round and a succession of replacement of random electronic parts. To meet the increasingly stringent emissions controls, and people's desire for a car that is reasonably cheap and accelerates at a decent rate, the cars seem to have become rather complicated, and reliability has been affected. Common points of failure seem to be: - dual mass flywheel (presumably the regular swift ramping-up of torque doesn't help) - turbo charger (obviously spins very quickly and unlike a petrol engine it comes on from about 1500rpm so it's used a lot) - diesel injectors (high precision components operating under pressure) - diesel particulate filter (can clog and require expensive replacement if car is not regularly driven hard) - random engine/ECU "thing" that nobody can figure out (who knows what the root cause of this might be) You might have better luck with a pre-common rail diesel car, but the fuel economy is unlikely to be very good and the performance - at least by modern standards - looks to be terrible.
  - grumps 13y ago
    The more electronic "stuffs" the greater the chance of an issue with it. What engines are you referring to in particular? Any brand in mind? Some manufacturers have been making diesels for a long time despite the emergence of common rail I'd suspect they would have most of this resolved now unless it's planned obsolescence
    - to3m 13y ago
      VW, Mercedes Benz and BMW are the brands I have these anecdotes for specifically. But reading on forums, it seems people have a lot of problems with modern diesel cars them generally. This is not exactly scientific, but the issue crops up at times in UK motoring and not-so-motoring press. Sample links: http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2012/mar/02/turbo-charged-cost-of-diesel-cars http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2012/mar/02/turbo-charged-co... http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/cars/article-2332107/Petrol-vs-diesel-cars-Drivers-warned-diesel-filter-trap.html http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/cars/article-2332107/Petr... http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/news/9407960/The-hidden-cost-of-diesel-cars.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/news/9407960/The-hidden-... http://www.which.co.uk/news/2012/07/petrol-cars-cheaper-to-run-than-diesel-291241/ http://www.which.co.uk/news/2012/07/petrol-cars-cheaper-to-r...
crististm 13y ago
You've thrown a heavy statement without backing it up.
discreteevent 13y ago
I just scrapped a car with a 1.9 tdi. 260,000 miles on it. The engine was still running perfectly, never gave an ounce of trouble and was still really economical. In general diesels have a reputation for lasting longer. Would be interesting to know what kind of an outfit your friend works for. They would be worth avoiding.
- davedx 13y ago
  Yup, our Seat Leon TDI is still going strong at 300,000 kms. It's an amazing car, we'll almost certainly be getting the same model when (if?) this one ever breaks.
- thedrbrian 13y ago
  1.9 Vw? Sounds like an older car since the new ones have 2 litre engines. Older diesels are fantastic even the vw PD engines. My friend was talking about the newer Euro4 and Euro5 engines.

sehugg 13y ago

Also for the average person shopping for a new car the extra $7k is hard to swallow, regardless of fuel efficiency over the lifespan of the vehicle. Diesels are built heavier and tougher by necessity thus pricier.

Zigurd 13y ago

As in many pricing situations, e.g. flat rate internet, what gets ignored is the "insurance effect." In the case of flat rate internet, the insurance is against your bandwidth use going way up due to a new application you start to use, and because people are poor judges of future bandwidth needs. In the case of high mpg cars, it is insurance against price shocks. If the petrodollar goes bust, you can still get to your office at a price you can afford, while everyone else scrambles to carpool or buy a high-mpg car. So even if you only break even over the life of the vehicle, you get the potential value of driving to the very end of the Oil Age.

stonemetal 13y ago

Looking at the current VW passat the diesel version is rated more than 10MPG over the gas version. So I wouldn't say gas has caught up quite yet.

fnordfnordfnord 13y ago

>- Modern Diesel engines are very complicated due to their turbos, hence are more brittle and expensive to repair. This is nonsense. Especially the part about turbochargers. It's hard to find a diesel without one these days. The technology is mature, and so widely adopted that it is the default. >- Price advantage of Diesel is practically not there anymore, but the Diesel model is still more expensive. Yup, takes much longer to pay for itself, if ever. >- Modern Gasoline engines have caught up with Diesels in terms of mpg. No. With a gas engine you can have lots of power, or good economy, never both. If that were true, I'd expect to see at least some adoption in trucking. >No one bought a Diesel because it's a Diesel. Everyone who buys a diesel, buys it because it is a diesel. Nobody buys one on accident. I still maintain that diesels got their bad reputation in the US because of the awful Oldsmobile 350 diesel experiment. I expect the persistent lack of diesels in the US has more to do with shady trade shenanigans than anyone's fear of diesels, despite the price.

pinaceae 13y ago
all the mechanics over here disagree - incl. the statistics about failures. modern VWs, BMWs, Audis, etc. all have more issues with their advanced diesel models. talk to mechanics and they have a list of engines to avoid. part of the reason are the new emission standards, leading to ever higher injection pressure and higher temperatures. your counterpoints seem strange, of course all modern diesels have turbos. i am not talking about the TDIs of yore, my 2004 volvo D5 engine is awesome. it's the post 2008 generation that has started the issue trend. common rail engines, over-engineered to the brim.