There was an article about a new turbo-diesel powered car from Honda in The Detroit News today. That was hailed as a breakthrough because Honda has always focused on gasoline-powered cars.
There was also an article about a new, turbo-diesel Mercedes in that same paper. The engine was praised for its power, economy and cleanliness.
The reason I bring this up is two-fold: 1) I had brought up the issue of turbo-diesels as a lower-cost, better performing, more durable alternative to ethanol (E-85) in a discussion yesterday and 2) I have written about this a couple of times in this weblog:
It's not that big of a stretch to understand why. Turbo-diesels offer better mileage and performance than most alternatives and the technology and fuel are readily available. There is also a potential environmental advantage over hybrids: no expensive battery packs to dispose of after they fail.
Sure, diesel fuel is oil based. But diesel engines can cut consumption significantly and be produced in large numbers by all manufactureres. That Mercedes is rated at 26 mpg city/37 mpg highway. Not bad for a larger car considering the numbers for that same car with a gasoline engine is 19/26. That's better than a 1/3 improvement in fuel economy... or a lot of barrels of oil.
And the key word here is clean.
