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I would think that moving shipping to rail would cut a substantial amount of diesel usage and create a market surplus. I don't know anything about petroleum refineries, but I thought that diesel was a bi-product of gasoline refining. I can't believe the oil industry would be interested in cutting trucking and the diesel demand. Shipping could be moved from diesel trucking to rail, rail could easily be moved to NG over electric.
Passenger vehicles could be moved to diesel.
Without an incentive to put more passenger diesel vehicles on the road, there is no incentive to move shipping from trucks to more efficient rail. Diesel engines are substantially more expensive to manufacture than gasoline and that is reflected in the vehicle purchase price. The retail diesel price locally has been close to the gasoline price and there is no justification for the extra capital expense of a diesel vehicle.
This is the type of thing that needs the government to step in on. A rebate for diesel vehicles, an incentive for rail to go to NG or even a plug-in hybrid scheme and tax the crap out of trucking.
If you meant diesel is a byproduct of refining, not so. However, with some effort, you can convert diesel to gasoline.
Also, diesel engines are inherently more efficient than gasoline ICEs, so there is a justification for their existence.
I have owned a lot of diesel construction/farm equipment and heavy trucks. One of my favorite diesel engines was a JD 4cyl, I wish I had one in my small truck, but there is no way a diesel conversion makes financial sense in a small low annual mileage passenger vehicle.
As a really bad example a VW Touareg. The gas V6 is $38K MSRP, V8 $43K and the V10 diesel is $59K. The fuel MPG from the brochure isn't a stunning improvement over the gas: 16/20,14/19,17/22
Why would I buy the diesel?
The 1 MPG saving isn't significant.
Diesel at the pump here is $0.92/L, gas is $1.25/L.
I have an older S10 pickup and a Saturn SL1. If I was going to replace either one and was making a decision on a small diesel, it's going to be $5K more than a comparable gas. This is an extremely conservative number and there aren't that many diesel vehicles available.
Assuming I can get 10 Imp. MPG better efficiency from the diesel. At 40 MPG gas, 50 MPG diesel. This comes out to $8.75/100km gas and $5.15/100km diesel. To make up the $5000 capital difference at $3.60/100km I have to drive 138,000 km.
I only have 130,000 km on our Saturn and it's a 1999. We just don't drive that much.
There is a wider price spread right now, but last year diesel pushed up close to the gas price and could do it again, which would make that even worse.
In larger high mileage trucks it makes economic sense. In small low annual mileage cars, you can't justify the capital cost.
If there is no incentive to go to a diesel vehicle, very few people will do it.
Your figures are from CURRENT model availability which is evidence of LACK thereof.
A larger supply of small and efficient diesels would drive down the price of those vehicles. Fully a third of the European private car fleet is diesel powered and successfully so, I might add, with more and more choices coming on line every year in the small car category.
How do THEY manage it?
Furthermore, let me cite the plumbing industry, which has embraced one particular model, the "Sprinter". The switch from the heavy gasoline powered service pickups and vans to the Sprinter has leveraged a very significant savings to local plumbers all over the USA....and this is just one industry, one model vehicle, and this vehicle is large but equipped with a SMALL (3.0 liter) engine.
I'm with you, small diesels are great. We have one in a backhoe that will run for days on 10 gal doing trenching. My nephew has a diesel powered arc welder on his truck that is the same.
Canada had a lot of LPG gasoline conversions 10 years ago. It was substantially cheaper at that time. The demand for LPG went up and so did the retail price and now it no longer makes sense to do the conversion. Supposedly not putting butane into summer gas makes it more expensive, but they are selling the butane in LPG for as much as summer gas.
Anything that is cheap for the consumer at the moment, whether it's corn or cellulose for an ethanol plant, silicon for PV or a consumer fuel is only cheap until demand increases. That's capitalism and why I believe the solar thermal is the only way out of the energy mess. You can't come up with a scheme that relies on something that is cheap now, it won't stay that way when demand increases.
Ethanol production increases and corn went from $2 to $4/bu. and will hit $5/bu. D'oh! Ethanol guys never saw that coming. Let's build a cellulosic ethanol from straw/stover plant.. woops they don't want to give us biomass for free. Let's convert passenger vehicles to diesel, NG, LPG or anything else...
Darn. The price went up with demand. As Mr. Young put it:
Keep on rockin' in the free world.
The difference between the gasoline and diesel models is, I bet, not solely the engine. You're also comparing completely different things - that V10 diesel is an outrageously outrageous bit of outrageousness. It has more torque than is really, well, what you might call necessary. Unless you're towing a 747:
http://www.autoblog.com/2006/11/22/touareg-v10-tdi-tows-a-747/
Take a more reasonable example. The premium for a VW Golf TDI over the gasoline model was $1500 Cdn in 2000. The difference in fuel economy was approximately 6L/100 km versus about 9 (mostly city driving). The price of diesel and gasoline has varied widely over that period, but diesel has always been at or below the price of gasoline. Let's make it simple (and biased against the diesel) and assume the prices were always the same. 3L extra fuel per 100 km means on average an extra $3 per 100 km (nowadays it's more than that, years ago it was less than that...I'm averaging). To cover the capital cost difference you would have to travel 50000 km. Over that time you'd have to see which engine cost less to maintain as well, but the point remains that it is possible to recover the difference in initial cost through fuel savings alone in a reasonable time. As you can probably guess, I own a 2000 VW TDI. Your definition of "not driving much" may be accurate for the prairies or for most USians, but my definition is this: our car has yet to hit 70,000 km.
The efficiency difference is not overwhelming, so I agree that the economics are not strongly in favour of the diesel at current prices. Guess which way I think prices are headed? :-)
More to the point, I like the 1000 km (600 mile) range per tank, and I just like burning less fuel for the sake of burning less fuel for the same task. Some people spend $1500 on a sunroof and leather seats. I think it makes more sense to invest it in burning fuel less rapidly.
(Though I would still like to be able to burn no fuel... hydroelectric generation plus battery-electric car, plus a far better public transit system, is what I'd like.)
btw, currently diesel here is $1.019/L, gasoline is I think $1.249/L.
I picked a bad example with the touareg and as far as mileage, in the first 3 years with the car I used to do 4 200km round trips per month and put the first 100,000km on the car. The other 30,000k are in the last 4 years. I drive my truck to work and a wee bit more and have put less than 5000km/year on it since I got it.
My whole point from above is that for consumer vehicles to switch to diesel, there has to be an incentive. It's probably not cheaper to maintain a diesel and it takes a while to recover the capital investment for people that are miserly with their driving. It would do wonders if they applied a tax on gas engines and a rebate on diesel engines to make it more attractive on a new vehicle purchase.
Makes more sense than banning incandescent lightbulbs in Canada.
It would do wonders if they applied a tax on gas engines and a rebate on diesel engines to make it more attractive on a new vehicle purchase.
Such a scheme has actually been in place in Norway since 1.1.2007 when the registration fee for new vehicles was reworked to favor vehicles with low CO2-emissions.
Since then, new car sales has been something like 80-90% diesel (although that's probably artificially high from deferred purchases of diesel cars).
The US passenger vehicle avg. mpg. was 25 mpg in 2003.
http://uspolitics.about.com/od/energy/i/cafe_standards.htm
This includes car and SUV; gas and diesel engines. Now that there is clean US diesel fuel availble the diesel market will start to open up in the US. My 2002 Honda Civic got 40 mpg on the highway, but was rated for 39 mpg. A Saturn gasoline engine does not get 40 mpg. anywhere. When I bought my car gasoline cost $1.25 a gallon. There was no great gas savings in paying more for a gas saving Civic, the savings are apparent today + it was easier to find parking in the city.
The diesel cars get 50-60 mpg. One new prototype is supposed to get 63 mpg. My brother has a Volkswagon diesel and was able to use recycled vegetable oil in the tank or regular diesel. They are cheaper than hybrids and there are no batteries to replace. The diesel engine was supposed to last longer than a gasoline combustion engine.
Transport Canada rated the 1999 Saturn SL1 at 5.7L/100km highway, 8.7 city (40/27 US mpg), (48/32 CDN mpg) for auto, the 5 speed manual is a bit better. This is about the same as a 2002 Civic highway at 5.5/7.3 std and 5.8/7.9 auto. The city mileage is a bit better in the Civic.