Now, Lexus Fires Up Diesel Owners

You are being a bit harsh here. For TH that post was a definite improvement. Another ~ 10% and he would have been almost correct

 

IIRC from our high school civics class (40 yrs ago) , at their core, all rules/laws must be related to their objective. Eg; stop signs prevent death by making you look who's coming. Similarly, a 10or15yr battery warranty may mean the ICE isn't working as hard as it might, if the battery only lasts 3yrs. One can find a similar (albeit weak) notion for the teeny 3gallon gas tank on the plug-in BMW. Eg; if you gotta stop & refuel anyway, you're more likely to fuel up electrons...... at least if it DC QC's. The basis of the law will be buried in congressional history doc's somewhere - but it'd hardly be worth looking up, because a law's 'rational- basis' minimum standard standard is pretty easy to concoct.
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Yep. I've little doubt that a fair number of people bought the PiP to gain HOV access but do not bother plugging in.

 

Sorry I think I have pulled this off topic.
It wasn't all that long ago, and the law is still on the books, you can get a smog waiver for 2 years.

Ask the Ref > Services > Repair Cost Waivers

They did fix a little part of it. You can only do this once, so only 2 years of driving before selling out of state. you used to be able to get the waiver multiple times.

If your diesel is my 1997 or before, or your gas vehicle is 1976 or before then you don't need to do a smog check. These vehicles were producing about 30% of the unhealthy pollution when I left the state. CAP likely has decreased that percentage, but it needs to be more aggressive. I understand people want to keep clasic cars, but higher taxes for these, and higher payments to buy old polluters would probably do more good to clean the air in the next 10 years than the fuel cell initiative.

 

Did your high school civics cover the monsanto protection act?


We do know why hybrid waranty and small gas tanks are part of the law, its the fuel cell lobby. It does nothing to do with CARBs mandate to reduce air pollution. It is about slowing adoption of hybrids and phevs to give the lobby time to ask for more government money. I'm not sure if that is cynical enough. You have to ask why leased fuel cell vehicles don't need to last more than 3 years, and don't have these long waranty requirements if this was really about consumer protection. If CARB was concerned about electric miles they would actually look at the data. They provide the prius phv roughly the same privalages as a volt - small battery is what causes low amounts of electric miles, not gas tank size.

 

So clearly it states that you must have spent $650 on emissions equipment and still failed. It's about giving you time to fix your vehicle because you can't afford the additional repairs. The rules are very specific and clearly applies to a very minuscule percentage of all the vehicles smogged.

As far as taxing classics which by the way are virtually non existent in the daily driving world is the most ridiculous thing I've heard. Go ahead and put more pressure on people who love their cars and relish classic vehicles. These represent history and those involved in the hobby take better care of their vehicles than 99% of the driving public.

One simple thing that seems to be overlooked by virtually every post in this thread is that some people, myself included, typically make vehicle purchases based on vehicle dynamics and styling. Not everyone likes the way a Prius drives, some people actually prefer the torque characteristics of a Diesel engine. Simply dismissing a vehicle because it doesn't pencil out on a spreadsheet, seems very odd to me. Either most of you are just overly passionate about the Prius, or have no vehicular passion in life. My perspective is that of a life long auto enthusiast, who is passionate about all aspects of auto design, performance, and efficiency.

 

Hmmm. I'm seeing 99 g/km for the diesel. Where did you get your number?

Also for sake of completion:

Auris 1.4Diesel - 74.3 mpg (imagine if this was turned into a diesel hybrid... it would be over 85)
Auris 1.8HSD - 72.4 mpg

 

So now you see 99 for the diesel, while 91 for the hybrid. Good, isn't it? It is the way around what you said before... And still the diesel not powerful as the hybrid is...


For the sake of completion:

Auris Diesel with 103g/km for upper trim level.
MPG of diesel and gasoline are not comparable.
Diesel hybrid cars have real low MPG increase (Peugeot and Mercedes).

 

Since I don't consider CO2 a pollutant (it doesn't harm human lungs & it makes plants/food grow)..... I would choose the one with the highest MPG and the lowest pricetag. On point 1 it's the diesel. I suspect point 2 is also the diesel (no expensive battery).

Point 3: I still would rather see an 85mpg Auris diesel-hybrid. C'mon Toyota..... Europeans love diesels (50% of the market). Marry your hybrid tech with the 1.4 diesel engine and you have a winner.

 

It's your point...
CO2 is not unharmful, it is a GHG.
C'mon Troy Heagy, Europeans may love diesels, but that's just because costs less at the pump.
And there is no way you can have a winner on joining a complex diesel with a expensive battery. (your words, I remind you a dualmass flywheel or a turbo may cost as much)

Lastly, I agree: "my" hybrid tech as is, married with a silent and simple 1.8 gasoline engine...I have a winner, it's the HSD.

I thought you had a Prius, which is a winner, but you would prefer a rough manner diesel, expensive to maintain (DPF).

 

Again this is getting far off topic.
The state just needs to say the repairs would cost more than that to fix it. The state also provides the money. you made it sound as if the cars failed went off the road. Its not miniscule when it comes to pollution in LA at all. One fix as I mentioned is now you can only keep the polluter on the roads for 2 extra years. This is fine in the bay area, but in LA or Bakersfield, there is good reason why these cars should be taken off the road.

Ok because you call it a classic, it should be allowed to pollute 1000 times more than a new car. What is so classic about a 1993 diesel? Its a poorly written law. You could check milage on annual inspections and if they traveled less than 1000 miles a year then you don't owe the extra tax, but california doesn't even track how much these cars pollute. You pull these classics off the road, you can probably go down to 2 summer blends, and clean more air than the billions spent for fuel cells over the last decade, you know drop registration fees Again 6 of the top 10 cities for air pollution in the country are in california, and this includes the top 5 on everyone's list. Just let the inspections work in those six areas.

OK so we have 2 choices which go back to my original point. Either the inspections work, which you claim they do, which means we don't need crazy long 15 year warranties on cars (added initial price, slow innovation, slow ) for a smog rating, or they don't. If a new bmw 328d pollutes less than a lexus gs350 for the first 11 years, it should get a lower smog rating even without a 15 year warranty. If the inspections aren't working in those non-compliant places, the state should get them to work, instead of adding more regulation for those outside those areas.

first this is a prius board, hence the prius bias, but second, I would say at least half the comments were pro-diesel here. You might just not understand the points.

 

I have no idea what your talking about, the State doesn't pay for any repairs and the time allotted is to give an individual under financial distress the time to fix his or her car. This only after the individual has already shelled out $650 in smog only repairs. If you don't meet that criteria you don't have any other options. How many people who are driving old beaters can afford the first $650 to begin with? If they can't shell out the initial cash they can't drive their car to begin with. It's not the free lunch your claiming.

Your so confused about the realities of smog testing in CA it's ridiculous. I've lived in CA my entire life (51 years), 38 of which have been in the LA basin. I can tell you for a fact that the air quality is multiple times better now than it's ever been. The Smog Check program as much as I'd hate to admit it is very much a part of why the air quality is so much better. You can't live in another state and feed me your bs about the CA smog program and it's failures when you don't presently live here. I see the difference and I breath the difference. Any and I mean ANY native who's as old as I am can attest to what I'm saying.

Who said a 1993 diesel anything is a classic? Your definition of what a classic is, doesn't fit any known description of what a classic car represents.

With your logic, we should just go ahead and tax new cars as polluters now, since the smog laws will only get more stringent with time.

The manufacturers are burdened with longer warranties because of new technologies. The state doesn't want to deal with poorly designed systems that will fail early on with excessively high repair costs. Instead of crying about these longer warranties, one who was logical, would actually embrace the fact that your getting a better product backed by these warranties. Some how certain people will always find a negative to any positive......

 

Driving home one day, there was a Pinto with the fish bowl side windows at a light. It had Pa classic plates. I know it doesn't meet the Classic Car Club of America's definition, and it may not meet yours, but it is the legal definition that only matters for registration, taxes, and smog checks.

Classic car - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia -
Most states define it as "A motor vehicle, but not a reproduction thereof, manufactured at least 20 years prior to the current year which has been maintained in or restored to a condition which is substantially in conformity with manufacturer specifications and appearance."

The 20 year or older is a classic definition is one I've heard before, but it could be 25 years in some states. So a 1993 diesel can be registered as a classic, or the owner might have to wait until 2018 to do so.

The purpose of longer warranties sound reasonable, but they could keep a manufacturer from bringing the new technology to market. Even if the system doesn't ever fail under that warranty once out in the real world, the company has to budget for warranty work before deciding whether it is even worth bringing to market. Before that, there is a higher R&D cost in getting a system to exceed the lower warranty limits.

Those real and projected costs can lead to the product just being terminated. The time cost for the R&D will lead to it being delayed.