I think that effort in making a 90 mpg gasoline-electric hybrid car, like the 2008 Prius is rumored to be capable of, would be a much wiser effort than to try to clean up Diesel's exhaust. A very high mpg car can also get sufficient range on compressed methane or hydrogen, or the combination thereof, and these two are renewable fuels. Biodiesel is also renewable, but considerable effort must be expended to produce it, and the potential for large supply of biodiesel would be a lot less than methane or hydrogen. Those two gaseous fuels can be produced much more quickly and in much larger quantity with the least expenditure of additional energy in the processing effort.

I try not to be sour puss on diesels, but in the end, gas hybrids will eventually rule the roads because of
Lower cost,
lower pollution
better reliability
Worry free, all weather operation
Quite

I was a diesel warrior for 20 years.
Had a '79 Diesel olds with a 260cu in engine for 108k miles.( 0 to 60 in about 16 sec!)
(only year they made it)
Then owned a 6.2L diesel vehicle for 230k miles.

I realize diesel advancements will make the engine "better", but it will not reach mass appeal because:
1) A diesel car will never sell in the US for less than $20k.
2) Worry of getting the wrong fuel with low temperature and clogging the fuel filter.
3)Worry about not finding a diesel station( never did run dry, but my wife did!)
3) Diesels will be eternally more noisy than any other engine.
4) untimately a less reliable car, because of the extra systems for diesels, plasma?, glow plugs, high

pressure pump.( If its mechnical, its less reliable)

Plus the diesel really does not have an enduring charactistic for the general public?
I think the answer is no.
* Will there be a diesel car in the up coming movie "Cars"?
* Will Nascar race them?
* Will Lowriders convert them?

Hey What's, its a public company. They lie with something like that, they go to the Enron place. The demand is there, the models are more than limited: VW, Jeep Liberty...that's it. Yet both are selling faster than expected. Those are the only examples and they are all pointing in one direction: the US consumers wants light duty diesels, period.

Tony, you really need that bonk on the head, now so as to bring yourself into 2006.

Lower cost: nonsense. In Europe, comparable models are comparable in price. Here, the VW examples show the same.

Lower pollution: depends what you consider more important. CO2 is lower with diesel, obviously. Some of the other stuff is higher, but that has been basically solved and soon to be implemented.

Better reliability??? Are you daft??? Diesels have always been more reliable than their gas counterparts. This is inherent to the design you dope.

All weather: umn, winterized diesel is at the pumps as of September. Of course the vehicles themselves operate flawlessly in the coldest of temperatures. Those Alps are pretty darn cold in the winter ya know.

Quiet: ok, got me there. A few dB more in return for a load MPG more. In the cabin there is no difference, and outside, not really an issue in this reality.

Less than $20K, umn, dopey, my '05 Golf TDI GLS sold new for $19,800, and yes, the LOADED model. The GL goes for $17K. You really are a dope, ya know.

Cold weather fuel again, that's been dismissed.

40% of all stations have it, that is only growing and will do so as demand increases. Biodiesel will also push this.

Again with the external noise. Ya know that tire noise at highway speed is much higher than engine noise, don't ya?

Less reliable...ugh, you are such a dope. Let me re-iterate...less moving parts, lower RPMS = MORE RELIABLE. That's why they are rated for 3-4 times the miles as a gas counterpart.

No, gas-electric will be related to the dustbin of history. Diesel-electric is simply more elegant and MUCH more efficient.

But for now, I'm gonna buy a bunch of '06 VW TDI's and sell them for a healthy profit in two years! ;)

A diesel Car just won a major European car race this year.
Any Diesel that meets PZEV standards is fine with me.

I love the concept of biodiesel as a transitional fuel.
They have to meet the same NOx standards Per Unit energy produced. This would adjust the NOx allowed upward a bit accounting for higher Thermal Eff.
If not, then anyone that can sit in a garage with the diesel running for an hour can have one

Tony -

I recently heard a lecture by Dr. Fritz Indra who headed up GM's powertrain development until he retired last year. He told us the Oldsmobile Aurora V8 diesel (designed before he joined GM!) was a modified gasoline engine that almost single-handedly gave diesels a bad name in the US. Perhaps your personal experience way back when is not representative of that of tens of millions of diesel owners in Europe today - the difference in the technology is like night and day.

As for noise, an engine with a high compression ratio and small displacement will always be noisier than one with a low compression ratio and/or large displacement. Modern diesels all feature acoustic encapsulation to mitigate the problem.

All-weather capability is a primarily a function of the fuel's cold filter plug point, the fuel system design and the engine' compression ratio. The petrochemical industry can adapt winter grades as required, e.g. in Nordic and Alpine countries. The military grade Special Austro DK remains usable down to -35 deg C (-30 deg F).

Especially in the smaller vehicle categories, the diesel option is usually the heaviest one. The suspension design has to be adapted to compensate. There is currently a trend - especially in France - toward slightly lower compression ratios of 15-16 to reduce NOx emissions, weight and cost at the expense of a little fuel economy.

Joseph -

if you find a diesel passenger car that meets PZEV regs, please let us all know immediately!

Rafael - actually, the Mercury Meta One was a diesel-hybrid concept shown at the 2005 Detroit Auto show that was supposed to be PZEV:

http://www.evworld.com/view.cfm?section=communique&newsid=7231

I appreciate the Scientists, Engineers, and Technicans defending the latest incarnation of the diesel engine.
However, you cannot deny these facts:
1) diesels will cost more the the equivalent gas model
2) exhaust smell will still be present
3) It will be more noisy then gas, externally

These issues will always be apparent to the street level buyer.
In the U.S. of A. this will doom the diesel to a niche in the market.

Hey Cervus: who said anything about a "grand conspiracies?" Did I say that? No, I did not. Where does that come from?

And my argument has merit regardless of any "engineering problems" of the EV you alude to (which are almost non-existent, by the way, apart from the battery power, which is changing fast!). That wasn't the point. You distract away from the point made, which is this: there is so much invested in the current infrastructure and setup by the major car makers & all related and anciliary industries that they will not just "drop" the I.C.E. overnight. It will take some time. A simple point.

Diesel haters... sigh. Maybe Tony is trying to point out the new technologies being proposed (plasma assisted catalyst, etc.) will add to cost. If that's the case... Tony is just guessing (though assumably, he's right). But he's just simply wrong if he means diesel's cost more now. My 2002 VW TDI Jetta was cheaper, brand new with all the options, than ANY hybrid car on the market at the time. I get about 50 mpg when I drive the speed limit on the interstate. I make my own veggie diesel from recycled vegetable oil (filtered and mixed with a small amount of kerosene and gasoline, plus a very small amount of stabilizing/preserving agents I buy from auto parts vendors)... though it is only approximately 85% vegetable oil (petrol products added to thin the fuel so it doesn't gum up the injectors/pumps, and to make for better combustion), there is no more particulate emissions/smoke coming out of my tailpipe than the typical small gas only vehicle, and smell... well my exhaust smells like a burning candle or a BBQ. Does it stink? Honestly, I say my friend's Prius has stinkier exhaust (which isn't to say the hybrid's exhaust smells more strongly... it just smells more noxious, like chemicals/petrol). Besides dramtically lower particulate emissions, the veggie oil diesel has significantly less NOx (I am working with an atmospheric scientist to test exactly how much, but have read on related sites it is anywhere from 1/3 to 1/2 as much as petrol diesel), and zero (or near) sulfur. It costs me less than $1 a gallon to make too (including the cost of upkeep for my filtering/pumping system, plus a small amount of electricity needed to power pumps). And the amount of fossil fuels I use to travel the 700 or so miles I can go on a single tank of fuel equates to about 300 miles per gallon!

So, since virtually every diesel engine on the planet is capable of running on vegetable oil (if either the oil or the fuel system in the car is modified correctly), and since this vegetable oil based fuel is renewable and recyclable (BTW IT IS NOT THE SAME AS BIODIESEL), why hate diesels so much? Americans are simply ignorant in these matters. We could be recycling used vegetable oil nationwide and making enough veggie diesel to run all of our mass transit and probably most/all of our commercial vehicles. For example, in my state there is somewhere between 500,000 and 1,000,000 gallons of recycled vegetable oil POTENTIALLY available each year (assuming it were all collected), which would translte into about 900,000 - 1,800,000 gallons of veggie oil fuel per year in my sate with a population of about 6,000,000 people. There is no need to build new refineries to do this (new collection and processing centers, yes... but fuel can be made, delivered, and pumped with existing equipment). There is no need to refine this fuel at all (beyond the gas and kerosene that is added). It by no means solves our fuel crisis, but it could be a significant step toward cleaner air, cheaper fuel, less dependence on (foreign) oil, etc. Americans need to lose their ignorance and prejudice regarding diesels, in some very significant ways they are truly superior to gasoline and or hybrid engines.