Jetta TDI vs Hybrid on 1 Tank from Seattle to San Francisco

[Shawn Clark]

Originally Posted by spwolf

In USA VW has awful market share, and they are seen as cool cars.

This thread is the first time I've heard VW's called "cool cars." Novelty items, "cute" as in the bug, "functional", yes, but "cool" is a new one for me. Cool like lederhosen, perhaps?

Of course my first memories of a VW was an old 55 mph governor limited bug (very uncool.) Then there were the Herbie movies...the originals. And when I was in college there were folks I knew driving the boxy little one. It was "fun" in that when the owner had ticked someone off (not in a driving capacity) and the vehicle was spotted on campus, it was light enough for a group of us to lift and move onto the sidewalk, no-parking zone, etc.

I remember driving one of the Mexican bugs on vacation, horrid little thing that went into wild cyclic shuddering at about 30 mph, various other problems too.

[bulldog]

Originally Posted by spwolf

and there is no power lack in that 4cly diesel, compared to any other 4cly petrol engine.

Oh really!! I think you forgot to send that memo to these guys

SUBARU.COM : MODEL OVERVIEW : 2008 Impreza WRX STI

Mitsubishi Motors - 2008 Lancer Evolution

People seem to forget that they always compare the power of a Turbo diesel to a naturally aspirated gasser. Try apples to apples.

[The Tramp]

Originally Posted by Woodman

As a european poster, can you comment on where you think the alleged shrinking diesel vehicle demand in europe is coming from. I've heard gas taxes are dropping, but don't know if VW diesels sell more, or less, because of it. TDI allocations after the official 8/15 "release" in the USA have been nothing short of impotent. Maybe 5-10 states?

• Cleaner diesel costs more. Even if in most countries it pays less duty than petrol, now in 16 countries diesel is more expensive. (before 2003 only three countries had expensive diesel: GB, IRL and CH)
• Cleaner diesel cars are yes more powerful, but are less economical. Just to give you an example, the TDI with 90 HP (the first one) had an average mileage of 60 mpg. now the TDI with the same displacement but with 170 HP has an average mileage of 42 MPG. he fault is not only due to the power hike but also due to heavier cars and multiple cleaning filters: EGR, FAP, DeNox, Etc.
• Congested and polluted cities do tend to forbid the circulation of diesel cars. This does tend to make the mass population to steer away from diesel.

[Tchou]

Originally Posted by spwolf

p.s. 140 hp diesel will be a lot faster than Prius, especially between 2000 and 3500 rpm when turbo kicks in. As result, it will feel a lot faster during driving (new Prius will probably be even faster, but lets wait for that). At the same time, you pay premium compared to petrol version of the same car and as an plus, you pay more at the pump for diesel, negating some of the positve mpg gains.

So there are pluses and minuses to every side of equation...

What i've noticed since I have my prius is that acceleration wise from other than full stop, Prius is equivalent to 140 HP TDIs, the other day an Audi A3 2.0L TDI (140 HP) tried to pass me when getting out of an intersection, it didn't manage to do so, I have also other example with passat TDI140 and also an A4 audi... This makes me think that the prius acceleration is quite far from ridiculous.
Acceleration from full stop is less good because of the slowlyness of transmission causing a delay between when you floor the pedal and the moment the car starts...

TDIs don't have a Turbo lag, it's effective very early from 1600-1700 rpms, the peak torque is in the 1900rpms
This is due to electronically controled variable geometry Turbo compressor capable of rotating with very low exhaust gas pressure... causing almost no lag and no kick from turbo like it was with the first turbo motors...
When you drive it it feels like a big 2.5 or 3 Liter block with a lot of torque.
When coupled with the DSG System, acceleration is very linear like the prius, except you are not troubled with your audition of motor rev, (when you accelerate, the motor noise is accelerating, as with the prius you can be accelerating with the motor noise deccelerating)...

[Dozzer]

I just traded my Avensis 2.0 D-4D turbo for a Prius... a no brainer really here in the UK with the price of deisel going up and up.

Back and fore to work I got about 38mpg(UK gallons) on the deisel.. and 50mpg on the Prius.
I used to fill the tank up every 3 weeks on the deisel for about £75 or so.. now I fill up once a month at £42...

Plus the saving here on road taxation.. Avensis £205 per year (going up next year big style) and only £15 for the prius (not going up next year)

Also fully comprehensive insurance was a little cheaper on the Prius.

Performance wise.. there is nothign in it.. Avensis and the Prius are about the same.

Now if they made a deisel that did 100mpg.. hmm

[jayman]

Originally Posted by Dozzer

I just traded my Avensis 2.0 D-4D turbo for a Prius... a no brainer really here in the UK with the price of deisel going up and up.

Interesting. The "diesel fanboys" here in North America think the D-4D 2 litre and 3 litre are the best things since beer, sex, and pickles, combined

Even more interesting, whenever a "fanboy" in the US quotes fuel economy of a EU-only diesel powered vehicle, they take the conversion from litres per 100km to miles per Imperial gallon. Then directly compare it to a vehicle in the US that is rated in miles per US gallon

They then complain about the huge difference in fuel economy of American vehicles vs EU-market vehicles

Originally Posted by Dozzer

Now if they made a deisel that did 100mpg.. hmm

I don't believe the VW Lupo 3L is still made. About Yaris sized, had the small 1.2 litre turbodiesel, IIRC 65 bhp

[Ogo]

I am also changing from Toyota Yaris 1.4 D4D to Prius on 29th of September.
The main reason is not fuel consumption. Yaris D4D can probably do better mileage than Prius. But it is also much smaller and noisier car than Prius, has manual instead of automatic transmission and other things ...

I was given a test Prius for whole day to play with. I made over 100 miles with it and managed to get maybe 5% higher consumption than using my much smaller and less comfortable oil burner. And when comparing Prius to same sized and comfortable diesels, Prius wins. It consumes less using fully automatic transmission and its maintenance is cheaper as maintaining small gasoline engine is much less expensive than maintaining modern turbo charged diesel engine. We can then scare people from Prius due to its expensive battery, but then again, we can scare people from modern diesels on the same basis. Broken turbo diesel engines are not cheap to repair ...

So, Prius won my heart and I ordered one. I also looked in direction of Volkswagen Golf TDI with DSG transmission. But those VW diesel beasts are even noisier than Toyota diesels. Not cool at all.

Ogo

[Ogo]

Originally Posted by jayman

I don't believe the VW Lupo 3L is still made. About Yaris sized, had the small 1.2 litre turbodiesel, IIRC 65 bhp

Lupo is smaller than Yaris. It was in fact of same size as Toyota Aygo.
City Car - Toyota AYGO - AYGO by Toyota

Lupo 3L was in fact made only for the purpose of proving they can make low consumption car. It was never popular, as it was small and very, very expensive. In fact price difference was higher than between today normal petrol and petrol electric hybrids. So it did not make sense to mass produce and sell it. It was more a proof of concept.

Anyway the problem of modern diesels is, that to make them clean, they effectively get less power efficient. All diesels with Dust Particle Filters in fact have 5 to 10 % higher fuel consumption than those without DPF as they spend some fuel to burn diesel dust particles instead of turning the wheels.

Ogo

[Flying White Dutchman]

the lupo back on the market today and it will be a HIT
it was marketed to Early with price still low