Starting in 1996, Alexa Internet has been donating their crawl data to the Internet Archive. Flowing in every day, these data are added to the Wayback Machine after an embargo period.
Over in Britain, Citroën is doing their best to draw owners of older, thirstier, CO2-spewing cars for a new low-CO2 model. To help attract customers to their showrooms they are offering up to £1,000 in cash for trade-ins on older cars. The deal applies to particular low emissions models of the C1, C2, C3, C4 and Berlingo van. Unfortunately deals like this are unlikely in the US because most of those low emissions small cars have little or no profit margin here.
New diesel-powered cars have been scarce in California in recent years due to more restrictive emissions regulations than anywhere else in the country. It looks like the drought is about to end as a Southern California Mercedes dealer has started advertising availability of the new E320 Bluetec from this coming Monday. It's not clear why Mercedes-Benz of South Bay would advertise the $53,000 diesel sedan on Craigs List, but it's there. If you are in the area this week you might want to swing buy and check it out. If the Benz is a little outside of your budget don't forget the new VW Jetta CleanTDI that's coming next March.
Auto-News is gladly offering up a bunch of lists these days. We saw high-mpg gasoline vehicles recently and now it's time for convertibles. We've taken a look at AN's list of the most fuel efficient convertibles in Germany, with figures and price. By extension, most of these cars can be purchased in Western Europe at similar prices.
While it's true that convertibles have lower mpg ratings than coupés or sedans, European marques have been installing efficient powertrains and even diesel engines, which seemed a heresy because of rattles, noises and fumes. Fuel economy has also been improved with the "CC"s.
Convertibles are not the most Cx efficient vehicles in the world, and with the top up, air always found its way inside making a "parachute effect" which added extra drag to the car. With metal tops, the problem has been partially solved, although they carry extra weight. They also add safety against robbery for owners, since cloth tops are really easy to open with a knife.
Most of these cars are, then, diesels, and most of them have factory-installed anti-particullate filters. You will also notice that some automakers use the same engines. That's the case of Ford/Psa, Saab/Opel, VW/Audi. And you have tops of every kind, from retractable to cloth.
The picture shows #15, the Mitsubishi Colt CZC. Find the rest of the list after the jump.
October 15th, 2006 is the date when the US started to sell low-sulfur diesel (ULSD) nationwide. According to the Diesel Technology Forum (DTF), the change happened seamlessly and no incidents have been reported. More ULSD is being refined, 93 million barrels in July 2007, which is almost double what was refined the same period from last year (54 million). This number will increase as the U.S. heads towards full ULSD use in 2010.
Availability has also exceeded expectations. The target was to have at least 80 percent of diesel stations pumping ULSD, currently 90 percent of them offer this fuel. Nevertheless, about 25 percent of the diesel in the U.S. is non-ULSD, although very little of it goes to road vehicles.
The EPA estimates that SOx emissions have been lowered significantly thanks to this measure, by approximately 100,000 tons. CO pollution has gone down 70,000 tons as well. According to Diesel Forum, a 2007 diesel truck emits just one-sixtieth of the soot exhaust of one produced in 1988. Nevertheless, not until the complete US truck fleet is renewed by 2020 will the full effects be fully noticeable, since new trucks will have fine particullater matter filters which were impossible to fit before.
The good news is that the new fuel allows owners of current vehicles to retrofit particullate filters. Congress is currently considering appropriations for the national clean diesel retrofit program and could provide up to $200 million this year to modernize existing vehicles and equipment.
Ah, the Monster Smart: a rolling contradiction-in-terms. This is the answer to a question nobody asked... except for Fifth Gear of course. Celebrating the unholy union of a Mercedes Unimog and a smart fourtwo, the contraption kept the 5.6 liter straight-six engine from the Unimog ... oh yeah, and the smart's engine too, which powers the lights. That might make this the world's least efficient generator, or something like that.
BMW is satisfied about its efforts in reducing emissions. Europe's press has been flooded with ads that praise the diesels coming from Munich. What are they about? Oh, only the first car with more than 200 HP that promises CO2 emissions under 140 g/km.
The car in question is the 123d a 1-series 3-door hatchback mated to a 2-liter 4-cylinder engine and Efficient Dynamics with two sequential turbos (one for low rpm and the other for higher). Actual specs are 204 HP, 0 to 100 km/h (0 to 60 mph) in 6.9 seconds and 5.2 l/100 km (45 American MPG) of fuel consumption. Actual CO2 emissions figure is 138 g/km.
The only bad news is that the car is not cheap: MRSP starts at 33,050 EUR in France.
Volkswagen is really into diesels these days as an alternative to hybrids (but don't forget this announcement). Just like Lexus is doing with their so-called "performance hybrids", Volkswagen has decided to power up their Touareg TDI. As if the huge, and hugely powerful, V10 diesel engine that is available in the Touareg is not enough, they have decided to one-up themselves with the new R50. Boasting 350 HP at 3,500 RPM and peak torque of 627 lb.-ft. at 2,000 RPM, Big Blue can reach 50 mph in just 6.7 seconds while emitting plenty of spent hydrocarbons all the way up to 146 miles per hour.
Autoblog has a blogger at the Sydney 2007 Motor Show, and he was able to snap off a few pictures of the new R50.
Below the fold is an hour-long video of a Google talk by Reed Benet, a bio-fuels-focused Ph.D. student at the University of California Davis Institute of Transportation Studies. Much of the second half of the talk has the audience asking, where is my diesel-hybrid and why are there no diesel-hybrids? As you may know from my article on VW, I don't think clean diesel is that great. Others think otherwise.
IMHO, a diesel hybrid would get amazing mileage but it could also be a marketing oxymoron. About 33 minutes into the talk Reed says there is really no invention that puts diesel engines "in compliance" with gasoline ones. Carbon is not the only problem with fuels, just like fuel efficiency is not everything. Diesel engines are a lot cleaner than they used to be, but diesel vehicles are not perfect.
Senator Barbara Boxer, chairwoman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, is holding a hearing Wednesday, October 10, 2007 titled "Air Pollution Challenges for California's Inland Empire." The hearing, which will be webcast live 9 AM PDT, will discuss the problem of pollution from diesel trucks and trains. The witness list does not include anyone from VW or BMW, so I would not expect much talk of clean diesel. When Inhofe was head of the senate environment committee, he was supportive of weak diesel regulations. If Inhofe tries to defend diesel in this hearing, I expect Boxer will react very much like she did in the video above.
While most of the major automakers are actively involved in developing HCCI engines, one prominent manufacturer is taking a wait and see attitude. Axel Rücker manager for Energy Integration Systems at BMW thinks that diesels still offer more potential for greater efficiency and lower emissions than HCCI. While General Motors has allowed us to drive HCCI prototypes and Mercedes-Benz showed a concept called the F700 at the recent Frankfurt Motor Show, BMW has not done any HCCI development yet. Ford and Honda are also both actively involved in working on HCCI as are many researchers at places like MIT and Purdue.
After the success of the original Ansari X-Prize, the X-Prize Foundation started creating new X-prizes in areas like medicine and cars. The Automotive X-Prize was announced in 2006 and in April of this year, the organizers released the first draft of the rules at the New York Auto Show. While numerous high-mileage car competitions have been held for decades, the X-Prize is distinctly different. Many previous competitions have yielded tiny little stream-liners running on bicycle wheels with tiny engines. While these vehicles have yielded efficiency of hundreds or thousands of miles per gallon they weren't very useful.
The goal of the X-Prize is to produce vehicles that got the equivalent of at least 100 mpg of gasoline and could be sold in volumes of at least 10,000 a year profitably. Two classes were defined, a mainstream one for vehicles with a minimum of four wheels and four seats and a second alternative class for vehicles with at least two seats. In August an initial list of thirty-one entries was announced by the foundation. The first batch of entries run the gamut from names that will be familiar to readers of this site, such as Tesla and Phoenix to home-builts like Maine Automotive X. We decided to take a look at some of these teams, and you can see more information and plenty more picture galleries after the jump.
We've talked before about the seemingly inexorable increases in engine power output while fuel economy is stagnant or moves up only slightly and of course European manufacturers are not immune. Audi has just bumped the output of 3.0L TDI V-6 in the Q7 from 233 hp to 240 hp. At the same time they did improve the mileage from 22.4 to 24.0 mpg (US), which is certainly impressive for such a heavy SUV. We should be getting the Q7 TDI here in the US later in 2008.
In an interview with the Windsor Star, Chrysler Canada CEO Reid Bigland talked about expanding the availability of diesel engines in the company's lineup. Currently Chrysler offers diesels in the Jeep Grand Cherokee, Dodge Ram HD and Sprinter van. A new Cummins diesel will definitely be added to the new light-duty Ram pickups in 2009. The 3.0L Mercedes-sourced V-6 diesel in the Grand Cherokee may also be added to other models. It's already used in the Chrysler 300 in Europe and could easily be added here next year after the BlueTec version comes out. The new 2.2L four-cylinder diesel in the latest Mercedes C-Class is also being considered for North American applications.
We've featured Orbital Corporation and their unique engine technologies before. It turns out that one of those technologies allows a four-stroke engine to run on multiple different fuels. Polaris, the manufacturer of snowmobiles, ATV's and Victory motorcycles is using this technology in their Patriot engine. This engine is designed to use military-grade JP8 fuel, but is also capable of running on regular diesel or even gasoline. The technology in use is reportedly similar to HCCI, but is apparently somewhat different. The fuel is directly injected into the combustion chamber along with a low-pressure stream of air. Orbital is calling the system air assisted direct injection. Orbital claims that an engine using their technology can reduce fuel consumption by 20 percent while still achieving Euro III emissions standards.
The Patriot engine is available in Polaris' MV800 ATV, which was developed for the military. The engine is 760ccs and produces 40 horsepower. Take a look at the press release after the break.
A new California law that goes into effect on the first day of 2008 will limit to five minutes a diesel truck's legal idling time. But truckers love to idle their massive vehicles, as the diesel engine provides power for all sorts of applications that run in the cabin when the truck is parked. In the business it's called discretionary idling (or "hotel loads"), and you can read this post for a more in-depth look at the issue.
Over in Peoria, Illinois, the Firefly Energy company is getting ready for the California law. Firefly thinks the solution is for truck drivers to run their cabin loads off of batteries, so Firefly is developing a truck-specific version of the company's carbon-graphite foam ledad battery through a new Battery Council International (BCI) Group 31 battery development program. All the technical details (and things like the name) of the battery are not yet available, but in a lot of ways, it sounds similar to Firefly's 3D battery and the battery Firefly is developing for the U.S. Army.
While most of the major automakers are actively involved in developing HCCI engines, one prominent manufacturer is taking a wait and see attitude. Axel Rücker manager for Energy Integration Systems at BMW thinks that diesels still offer more potential for greater efficiency and lower emissions than HCCI. While General Motors has allowed us to drive HCCI prototypes and Mercedes-Benz showed a concept called the F700 at the recent Frankfurt Motor Show, BMW has not done any HCCI development yet. Ford and Honda are also both actively involved in working on HCCI as are many researchers at places like MIT and Purdue. 
In an interview with the Windsor Star, Chrysler Canada CEO Reid Bigland talked about expanding the availability of diesel engines in the company's lineup. Currently Chrysler offers diesels in the Jeep Grand Cherokee, Dodge Ram HD and Sprinter van. A new Cummins diesel will definitely be added to the new light-duty Ram pickups in 2009. The 3.0L Mercedes-sourced V-6 diesel in the Grand Cherokee may also be added to other models. It's already used in the Chrysler 300 in Europe and could easily be added here next year after the BlueTec version comes out. The new 2.2L four-cylinder diesel in the latest Mercedes C-Class is also being considered for North American applications. 
A new California law that goes into effect on the first day of 2008 will limit to five minutes a diesel truck's legal idling time. But truckers love to idle their massive vehicles, as the diesel engine provides power for all sorts of applications that run in the cabin when the truck is parked. In the business it's called discretionary idling (or "hotel loads"), and you can read this post for a more in-depth look at the issue.
