Right. Because American gasoline engines are so much better than European ones… :rolleyes:
Also, to answer the question, diesel cycle engines do produce more particulate emissions (and nitrogen oxides), and do smell a little worse (subjective, of course).
In Europe, diesel fuel is subsidized much more heavily than gasoline, which is as much if not more of a consideration that whatever GM may have done to destroy the US diesel market.
I think this is true, provided “subsidized much more heavily” = “subject to lower taxes”.
I can’t find a cite but recall that about a year ago “Top Gear” showed a Renault Formula 1 Diesel.
No, neither of those, it was definitely a Renault.
Ahem. Yes, that’s what I meant. :smack:
Not sure what the rolling eyes are for. Everyone’s gasoline engines are about the same now, when talking mass market. Everyone’s gasoline engines back before the emphasis on diesel passenger vehicle engines were also about the same (mass market). Don’t forget that small engines and diesels are a response to gasoline pricing pressures. In the US, there was an oil embargo. In Europe, there were high taxes on gasoline but not diesel. Eventually the American gasoline prices got reasonable again, but that never happened in Europe. The love of diesel in Europe is entirely market driven due to fuel costs. Consequently the market demanded better and better diesel engines. There wasn’t the same market incentive in the USA, and so it was easier and cheaper just to give up diesel development for the USA market. Both GM and Ford have excellent, well regarded diesels in Europe today (they’re just not clean enough for the USA). In the USA, though, we didn’t revert to purely big V8’s and large-displacement V6’s due to CAFE. That was regulation driven, not market driven (cheap gas). Of course the Europeans also got good, small-displacement gas motors too, because not everyone wants diesel.
With a spark ignition (gasoline) engine, all the fuel is already in the cylinder when the spark ignites it. If the pressure exceeds some amount (depending on a LOT of variables) it detonates, causing a knocking sound. For non-gearhaeds, “knock” in this context means a rattling sound, nothing like knuckles on a hardwood door.
A compression ignition (Diesel) engine, as you point out, uses direct injection. Ideally the fuel burns instantly as it is injected, and the burning rate is limited by the injection rate. What spoils this ideal is that there is a delay between the start of injection, and when the fuel first ignites. All the fuel that has been injected to that point then detonates, creating the characteristic diesel rattle (knock) sound. This IS detonation, but only of a small amount of fuel. While you can hear it, it doesn’t do the damage that full charge of fuel in a gasoline engine detonating does. Some modern Diesels inject a small initial “priming” charge, pause, then inject the main charge. Only the priming charge detonates, greatly reducing the noise.
Beyond that mentioned above, Diesel engines do not detonate, regardless of cylinder pressure. Insanely “bombed” sport pulling tractors have run 200+psi of boost (multi stage turbocharging) with pure oxygen injection.
Not *instantly. * Did you forget about the compression stroke?
[repeat]Injection…compression…ignition…exhaust…[/repeat]
In so far as relative performance goes, I should point out that Audi has won the last two 24 Hours of Le Mans with a diesel powered race car. Maximum power might have been down slightly from previous race cars but the torque, simplicity, and fuel mileage gave the R10 a big advantage.
The only thing being compressed is air. Fuel is then injected at the end of the compression stroke.
Direct injection, mentioned in the post above, presented challenges along the way. It’s always been tough to master direct injection, and the successful progress of Diesel engines has a strong correlation to the ability to manage direct injection. Reliability issues have been solved (mostly), and with computer aided everything, the precision is now there consistently.
I sit corrected. 
That’s true generally. However, diesel-hydraulic units are becoming more common, especially for higher-speed, lower-load rail applications such as DMU (Diesel Multiple Unit) passenger rail cars. Diesel-hydraulic is also used widely in Japan, for some reason.
I saw a few figures published in the motoring section of The Times some months back and hybrids beat diesels (just about) in city driving, so I suppose if you rarely venture beyond the suburbs, they’re worth it. Although IIRC Peugeot are working on a diesel hybrid.
In the U.S. Krauss-Maffei tried out their line of German diesel-hydraulics and they quickly fell out of favor due to reliability issues. Story here (scan to the bottom of the paragraph). There are some industrial diesel-hydraulics puttering around on this continent but inless there have been some really recent developments, no main-line that I know of.
In Germany, on the other hand, they are quite popular, easily outnumbering diesel-electrics.
There are gasoline direct injection engines. Ford will be releasing them very soon in North America (in the automotive world, that means within 3 years). It’s a huge fuel savings, without some of the other disadvantages of diesel. Of course, there are new diesels coming out, too, clean ones, as I mentioned above.
What about the two-stroke diesel? How common are they? Don’t they have the kind of weight/power ratio to outperform gasoline?
Heh, that’s bully for Ford. Mitsubishi started selling GDI engines in 1995, BMW, GM and Audi off the top of my head are offering them right now.
I wasn’t meaning to say, “hey, good job, Ford.” Only to say, they exist, in light of this being mentioned as an advantage in diesel. They already exist in Europe from Ford, by the way. I believe the North American versions will be turbo only, too.