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86 mpg focus? ford, y u no sell this in america?

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There's also the currently high price of diesel here to consider. It's about 50 cents more a gallon where I live. About 3.49 vs 3.97.

With the price of diesel, and the extra cost of the diesel engine, it probably still doesn't make economic sense to buy a diesel powered car yet.
 
It has all to do with cost of bringing the diesel cars to market here. Its BS Americans don't want diesel cars, VW sells every single one they bring here. Audi, BMW, merc all sell decent enough amounts of them. The problem is that diesel engines inherently cost more to make, coupled with stricter emissions here and that diesel is usually more expensive than gas means the savings simply don't appear as it does in other markets.
 
Demo24 said:
It has all to do with cost of bringing the diesel cars to market here. Its BS Americans don't want diesel cars, VW sells every single one they bring here. Audi, BMW, merc all sell decent enough amounts of them. The problem is that diesel engines inherently cost more to make, coupled with stricter emissions here and that diesel is usually more expensive than gas means the savings simply don't appear as it does in other markets.
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You wrote what I wanted to.

To add: as others mentioned - fuel is much more heavily taxed in Europe, and at least in Germany diesel is taxed less than gas. So the time to re-coup the extra cost of diesel engine is much shorter there than here.
 
0roo0roo said:
Yes but how much crude to make diesel vs gasoline?
If americans used more diesel surely the price would go up and defeat the point...
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It doesn't work that way.

Gasoline and diesel are totally different distillates of crude oil.

If you aren't familliar with distillation, you heat a liquid and at varying temperatures, differend compounds boil off. You cool and collect the vapors. It's an effective way of separating mixtures if you don't need great purity.
 
I'll be watching the incoming 2013 Chevy Cruze diesel very closely. If it can put up around 50mpg on the highway, I would get that over a Prius C when I go car shopping next year.
 
Chapbass said:
One thing regarding post #2: In some states with high taxes (like I have in Illinois), Diesel doesn't fluctuate nearly as much as standard gasoline. Now, sorry if my numbers are a little off, as I've been in Germany the past month, but before I left Chicago gas prices were around 4.30, 4.45, 4.60 for 87/89/91 or 93. Diesel was around 3.90 or so, and its been like that for quite a long time. Gas used to be cheaper, then it got much more expensive recently. It may have gone down again in the past month, but all I'm saying is that in some markets diesel can be cheaper not more expensive. (And I will say, diesel has been cheaper for quite a while now around the Chicago area in general). This is all based on memory of course, and I don't own a diesel car so I don't follow it as closely, just something I noticed.
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Good info! While a diesel car there makes some sense, its basically insane to consider in texas.
 
Franz316 said:
I'll be watching the incoming 2013 Chevy Cruze diesel very closely. If it can put up around 50mpg on the highway, I would get that over a Prius C when I go car shopping next year.
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See now that wouldn't make any sense for me. With the regular Cruze getting 38 mpg and the Eco getting 42, and the price of the cars and the fuel, the diesel is a non-starter.

The only thing I can see attractive about is the horsepower and torque, 160ish and 260ish, but it's likely those figures will be lower for the US version.

It would likely be the quickest Cruze.
 
Ferzerp said:
It doesn't work that way.

Gasoline and diesel are totally different distillates of crude oil.

If you aren't familliar with distillation, you heat a liquid and at varying temperatures, differend compounds boil off. You cool and collect the vapors. It's an effective way of separating mixtures if you don't need great purity.
Click to expand...

vaguely, but i thought there were ways to get more gas or diesel out of a barrel of crude, and either way if you mess with demand its going to mess with the price.
 
0roo0roo said:
vaguely, but i thought there were ways to get more gas or diesel out of a barrel of crude, and either way if you mess with demand its going to mess with the price.
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I don't think so. There is no overlap between the two. Kerosene sits in between them even. I guess you could break specific bonds in the diesel to turn it in to gasoline, but that would likely require more energy than it is worth.

edit: found this link.

http://www.environbusiness.com/AEEE/crudeoil.html
 
0roo0roo said:
vaguely, but i thought there were ways to get more gas or diesel out of a barrel of crude, and either way if you mess with demand its going to mess with the price.
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long-chain hydrocarbons can be cracked or fractured into smaller chains, giving you everything from tar to methane. 60% of a barrel of oil ends up as gasoline and about 15% goes to diesel.
 
LTC8K6 said:
There's also the currently high price of diesel here to consider. It's about 50 cents more a gallon where I live. About 3.49 vs 3.97.

With the price of diesel, and the extra cost of the diesel engine, it probably still doesn't make economic sense to buy a diesel powered car yet.
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50 cents is 14% higher cost. Diesel just has to be 14% more efficient for it to be worth it. 59 MPG *.86= 50.7 MPG. That's still quite a bit more efficient than the 40mpg petrol version.
 
Doppel said:
Imperial gallons on a different testing cycle.

It should almost be a UN resolution that all websites available in the US touting a European car's mileage state that.

I am sure that in practice this wouldn't even match a gasoline Prius in city, the Prius being larger and faster as well.Primary use of the internet is porn. Secondary use is indeed creating threads like this.
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exactly. we have this same thread here every couple months 🙄
 
astroidea said:
50 cents is 14% higher cost. Diesel just has to be 14% more efficient for it to be worth it. 59 MPG *.86= 50.7 MPG. That's still quite a bit more efficient than the 40mpg petrol version.
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Price of the vehicle?

And 59mpg is vapor at the moment.

50mpg is what I have heard.
 
bfdd said:
Because the market here is for gasoline, I too want a diesel(preferably diesel hybrid).
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From what I recall the diesel cycle doesn't lend itself well to hybrid operation. I think it has to do with the continuous stopping and starting.

Fuel costs three times as much here as it does in the US, so we save as much as we possibly can, hence diesels. If we had US gas prices I'm fairly sure Europeans wouldn't be so crazy about diesels either.

*I* would still like them, but I'm an efficiency junkie.

On a related note, more and more people around here are getting gasoline vehicles and converting them to LPG, or buying them already LPG-enabled. I think I'd do the same if I had to buy a car today (I currently have a diesel); gas seems a much more logical choice to power an internal combustion engine than any sort of nasty liquid.
 
Also, the fuel efficiency of diesel over gas becomes less so in hybrids; most hybrids are using Atkinson cycle gasoline engines which themselves are much more efficient than regular gas engines, but at a substantial cost of torque. This torque deficit is made up by the high-torque electric motor, so they pair well together.

It looks to me that diesel will never be accepted mainstream in the US. Hybrid tech continues to evolve and is making diesel increasingly irrelevant for passenger vehicles.

GM is coming out with a diesel cruze soon, the first "new" manufacturer in something like 20 years to come up with a diesel car. I expect its cost to be similar to a Prius and so incredibly pointless, as its fuel economy will undoubtedly be worse.
 
Why would you expect the cost be similar to a prius? The Jetta TDI costs $4k less than a prius, without the lethargy.
 
GTaudiophile said:
This youtube video seems relevant to this thread.

A good friend of mine bought an Audi Q7 TDI and now only wants to buy Diesels. He just bought a Audi A3 TDI. If I needed a car, I would seriously consider the VW Golf TDI.

I think if Americans were properly educated about Diesels and had a chance to drive one, the public opinion would change quite a bit.
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I agree. I had a chance to drive the 335d. That thing is amazing. 265hp, 425ft-lbs of torque and it gets 36mpg on the highway!

The thing has so much torque, you'll find yourself hardly needing to rev it past 2k.
 
astroidea said:
Why would you expect the cost be similar to a prius? The Jetta TDI costs $4k less than a prius, without the lethargy.
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The base prius is ~$1200 more than the base TDI. If you ever get a chance to drive one, it is definitely not lethargic. The electric motor makes it feel very strong off the line.

I've only driven a 1.9T TDI so I can't speak for the newer one, but I was not impressed by the torque.
 
astroidea said:
I agree. I had a chance to drive the 335d. That thing is amazing. 265hp, 425ft-lbs of torque and it gets 36mpg on the highway!

The thing has so much torque, you'll find yourself hardly needing to rev it past 2k.
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The new 328i gets about the same mileage with the turbo 4.
 
astroidea said:
Why would you expect the cost be similar to a prius? The Jetta TDI costs $4k less than a prius, without the lethargy.
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In fact the Jetta TDI costs the same amount as a Prius, unless you get the manual tranny, which drops price about a thousand below Prius. Second, it's only very slightly faster.

Chevy Cruze will probably cost similar to the Prius C.
 
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