This guy claims that the VW model he drove in the UK which got over 70 mpg is not allowed to be sold in the US. He claims that initially the first answer he got as to why was because of the US’s tighter pollution standards, but he responds by pointing out that, due to the almost 2-fold increase in mpg, this car actually results in less pollutants. He then goes on to claim that the “current administration” ultimately said that the real reason engines such as this were not permitted in the US was “economic reasons”.
OK, obviously the use of “current administration” is a huge red flag that this guy has an agenda. I’m personally finding it quite hard to believe that this claim is consistent with an administration that issued the “cash for clunkers” program which spent large amounts of money trying to get drivers into more fuel-efficient cars (however unsuccessful it might have been). But I mean, the whole thing kinda smells of one guy’s politically-motivated, paranoid conspiracy theory.
I didn’t watch the whole thing but two issues jump out.
He is comparing the UK test to the US test they aren’t the same so the numbers will be different
AND (here is the biggie)
The UK uses imperial gallons which are larger than US gallons.
Apples to kumquats comparison.
Some years ago there were advertisements for a ‘black box’ that would decrease fuel consumption (and thus increase your mpg). And that the reason it wasn’t commercially available was because big government did not want such efficient carburetors so as to keep the oil business in business. And in my recollection somewhere I believe the all-knowing Cecil wrote about it.
That sounds a bit off the wall… I’ll assume he’s talking about a VW Polo, a very small car that does get 70 UK-mpg with a small diesel engine.
First, the UK measures MPG differently then the US – they have a bigger gallon, and a test cycle that results in economy figures that are better than an average US driver would achieve. So 70 UK-mpg would be much lower in US-mpg – this calculator says 58 mpg. Still, that’s quite an impressive figure.
But, only the diesel models have economy that high. The gasoline powered models get 43 US-mpg, according to that calculator, which is still a good number but comparable to many compacts and subcompacts you can buy in the US.
Diesel engines produce more pollutants than gasoline engines, all else being equal. Since they are more efficient, they do produce less CO2, but on the other hand the produce more of other nastier pollutants – particulates, unburned hydrocarbons, and sulfur compounds. You can design a diesel-powered car that will meet US emissions standards, but it will require expensive emission control systems (that aren’t required in Europe to the same degree).
In fact, VW sells a diesel version of the larger Jetta in the US. But between higher cost of emission controls, and lack of demand for diesel cars in the US, it costs $4000 more than the equivalent gasoline powered model. And even then, the diesel Jetta doesn’t sell very well. If there was a market, VW could easily sell the diesel Polo in the US. There just isn’t enough demand – not enough drivers in the US that are willing to pay a premium for a particularly small subcompact.
There’s two things the guy isn’t mentioning or isn’t aware of:
One, like others have said, the test cycles (and gallons) are radically different. For comparison, the 140HP 2.0L TDI engine we DO get in the US is rated at 70 MPG highway in the UK, but only 43 in the US so that’s most of the difference right there. The emissions equipment and tuning on the two are slightly different, but that only accounts for an MPG or two.
Secondly, the 105HP 1.6L diesel model he’s prattling on about is a spectacularly slow car by the current US new-car standards. It’s 0-60 is about 13 seconds, which I believe would make it the slowest car sold in the US, which is not a distinction any car maker wants. Especially when the Passat is supposed to be one of VW’s more upscale offerings.
The US’s emissions standards do make diesels somewhat more expensive to sell in the US, although the difference between US and European standards for diesels is much much less than it has been historically. In the end though, the major stumbling block is still that you have to pay more for the diesel, and current fuel prices mean that the new car buyer will essentially never break even. And they are never going to pay MORE for LESS performance. VW has managed to keep selling diesels in the US partly by being shrewd about what engine options they offer. They only bring in the highest performance diesel they offer so that, in terms of performance, the TDI engine ends up being between the entry level 4-cylinder gas engine and the high-performance (V6 or turbo) gas engine. So people will pay for better mileage AND slightly better performance, but not just mileage alone.
It is certainly troublesome that the US continues to measure pollutants by % coming out of the exhaust, rather than total amounts per mile driven. So mileage doesn’t figure into EPA standards in any reasonable way.
Ah, right. Sometimes I forget that we now live in a totalitarian nightmare state, where Obama has forced the socialist principles of “supply” and “demand” on all of us.
Isn’t there a requirement for performance in the US as well? There are clown cars available in europe that simply cannot hit freeway speeds; I would assume any vehicle sold in the USA should be capable of 60mph so as not to slow traffic on freeways.
Plus, part of the weight savings on some clown cars would be lack of high-speed crashworthiness. I don’t think they compromise i just because the vehicle does not reach those speeds.
I remember watching one of the driving programs on TV here (Top Gear or 5th Gear, I forget which) doing a test which demonstrated that the MPG ratings are actually pretty accurate. However, I think that the type of driving that British drivers do is likely rather different than that of American ones, with a higher emphasis on urban driving and less on A-road / freeway and motorway / interstate driving.
I’m not sure there’s any need to look to government conspiracies, or emissions regulations or crash regualtions, which are probably quite similar in Europe and the US these days. It’s simpler than that - gasoline is more expensive in Europe, and in many parts of the continent people are less well-off than Americans. Therefore there is more demand for economical cars. There are certain trade-offs involved in making a car more fuel efficient, as has been touched on, which is why such cars are less popular in countries with relatively cheap gasoline, like the US.
In the video he claimed the US measures pollutants by gallon (instead of by miles). This point did kinda stick out. Theoretically if some awesome, amazing new engine was developed that did in fact achieve these super high mpg ratings but exceeded US regulations of pollutants per gallon (so that when you take distance into account it would in fact be less polluting), would it be allowed? (though I know it was mentioned up thread that it’s not just the absolute percentage of pollutants, but the different kinds of pollutants involved. Is that the issue here?).
I don’t know where he got that from because as you can see from the link in my post right above yours, the EPA says its standards are based on emissions per mile driven, not gallon.
Well, looking up reasonably current prices for fuel in Germany, I find;
Price fixing, released on03.05.2012 at 23:05 o’clock
Regular 91 Oct 1,633 €
Super 95 Oct 1,632 €
Super Premium 98 Oct 1,690 €
Diesel 1,463 €
SuperE10 95 Oct 1,600 €
Diesel is aprox 90% the cost of gasoline. Whereas near me, they’re currently selling regular at 3.699 and diesel at 4.099, thus making gasoline @90% of the price of diesel, the opposite of Germany. And at that, I’ll say that diesel has come down quite a bit, it used to be more like a 20% premium a couple of years ago.
So which is more popular where? Clearly the one that is cheaper.
I went to the UK VW site and checked out a couple models with the engine he mentioned (the BlueMotion 1.2 TDI). Both the Golf and the Passat have a 0-60 time of about 14 seconds. It’s pretty hard to find a car sold in the US with a 0-60 time above 9 or 10 seconds. The “economic reason” that Americans don’t have access to these cars is that not many Americans will pay $20,000 for a car that would be smoked by a 1993 Geo Metro.
His CT explanation for this (that that the Gov’ment doesn’t want high-mpg vehicles on the road because it would mean less revenues from gas taxes) doesn’t make sense either. Even if hyper-efficient vehicles DID result in less gas being sold, market forces would ensure that any decrease in gasoline sales would be gradual, over a period of many years, giving TPTB plenty of time to revise how they collect revenue for highway upkeep.
As for why diesel fuel is cheaper than gasoline in much of Europe, and vice versa in the US, it is a simple matter of taxes. Pre-tax, diesel fuel of sort you can run in first-world countries costs a bit more than gasoline. The US taxes diesel fuel slightly more than gasoline -between federal and state taxes, about 5 cents a gallon more. European fuel taxes tend to favor diesel fuel by quite a bit, so it ends up being cheaper at the pump in many European countries.
And anyone looking at Chimera’s fuel prices from Germany, and wondering why the octane ratings are higher than we get in the States, Europe uses the Research Octane Number (RON) method of calculating octane rating, while the US uses the Anti-Knock Index (AKI) method. The RON score is usually 4-5 points higher than the AKI figure, for the same fuel.
And the idea that the US government doesn’t want people to buy more fuel efficient vehicles doesn’t jive with the fact that the US government offers large tax credits to people who buy electric & plug-in hybrid cars, and that the government has been pushing for much higher CAFE standards -54.5 mpg by 2025. (Granted that even the most recent CAFE standards have loop-holes you can drive a light truck through.)
One thing that hasn’t been mentioned (i think) and should be kept in mind when looking at fuel efficiency is that diesel is denser than than petrol/gasoline.
So a gallon of diesel contains more energy than a gallon of gasoline… about 11% more according to wiki… Diesel fuel - Wikipedia
It also means that burning a gallon of diesel produces more CO2 than a gallon of gasoline.
