Bosch Announces Better Diesel Engine: Sorry Germany, Diesel is Dead

I don’t know how much electricity costs where you are, but here in Seattle the per-mile cost of electricity is much cheaper than gas or diesel. Lower maintenance cost for pure EV due to simpler drive train. I rode with a Lyft driver in a used Leaf he picked up for $9,000. Uses high speed charging stations twice a day, pays next to nothing. He seemed pretty happy.

I might consider buying an electric car when I can recharge the batteries in 2 min and then go another 600 miles, as with my diesel car & truck.

If diesel is dead, those still around should go cheap. I liked my Mercedes 240D but let too many needed things go unfixed on it. Aside from nitrous oxide, diesel is more fuel efficient than gasoline, especially if you have a manual trans as I did. Diesels do need a turbocharger if you want decent pickup. My 240D was only 72HP at birth and probably less when I sold it at 300k miles. The turbocharger, however, may be the cause of the NO2 problem.

Sorry but you’re wrong about diesel in Europe. The price of diesel is still very competitive especially in Germany where it is clear the government wants a long and smooth transition. I saw diesel at 1.10 euro at the pump not so long ago, that’s very cheap considering it has been as high as 1.80. Although our EU member countries like to talk the green talk just to get a few more votes, in practice you will find most countries will bump up the road tax and parking rates for early vintage diesel engines and leave the latest ones alone (post Euro 5) for the time being. Its true the early cars are dirty, as are old petrol engined cars, but it doesn’t help that there is absolutely no supervision nor any penalties for users who don’t do any maintenance of these cars. Diesel seems to be a perfect cash cow for governments and thanks to VW they are the new pinata in town. Clearly, the automotive world wants to adopt EV in the long term but they know it is just that: the long term. Until then, there is no way an EV can replace a combustion engine in either cost, range and refuelling practicality when it is scaled up for mass use. I’m not even going to debate the fundamental idiocy of EV because manufacturers want it for their increased margins and cap cost, and governments want it too for votes and control over mass transport users; thus EV it is for all of us – whether a good idea or a bad idea, but no need to overhype it.

Space X going to Mars is just Musk’s escape plan from Tesla bond investors.

How much did China’s go UP to make ours go DOWN? EnviroNazis – they make an economic wasteland, and they call it green.

mish writes meaningless dribble now. He proclaims diesel is dead yet he knows nothing of the technology. He is incontrovertible in his view. He proclaims electric but knows nothing of batteries or their technology. What he does know is to write many meaningless dribble articles for click bait so he can generate income and finally move out of his mom’s basement.

A colleague who works for a National Laboratory tells of the time he was stuck in a meeting about electric cars with a group of enthusiastic (if under-informed) greenies. One of the greenies was particularly vociferous about the zero-(tailpipe)-emissions benefits of the electric car. My colleague asked the greenie where the power came from to recharge the car’s batteries. Greenie looked at him with ignorant incredulity, and pointed at an electrical socket on the wall of the conference room — “From the wall, man! From the wall!”.

I see that Mish still doesn’t like the first, second and third laws of thermodynamics with relation to the modern day version of the energy, perpetual motion, free lunch wunderkind of our time,the electric vehicle. Geez, I wonder what the overall efficiency of electric vehicles are?

https://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/new-nasa-images-highlight-us-air-quality-improvement/

You don’t hear much about the trend of air pollution in north America. Reading the sensationalist news you would get the impression things are awful. Actually, the opposite is true: air pollution has been getting better and better: (I wish I could have found data that goes back further)

Mish, have you ever owned a diesel vehicle? Usually I find that people who are skeptical of diesel engines don’t know much about them. I have owned many diesel cars trucks and tractors and when they come out with the new diesel I will be eager to buy one. My VW TDI (turbocharged diesel) was one of the best cars I have ever owned (I’ve owned almost 100). I wish the so-called pollution problem had not been discovered so I could still be driving it, but VW made me a great buy-back offer I could not refuse. I could charge up an electric car for free with my solar system, but I’m not going there; not yet anyway.

Problem trusting any German or EU company now. The degree of corporate capture is massive. Rules can be bent and foreign governments have to police as the Germans and EU obviously will not. Dieselgate the example. Watch out for Bayer/Monsanto. Test everything in the US.

I worked in the industry for 35 years. Boush was considered one of the worst suppliers for the auto industry…. them and Lucas-Methode. The problem with the whole industry is that safety/emissions testing and verification is self compliant. When you pile a bunch of capital into developing a product for a marketable price range and things don’t work out like you’d like them to, the corporate pressure to cheat is enormous. Honda got away with all kinds of MVSS problems for years and the indications are that there was graft at the DOT, The system is wide open for bribery.