I totally agree. Diesel power is underated and over looked in this whole scheme. You are correct, the vw 1.9L turbo motor gets roughly 45-50mpg highway with no special technology. it can also run biodiesel without issue and SVO(straight vegetable oil) with some modifications(most reefers would probably be able to mod theirs no problem). What i like best is that outside of oil changes and basic maintence, diesel is reliable and requires no fancy emissions gear unlike modern day gas engines who may intially put out less emissions but once they age a few years and all the emissions gear that is supposed to be replaced and done during maintence is neglected, they end up polluting a lot more than a diesel. Diesel engines also tend to last longer and are more reliable than gasoline engines.
People need to forget electric cars and hydrogen power. Too complicated and far fetched.The only thing electric cars may solve is that carbon emmisions may be reduced to only the power plants intsead of the mobile vehicles, which maybe then we can improve upon our air scrubbers to make buring fossil fuels alittle cleaner.
I also don't get why the united states is so damn focused on ethenol production while creating biodiesel is much easier and less energy intensive(as in it may yield a net gain of energy), and we could use biotech to develope a better crop which could produce high oil yields, grows fast, insect and drought resistant, etc etc not to mention the co2 created when burned in the engines would be reused in theory by the plants that are being grown as fuel.
And finally, life style/living changes should be made. Space is limited. Cities are more efficent than the suburbs, where one gets into their SUV getting 15mpg and has to drive 5 or 10 miles to get to a wawa or to a food store...to the post office. Cities offer high density meaning less distance to travel (bikes and walking and mass transit become more favorable). Logistically its easier for power grids and plumbing and delivery of goods, etc etc. I think the fedual style city planning may be what we should be considering with xtremely tall scapers and dense living areas surrounded by outlying rural area used to farm crops for food and fuel. A bit radical maybe, but w/e. You have to think radically when it comes to these sorts of things. Electricity, planes, physics, nuclear power, etc were all radical ideas for their times, but are now common place.
I don't want to force people to live a certain way, but there is a lot of room to improve upon efficency. I wish people would just place trash trashcans really. Nothing i hate more than when i am on the water at crew practice in the morning and see trashbags and bottles and potato chip foil floating and stuck on shore.
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Originally posted by MC Lighting
Like stated above I drive a 1 ton diesel pickup and you know sadly that 9000# oil burner gets the same mileage as my neighbors 3000# Ford escape hybrid that has toxic batteries and motor components not to mention all of the energy to create the chips for computer components that it took to make it work that all took big amounts of energy.
The Toyota Prias is proud that it gets 50mpg but yet a VW bug with a Turbo diesel gets the same mileage and again without all of the other crap that it took to make it work and in the end of the vehicles life it gets crushed for metal where the hybrid has to be carefully disassembled since it has all of the making for a toxic mess but yet so many fall for this saving the planet.
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