Minor fix. I don't need to drive an Ascari, but you need a car with at least reasonable acceleration.
getting to the motorway with acceleration of 12+s to 60mph / 100km/h is a pain mine does 8.5s which tbh is just enough for normal driving... im getting a faster car eventually but thats only cause i wanna do some track..
My tuned bimmer gets to 60 in under 4 seconds, and I average 24 mpg in between fill-ups. When I drive a few hundred miles highway and re-fill right after, it's around 37 mpg. If I drive around town all week, and I floor it a lot, I get 18 mpg. -scheherazade
The fact is most Americans could care less about how driving affects the environment. Our life revolves around the car, therefore that's a priority and we want a nice one. If you care about the environment then go convert an old bug to biodiesel or something and hug a tree. We are very quickly migrating to alternative fuels so use the petrol while you can! Actually E85 is great stuff because of the octane rating, just a bit expensive. Anyone who uses it thinking they are reducing their carbon footprint is deluded though (until we figure out a way of doing it more efficiently).
Pffft, even the windshields don't meet EU standards. At least that's how it is (or was at few years ago at least) with Chevrolets. Yea, it's a minor thing, I know.
It's kind of strange that we don't have any issues with that over here, but I think it's because we "winterize" the diesel by mixing it with something else (I have no idea what that might be...). I know the army mixes the diesel with paraffin to make it more resistant to cold weather, and I remember starting my diesel driven BV206 in below -40c without any issues.
Yeah, there is probably some myth there based on older diesel tech...there are diesel trucks around here that seem to do fine with glow plugs and whatever additives are necessary. Not too many years ago, you had to plug diesels in to keep them warm enough to start (block and tank heaters), and that isn't an option where most people park, so diesels have long been considered impractical. I'll admit that my understanding of modern diesel tech is almost nil, because you just don't see many diesel cars here. For argument's sake, this area of the US is, on average, quite a bit colder over the winter months that most population centers in Scandinavian countries, but given the extreme cold faced here and there, I doubt it makes much difference. nm+ pointed out that in order to be sold anywhere in the States, vehicles need to be able to pass Federal emissions standards, and most vehicles are generally just built and sold domestically to pass somewhat stricter California emissions standards. I suspect that is where the problem lies in lack of diesel adoption in the States. Though we are seeing more in recent years...the VW Jetta and Gold TDI models are the obvious ones, along with the BMW 335d. We see loads of domestic diesel trucks, of course.
That was what I was talking about when I said that Bio-diesel sucks. Even though it can come from various sources the most common sources are like the ones Joey said. I understand the 40 mile thing in the Chevrolet Volt. It seems they were aiming for that range. According to their website it's more like 75% of people... I am not from the UK. I am from Portugal. In here and most European countries we use the metric system so we use l/100km. If everyone understood this method i wouldn't bother putting mpg (US) but i wanted to make it easier for people to understand so i did the conversions from US gallons to l/100km and vice versa. I think only the UK uses imperial MPG. Already edited my post.
Why don't they just mix the diesel in the states with antifreeze straight in the pumps? that is how they work in winter in Europe... and the thing with diesel in the US is so hilarious, people think it's the fuel of satan, like Clarkson. I saw on Mythbusters that they were actually promoting the VW Jetta TDI and they were giving facts about diesel just to convince people there to switch... all done on Mythbusters...
Recent Diesel technology already has heaters in the system and i think some don't even need it at all because they have some technology that introduces the fuel into the chamber sooner so it has more time to heat up or something like that.
lol that's a good one but cast iron block and head, seven main bearings and a stud girdle might have something to do with it too. I dunno about the gas mileage but my '01 Cherokee XJ Limited and Bridgestone Dueller ATP tires = FUN. It's only got 83,000 miles on it but I have a '93 Grand Cherokee 4.0L with 240,000 miles on it that's still going strong too.
Oh snap... i was confusing it with gasoline antifreze... what i was referring to is antigel, that substance you add in the diesel to prevent it from turning to gello
Very mature. Bio-diesel from crops is going nowhere. We are not quickly migrating to alternative fuels since like 99.9% of the world cars use either diesel or gas and we are not going to change to electric or hydrogen cells that fast. Eventually the oil supply of the world won't keep up with the demand and the prices will increase in a way that people will have no other choice then choose an alternative vehicle. The Chevrolet Volt seems like a good temporary solution but i guess it won't attract many Americans since it only goes to 160km/h and 0-60 in 8 seconds and so it is not good enough for the stop-start-stop driving of most cities. And it is not a SUV...