Why does the US tax diesel more than gasoline? AFAIK it’s the only country that does.
I believe it’s because although it’s cleaner than it was 30 years ago, diesel is still a “dirtier” fuel than gas - more NOx and sulfur compounds, soot, etc.
^missed edit window.
Also, in the US most diesel vehicles are large commercial trucks, like tractor trailers. The amount of road wear and tear a vehicle causes increases exponentially with size, so large vehicles like semis and dump trucks cause a disproportionately large amount of wear on our roads - Cecil mentions that a semi with 9 times the axle weight of a car causes over 6,000 times more wear on the road. Since these types of vehicles are mostly diesel, taxing diesel is a simple way for them to pay for this extra wear.
No, he is talking about the Passat BlueMotion 1.6 TDI 105HP 6-speed manual, specifically (the sedan, although the car he hired was a station wagon). There is no 1.2 litre Passat, at least not in the UK. That is the only model + engine variant I can see that achieves the figure of 78.5 mpg (imperial). 0-60 time for this car is about 12 seconds. Also, Diesels tend to look worse in 0-60 comaprisons, but feel a bit faster when you drive them because of all that low-end torque that they have. The 1.8 litre petrol model does 0-60 in about 8.3 seconds (bearing in mind that UK figures are actually 0-62mph, that being the Euro standard of 100kmh).
In the UK diesel is currently about 5 to 6 pence more that petrol. Must do a road trip to Germany for some of that cheap diesel. 
well yes except it has the unwanted side effect of excessively taxing small fuel efficient diesel engine cars as well.
In Australia we handle this by having the yearly registration fee for a truck be based directly on weight and axles, which is a much fairer way of doing it. I find it hard to believe that the US couldn’t implement a similar system of registration fees based on vehicle weight.
In the US, we do have extra registration taxes on large commercial vehicles, based on weight and distance travelled. When you enter a new state on the Interstate or other major highways, it is common to see weigh stations, that well weigh commercial trucks (they don’t weigh every truck, just enough to keep the truckers honest.)
Now, given that burning a gallon of diesel produces more CO2 & noxious smog forming compounds than burning a gallon of gasoline, and that it takes more crude oil to make a gallon of diesel than it does to make a gallon of gas, taxing it slightly more make perfect sense. Heck, if you really wanted too, you could turn 1 gallon of diesel into 1.12 gallons of gasoline by breaking down the longer hydrocarbon chains into shorter ones; this is effectively what refineries are doing.
The Toyota Prius gets 72mpg.
You can buy it in the US. Hell they sell a smaller version called the Prius C in the US that I think does even better. There, problem solved.
I’m sure a Ford Ka or mercedes A can keep up with normal highway speeds, but I saw some incredibly small putt-putts in some parts of Italy and Paris and especially in Amsterdam that I swear were simply golf cars with a roof and doors.
I guess the question is, are there performance reqirements before a car can be licensed for raod use in North America?
There was the same issue with mopeds in Canada - some provinces say since they are limited to 30mph, they cannot go on major roads where the speed limit exceeds 80km/h (50mph). I suspect you might want that sort of restriction on enclosed autos too.
Aren’t speed limits lower in most of the US? Like 65mph?
Provided they pass whatever applicable small engine emissions standards, most of those funny little micro-cars or enclosed motorcycles or whatever else would be street legal in most of the US, although they would be classified as something other than an automobile. See for example the street-legal golf carts that are getting popular in the sun belt. You’re not allowed to drive them on the highway, but I imagine that is the case in Europe as well.
I don’t think there’s really any social engineering aim there, it’s just that diesel was historically cheaper to produce so they figured they could get away with a slightly higher tax on it. These days, monkeying with the fuel taxes in either direction is a political minefield, so they’re not going to “fix” it any time soon. It’s not like diesel is taxed that much higher-- the federal tax is only 6 cents higher and there’s usually around 10 cents difference in the state tax. That extra 16 cents or so isn’t the main reason why diesel is nearly $1/gal more than regular unleaded in some places.
[moderator note]
Please keep the political commentary out of GQ. If you wish to debate politics, we have other forums for that.
[/moderator note]
Local entrepreneurs are now making diesel fuel out of used restaurant cooking grease. Formerly, you had to pay to get rid of cooking grease-now they collect it for free.
My question: if enough of this stuff becomes available, the Government will start looking for road taxes- who will wind p paying? And, if I make my own biodiesel-do I need a license to do so?
Thanks for the info. The EPA in doing it’s own cert. testing does appear to take miles into account for new models (and does “age testing” of those models).
I was going on the once a year emissions testing we go thru in some regions which are intended to make sure our vehicles stay without limits. Here, it’s just a test on a roller at two speeds, both of which have the same spec. set.
These annual emission tests are mandated (in many cases) by the Feds and implemented by the states, in those counties that exceed pollution limits. So they are “Fed” rules that are trickled down.
Some states have alternative taxes where you’re supposed to record your mileage and pay it all in one lump sum at the end of the year, but in most states you’re off the hook. You don’t need a license to make or process your own bio-fuel but you might if you sell it. It could be that in the future if electric or other alternate-fuel vehicles really take off, more states might even switch over entirely to mileage-based taxes. Right now, though, since they’re trying to encourage alternate-fuel cars, most states see taxing them as counterproductive.
I used to have some friends who were hugely into the waste vegetable diesel thing and loved to talk about how sustainable they were being, but as WVO conversions got more popular, the smallish college town I lived in hit “peak grease” pretty darn quickly. They all used to just scrounge for grease and process it individually, but eventually a couple of them started a business and pretty much monopolized the waste grease supply, and now they sell the finished product for about the same price as petro-diesel. From what I understand, this is pretty much how the WVO thing has played out in most places and so, alas, the days of free fill ups behind the local burger joint are largely gone.
The extra tax difference is even smaller than that - the average US tax on gasoline (including state and federal) is 49.5 cents per gallon, while the average tax for diesel fuel is 54.6 cents per gallon. CITE. For the metric Dopers, that means diesel is taxed about a single cent more per liter than gasoline in the US.
This will never become a problem because there is not enough used grease. If one or two people are doing it, they can get the grease for free. Now, so many people want it they expect to get charged. Even so, you quickly hit the point were you can’t use old grease and have to use new vegetable oil in production. Then you are looking at commercial outfits and possibly new tax regimes.
Hmm, you’re right. It seems I was looking at the Polo, not the Passat. Two very different cars. I hear what you’re saying about diesel cars feeling more “zippy” than their 0-60 times might suggest, especially in city driving. It occurs to me that the guy in the video describes having the car loaded with large adults and luggage, in which case a diesel would probably serve him better than a similarly powered gas engine.
Western states are all 70, 75, or 80 on the Interstates. In the east, 65 is the maximum speed limit in MD, DE, NJ, NY, CT, RI, MA, VT, NH, WI, and IL. All the rest are at least 70 MPH, with ME and LA at 75.
Baring some major breakthrough in algae based biofuel production, it doesn’t seem possible for the US to make enough biodiesel for taxes to matter that much. Last year, the US produced ~3 billion bushels of soybeans. You can turn a bushel of soybeans into about 1.5 gallons of vegetable oil. So if you converted the entire American soybean crop into fuel, you would get 4 billion gallons of biodiesel. Which is less than 10% of the US diesel fuel needs.