Is diesel the fuel of our future?
WITH GAS PRICES spiking, perhaps it’s time we looked to an old technology that has got much more efficient: the diesel engine
Ican recall at just 7 years old, during a family vacation to Florida in a 1975 diesel Mercedes at a time when there was a serious North American gas shortage, looking at all the cars on the road and asking my father: “Which of these cars gets the best mileage?”
“That’s easy,” he said. “The ones that are diesels.”
Now, more than three decades later, not much has changed. The price of fuel has risen about 800 per cent since then, and diesel-fuelled cars still get the best fuel economy. So the question is: Why haven’t more North Americans embraced the diesel engine?
Having seen my father go through various diesel-powered cars over the past four decades, and being the owner and backyard mechanic of three diesel cars myself, I think I’m something of an expert on the once noisy and difficult-to-start engine.
Invented way back in 1893 by Rudolph Diesel, the diesel engine has no spark plugs; instead, it uses glow plugs (more or less small heaters the size of spark plugs) and high engine compression to ignite fuel. The result is an engine that heavily outperforms a traditional gas engine both in its efficiency and its torque output.
The diesel engine went mainstream in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when Volkswagen mass-produced its Rabbit in response to the gas shortages of the day. The Rabbit delivered an incredible 50 miles per gallon, or 4.9 litres per 100 kilometres. Many Montreal taxi drivers then embraced Volkswagen Jetta diesels because they seemed indestructible, with engines that could easily survive 500,000 kilometres.
At –10 C, however, problems arose; the incredibly frugal engine became almost impossible to start. That, combined with its very loud engine knock that could be heard a block away, and the black smoke that came out of the car’s exhaust once it actually did start, just about killed the diesel.
Today, however, as I fill up either my 1984 Jetta diesel or my 2000 Jetta TDI, I wonder how it is that everyone is not driving one of these cars. How do drivers tolerate fuel efficiency of anything less than five litres per 100 kilometres as they fill up their SUVs and their V6 gas-powered cars? A typical 50-litre tank costs about $70 to fill. For that kind of money, I want a car that can deliver.
Sure, today’s hybrids can perform as well as diesels, but can we really trust these cars? The diesel engine is remarkably easy to maintain compared with the hybrid, and with our winters, I’d rather maintain one battery, not five.
Gone are the days of waiting and praying that your diesel would start at –30 C; now these engines start reliably even without a block heater. On a 50-litre tank of fuel, I get a guaranteed 1,000 kilometres with some highway driving.
Plus there is no more black smoke from the exhaust, and with the new Blutech technology, diesel engines produce water vapour from their tailpipes.
The teeth-rattling knock that the diesel engine used to put out has been replaced with near silence. It’s hard to tell now by listening alone which cars are diesels and which are not.
Back in 1975, the gas shortage got so bad that in the United States, cars with licence plates ending in even numbers were only allowed to buy gas on even-numbered days of the month, and those ending with odd numbers only on odd-numbered days.
In addition, there were many episodes of violence as people fought for gas in a manner reminiscent of our current zombie apocalypse movies. There is certainly a distinct possibility that this kind of shortage could happen again.
Imagine this: Montreal becomes a pioneer city in Canada with its drivers dominating the road with cars powered by diesel engines. Everyone would save 40 per cent on their fuel bills, and they might actually smile instead of frown while filling up their cars at the pumps.
As hard as it may be to believe, the answer to the world’s energy crisis — which has emerged primarily because of the overuse of automobiles and their inefficient engines — has been here for 100 years already. That answer is diesel.