Interesting points about mileage and fuel costs, but what about maintenance? I know diesel engines don’t have spark plugs, so you save money on tune ups. On the other hand, diesels require heavy duty catalytic converters because they burn dirtier than gas. Diesel Mercedes, for example, require regular additions of urea, which could cost something like $1500 for the life of the car. I don’t know about VW though.
“tune up” has been almost meaningless for gas engines for years. Spark plugs on a lot of modern engines are spec’ed for a 100,000 mile lifetime.
AFAIK urea-based SCR is pretty much required to meet the limits for NOx emissions in this country.
I have been pushing diesel jettas, I adore mine though I wish it was a manual instead of automatic. I would kill for the ability to import a german ford kuga manual diesel into the US … I drove one in Germany a couple years back for a week on vacation and fell in love with it.
VW owners are huge apologists.
The ones I know have said that theirs were lemons and that the dealers couldn’t fix it. Of course, it is a small sample set.
My one friend took hers to the dealer 5 times, I finally had her take it to my mechanic. He laughed and said he saw a lot of them. But I didn’t ask how many a lot meant. She has had many problems with hers.
These experiences were enough to make me cautious.
I have a 2011 VW Jetta TDI that I’ve had for about eighteen months now. My mom, brother, and oldest sister have the sportwagen. The car is very good, but the tires are shoddy. I think I’ve had to replace at least three of them, and I know my mom and sis have had similar issues. My mom replaced all four of hers, then had a flat with one of the new ones while I was in the car with her. So that’s five for her, I think; and then my sister was saying a couple of weeks ago that she had to replace two of the tires on her car, and she’d already changed out several of the others.
I wouldn’t buy another VW because of the tire issue, but that hasn’t scared me away from diesel. There are only a few stations around here that have it, but it’s cheaper(10-20 cents cheaper) an hour away where my parents live anyway, and I rarely drive.
This. My wife and I recently got a 2012 VW Passat, and while we considered the TDI version, we ended up going for the plain old 2.5L SE w/sunroof.
The primary reason is because the total cost of ownership was considerably lower for the gas version, considering how my wife drives, and the hidden maintenance costs that VW doesn’t like to mention. The TCO includes the initial cost, the gas/diesel mileage difference, and all the odd maintenance requirements.
For example, the 6 speed DSG automatic gearbox requires fluid changes every 30k miles, with oddball Euro fluids that are something like 15 dollars a quart. It requires oil changes with VW 507.00 oil every 10k, which is hard to find and expensive when you do find it.
So since she doesn’t do a lot of city driving, and unless diesel ends up being significantly cheaper than gasoline, it was going to take us somewhere upwards of 120k miles to break even- gas vs. diesel.
Payback (using cheap $2.72 gas) for the most popular hybrid, the Prius is 2.6 years. The Camry hybrid 1.4 years. The hybrid caddie Escalade, 3 months.
Payback for diesels? The VW Jetta wagon 6.3 years. The Toureg 10.5 years.
FWIW
Personally, I think they reek. I’ve never driven a diesel that didn’t stink, and I like driving with the windows down. I’m frequently pissed off at diesel owners when I have to follow one down the road and I end up rolling up my windows until the next passing zone.
Also, it gets cold where I live. When I bought my last truck, I went to the dealer when the outside temperature was 30 below (F). There wasn’t a single truck on the lot that he could get to start. The gas engines just fired right up. I couldn’t get my big diesel tractor to start when it was cold unless it was plugged into a block heater. That was fine for the tractor, because it stayed on the ranch, but not for a truck I may be parking in town.
It’s the smell. And, for a long time, the only diesel cars you could buy were either ridiculously expensive or ugly. Or both.
Diesel cars will probably become more popular here as the younger diesel tuner pickup crowd transitions into family life, the suburbs, and sedans.
That said I hope they never get as popular here as Germany. I spent the last year in Germany, and while the smell and visible tailpipe emissions are all but eliminated, there is still a fair bit of particulates in the exhaust. Busy narrow thoroughfares with houses and shops set close to the curb often showed a darkish soot stain on the wall facing the street up to 3 or 4 feet above the ground.
Odd, but my parents had a diesel Rabbit when they first came out, and loved it! I don’t remember any bad smell, and even though my dad was a mechanic and would have worked on the car himself, I don’t recall any huge repair issues. My dad loved that car! He even wrote a letter to the editor when someone criticized diesel cars…he was getting 50mpg then and was so pleased! I do remember a bit of anxiety when we were traveling about where to find gas stations that carried diesel, and that he had special maps with diesel locations marked. We never used the block heater, and I don’t remember it ever having issues with starting in the winter, and it was kept in an unheated Ohio garage.
We were car shopping last fall/winter, and the VW Sportswagon TDI was high on the list. Except we figured it would take 150k miles + to make up the cost difference between a gas and a diesel engine. VW charges a large premium for the diesel, and on top of that, we couldn’t find a low end model of the diesel. It was only available in the more expensive packages. Do diesel premium and not being able to get a base model killed it for us.
In addition to the “image” issues that GreasyJack raised above, another reason might be that so many Americans do such a high proportion of their driving in stop-start conditions, in cities and suburbs, and on crowded rush-hour freeways.
The main fuel consumption advantage of most diesels is at freeway speeds. According to the EPA figures, a Jetta diesel is 7 mpg better than a regular Jetta in the city, but 13 mpg better on the highway. Hybrids, especially “proper” hybrids like the Prius, actually get better mileage in the stop-and-go of city traffic than they do on the freeway.
Leaving aside cost of purchase for a moment, if i were looking for a fuel-efficient car here in San Diego, where at least 80 percent of my miles are driven at 60-80 mph on the freeways, i’d strongly consider a diesel. If i spent most of my time doing city driving, i’d be more likely to go for a hybrid.
They are popular in Europe because diesel is a lot cheaper than regular gas (here in the Netherlands at least, but I think this is the case everywhere). The performance of diesel’s has improved, but a decade ago opting for a diesel was very clearly sacrificing driving performance for economic gain. You do have to pay more road taxes for diesel cars btw, it is mostly people that are on the road a lot that drive them.
[quote=“Gary “Wombat” Robson, post:29, topic:619811”]
Personally, I think they reek. I’ve never driven a diesel that didn’t stink, and I like driving with the windows down. I’m frequently pissed off at diesel owners when I have to follow one down the road and I end up rolling up my windows until the next passing zone.
Also, it gets cold where I live. When I bought my last truck, I went to the dealer when the outside temperature was 30 below (F). There wasn’t a single truck on the lot that he could get to start. The gas engines just fired right up. I couldn’t get my big diesel tractor to start when it was cold unless it was plugged into a block heater. That was fine for the tractor, because it stayed on the ranch, but not for a truck I may be parking in town.
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Gary, modern (i.e. EPA 2010+ compliant) diesels don’t smell anymore. When I drove the 2012 F-350 diesel mentioned above, I was amazed that the exhaust smelled of nothing.
They stopped smelling before that. My ex-wife and I had a VW Golf TDI from 2003 to 2009 (I assume and hope she continues to drive it today). The only time it ever “smelled” was when we occasionally filled up with biodiesel, in which case, it really did smell like french fries.
I can’t recall ever having any major mechanical problems with that vehicle. I think we had a twice-recurring issue with the glow plugs, but that was about it. The car always treated us well, and we were very pleased to have gotten 700 miles out of a 14-gallon tank once (on a road trip to northern California). I would happily buy another one today if I could. Of course, living in LA means that finding diesel stations wasn’t very hard (I recall being told that one in every three gas stations carried diesel). And there were a lot of times when diesel was cheaper than mid-range gas.
I don’t know what the situation is today since I haven’t gone car shopping in a while, but when we bought ours, even though MSRP on the TDIs was higher than the gasoline models, we encountered a number of dealerships that were selling them for much less. The TDIs were fairly new them, and dealers were having a hard time marketing them, and some just wanted the cars off their lots. If I’m recalling correctly, we paid $250 over invoice for ours (just over $17k at the time). I have no idea how hard they are to sell these days.
They knocked a thousand off the sticker for mine without me asking.
I’ve had an Audi A3 TDI (basically a upscale Jetta Sportswagen) for a little more than 2 years now. It’s performed flawlessly, delivering a reliable 30-35 mpg in town (depending on how long I get stuck at stoplights), and 42 mpg on the highway at 75 mph. I just hit 32,000 miles – I’ve had quite a few 600-800 mile drives, which is where the TDI really shines, getting roughly 600 miles per 14-gallon tank.
Here in metro Atlanta, diesel usually runs about the same as premium, roughly $0.30 more per gallon than regular. At the moment, it’s actually a few cents less than premium, which is even better.
Bump to my one year old thread.
I dumped the TDI Jetta two weeks ago after a year of ownership. I began having issues that the dealers could not correct (and were none to helpful to diagnose).
At 28,000 miles, I figured it was good to dump the thing before the warranty expired.
Having said that, I do miss the car: it had tons of torque and could very easily rocket itself off the line. I really, really miss that acceleration and power, especially when merging onto a highway and sometimes having to punch it.
My only complaint about diesel was the difficulty in getting fuel. Most stations selling diesel in my area will only have a single pump that shares diesel and gas (you can fill from either side of the pump). Quite a few times I’d find a gas car parked at the shared diesel pump and the owner no where to be found, or find someone filling with gas, yet all the other gas only pumps were empty.
I really think diesel would be a good option here in the States. I’m glad to see news that Mazda is bringing their diesel Mazda6 over. I’d buy another diesel in a heart beat, but never again a VW.