The Internal Combustion Comeback

The Internal Combustion Comeback

The Jetta TDI is one of a thrifty family of similarly engined VeeDubs that includes the Golf TDI, Passat TDI and VW-owned Audi A3 TDI. “I’m a big fan of these,” Wiesenfelder said. “I believe that the success of Volkswagen diesels, both in their execution and their success in the market, is what has given other manufacturers the confidence to give [diesels] a try.”

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These developments are encouraging! One thing puzzles me though... if the automakers are required to achieve a fleet average of 35.5 mpg, how are they going to sell any trucks? Because I don't care what engine you put in it, you can't make a pickup aerodynamic or give it the same power to weight ratio as our small cars without compromising its function.

An average of 35.5 the truck can still get 17mpg if the rest of the fleet balances it out.

Softrockrenegade said:

An average of 35.5 the truck can still get 17mpg if the rest of the fleet balances it out.

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Precisely... so if the pickups are going to get 17 combined, then the entire rest of the fleet will have to get 53 mpg combined. That pretty much indicates the death of the affordable performance car, among other things. Kinda sad.

Don't forget: these are CAFE numbers. Fleet average MPG is always quite a bit lower than CAFE. I think the 35.5 will come more like around 28-30 for fleet average.

Wasn't one of the big stinks on setting these new fleet/cafe requirements that the light trucks and SUVs were still given a loop hole?

It is nice to see the diesel put in a good light in the press instead of all the "remember grandpas diesel?" crap.

Regarding the CAFE requirement and trucks, it's not that simple. Everyone quotes the one number (which is a fleet average) but it's not just one number. It is a variable that depends on the vehicle's footprint (track width x wheelbase).

Expect to see vehicles with the wheels pushed all the way out to the corners.

Expect regular-cab short box pickup trucks to go away. A Mega Cab long box doesn't get appreciably worse mileage than a regular cab short box but the bigger footprint gives it more leeway.

Compact pickup trucks probably aren't coming back. Same issue with the footprint.

In other words, this system will result in EVEN BIGGER trucks.

The footprint requirement makes sense on the face of it, but it doesn't stop the manufacturers from gaming the system.

Also, there are credits for alternative fuel use (like E85) even though almost no-one uses it in reality.

There are big credits for electric vehicles, too.

So, in the market of the future, expect 24 foot long pickup trucks with a 20 foot wheelbase with the wheels sticking out the sides (see Ford F150 Raptor) and an enormous cab, with an 8.1 litre V8 that is E85 capable. If you purchase one of these then a mandatory option will be an electric car built as cheaply as possible, that fits in the bed and powered (if that is the word) by a single lead-acid battery for a couple of miles (just long enough to get through the Federal Test Procedure). The electric car will be thrown in the garbage the moment the whole deal gets home, but it will have served its purpose of satisfying the regulations.

Daekar said:

These developments are encouraging! One thing puzzles me though... if the automakers are required to achieve a fleet average of 35.5 mpg, how are they going to sell any trucks? Because I don't care what engine you put in it, you can't make a pickup aerodynamic or give it the same power to weight ratio as our small cars without compromising its function.

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A 4x4 truck can get 30 mpg. Amarok does. I know it is not 35.5, but that is a fleet average, not individual model. I think a truck could easily get more if people's expectation for acceleration with a load were lower. People all over the world haul loads with much smaller engines than the V6. It is all a matter of perspective, and how impatient you are.

You can haul a load 85 mph or accelerate to 40mph in 3-4 seconds with a load if you have a v8, but that does not make it necessary.

I like this quote.

The introduction of ultra-low sulfur diesel fuel in 2006 has enabled clean diesel vehicles to become contenders for drivers’ attention after decades of being seen as noisy, dirty and slow.
“They tend to deliver a lot of the advantages of the hybrid in terms of efficiency,” Wiesenfelder said. “[But] for me, the modern diesels are better to drive than hybrids.”

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Eh, you won't see wheels pushed outside the wheel wells as a normal thing - that hurts fuel economy directly, far more than the benefits in footprint.

For what it's worth, the Passat TDI with a manual gets 46.4 mpg on the CAFE (1978) combined cycle, and that is the most efficient diesel-powered vehicle currently available in the US. (38.2/62.8 are the base numbers, so on the 1985 cycle, that'd be 34/49, 41 combined, when compared to original sticker numbers on a PD or earlier.)

The following MY2013 vehicles beat the future 54.5 mpg CAFE requirement:

Toyota Camry Hybrid XLE: 54.8 MPG
Acura ILX Hybrid: 54.9 MPG
Lexus ES 300h: 55.2 MPG
Toyota Avalon Hybrid: 55.2 MPG
Toyota Camry Hybrid LE: 57.4 MPG
Honda Insight (CVT): 58.8 MPG
Toyota Prius v: 58.8 MPG
Honda Insight (selectable ratio CVT): 58.9 MPG
Volkswagen Jetta Hybrid: 60.8 MPG
Honda Civic Hybrid: 63.1 MPG
Ford Fusion Hybrid: 66.1 MPG
Lincoln MKZ Hybrid: 66.1 MPG (exactly the same results everywhere but the sticker MPG as the Fusion - something screwy is going on here, and the sticker MPG, even unrounded, is exactly 45 on the MKZ)
Ford C-Max Hybrid: 66.1 MPG (exactly the same results everywhere as the Fusion)
Lexus CT 200h: 70.6 MPG
Toyota Prius: 70.6 MPG (exactly the same results everywhere but the sticker MPG as the CT 200h - the CT 200h has much lower sticker MPG. Might be because of the higher speed tests, in this case, as the Prius has better aero)
Toyota Prius c: 70.8 MPG

Pickup trucks will need to change a lot to get better fuel economy, but it's certainly doable. Aero will be hard to do, but some can be done by switching to transverse FMF drivetrain layout. Further help here can be found by hybridizing, and using the hybrid system to power electric motors on the rear wheels to get AWD, which will also allow lowering the load floor (no more differential). The Power Split Device could be useful here, too, to keep the engine on full boil relatively efficiently.

All of those gasser models (Fiat 500, Cruse ECO, Focus SFE, etc) are getting ~40 mpg highway rating. That's about what my Passat is rated at, and yet the reality is that Passat gets better than 45, even better than 50. If you really push the hypermiling, the TDIs really excel over the gasser counterparts. 55mpg is not hard to get in a Passat on the road, even with a full load. The gassers just can't match this.

So the question is, will there ever be a more realistic fuel economy number put on the TDIs? 30-42mpg is not real. I've never gotten less than 35mpg in the city, and have seen nearly 60mpg on the road, and without the higher price for the hybrid technology, or ever having to worry about batteries. Now that's a real competitor for gassers mentioned in that article... better than implied.

And think what this does for range, as well. All this and without any hybrid drivetrain complexity. I'd like to see an acknowledgement of this in these articles.

Worth a watch...

http://www.wimp.com/combustionengine/

dubStrom said:

A 4x4 truck can get 30 mpg. Amarok does. I know it is not 35.5, but that is a fleet average, not individual model. I think a truck could easily get more if people's expectation for acceleration with a load were lower. People all over the world haul loads with much smaller engines than the V6. It is all a matter of perspective, and how impatient you are.
You can haul a load 85 mph or accelerate to 40mph in 3-4 seconds with a load if you have a v8, but that does not make it necessary.

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My Jeep Liberty CRD gets 29MPG (with a tune) even with me driving at 70-75MPH (in the summer), Only 4x4 able to tow 5,000 and get close to 30MPG I've seen (340tq close to a v8).
I bet we see a lot more pickups with small diesels (dodge has one coming this fall) I'll be watching closely as the only reason I bought the Jeep was for the engine.
I also doubt we see many real 4x4 SUVs in the future, AWD crossovers will be as close as we get.

I like how a Ram 1500 is now a small pickup.

(And by "like", I really mean the exact opposite.)

The seven passenger rental van I had in Germany last month got 36 mpg (not imperial) with a seven speed DSG. That was with me flogging it through villages and going 160kph on the autobahn with it loaded with passengers and luggage. It was a VW caddy hi-top with the 1.9 TDI engine. It handled and accelerated virtually as well as my 06 Jetta. Braking felt way better. I figure we hauled 1000 Lbs around and I thoroughly enjoyed popping through the gears in manual mode. No compromise in ride for me.

RNDDUDE said:

Worth a watch...

http://www.wimp.com/combustionengine/

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That is very cool. There is, or was a company, (not really sure which,) that had a similar design for a Jetta TDI a few years ago. I don't remember the company's name, but it was in the Diesel Power Magazine a few years back and I believe they were out of Colorado somewhere. Maybe I'll have to go dig through some boxes and find it.


Here we go, http://www.dieselpowermag.com/features/1104dp_sturman_industries_camless_engine_systems/

The company is Sturman Industries out of Woodland Park, Colorado. I'm not to sure where they are on this project, but it may be worth taking a look at their website from time to time.

RNDDUDE said:

Worth a watch...

http://www.wimp.com/combustionengine/

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That would solve the PD cam issue.

RNDDUDE said:

Worth a watch...

http://www.wimp.com/combustionengine/

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That is so exciting. The possibilities simply boggle the mind. Nearly infinitely possibilities for valve opening 'profile' and variability. This could be a bigger step forward for efficiency than DI. And of course adding valve management to ECU control would mean that performance tuning would then be done via ECU mapping.

Sorry camshaft, it's been real. Can't say I will miss you though.

3L3M3NT said:

That would solve the PD cam issue.

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That would solve the timing belt issue!

dubStrom said:

All of those gasser models (Fiat 500, Cruse ECO, Focus SFE, etc) are getting ~40 mpg highway rating. That's about what my Passat is rated at, and yet the reality is that Passat gets better than 45, even better than 50. If you really push the hypermiling, the TDIs really excel over the gasser counterparts. 55mpg is not hard to get in a Passat on the road, even with a full load. The gassers just can't match this.

So the question is, will there ever be a more realistic fuel economy number put on the TDIs? 30-42mpg is not real. I've never gotten less than 35mpg in the city, and have seen nearly 60mpg on the road, and without the higher price for the hybrid technology, or ever having to worry about batteries. Now that's a real competitor for gassers mentioned in that article... better than implied.

And think what this does for range, as well. All this and without any hybrid drivetrain complexity. I'd like to see an acknowledgement of this in these articles.

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That's what I don't get. the 30/42 rating for the Jetta TDI manual is ridiculously underrated. I have to drive HARD in the city (stomp it from 1st to 3rd, or race off every light) to get lower than about 35. Unless "City" is considered bumper to bumper NYC traffic, in which case I think a Hybrid's battery would be rendered useless after a couple miles. Highway, I have put 6100 miles on my car since I got it mid July and it's still not broken it yet, but I get about 46 MPG going 78 mph on my way to and from work every day. The day that I did go the speed limit (70 MPH GPS indicated) I got about 53 REAL MPG. (I figure that because my MFD consistently has shown 8% better economy that I actually get, and the computer showed me 57 MPG)

With the hybrids, it actually appears to be lack of use that hurts them more than abuse. The battery management systems are pretty good about not draining them too far or charging them too much, and those would be the killers from using them.

RDC98tdi said:

That's what I don't get. the 30/42 rating for the Jetta TDI manual is ridiculously underrated. I have to drive HARD in the city (stomp it from 1st to 3rd, or race off every light) to get lower than about 35. Unless "City" is considered bumper to bumper NYC traffic, in which case I think a Hybrid's battery would be rendered useless after a couple miles. Highway, I have put 6100 miles on my car since I got it mid July and it's still not broken it yet, but I get about 46 MPG going 78 mph on my way to and from work every day. The day that I did go the speed limit (70 MPH GPS indicated) I got about 53 REAL MPG. (I figure that because my MFD consistently has shown 8% better economy that I actually get, and the computer showed me 57 MPG)

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Your engine will be broken in when you reach 60k miles, and not before!

Out of curiosity I decided to calculate how much fuel I would have saved since my Golf was new, if it had incorporated a hybrid system to produce 50 miles per gallon.

In 448k miles, I would have saved about 2070 gallons. If I'd paid about $6500 more for a diesel-hybrid, I would have now reached the break-even point. Going forward, fuel prices are higher than what I've paid on average these last ten years. So it seems likely that the break-even point is somewhere around an $8000 premium for a hybrid system.

The big savings in fuel costs occur when one switches from a 12-mpg vehicle to one that gets 15, or when one switches from a 15-mpg vehicle to one that gets 20. Switching from 20-mpg to 30-mpg results in a smaller savings, from 30 to 40 mpg even smaller, and so on.

So, hybrid technologies make sense mostly for trucks and large SUVs, and not much sense for passenger cars that already get 30-40 mpg or more.

TornadoRed said:

Out of curiosity I decided to calculate how much fuel I would have saved since my Golf was new, if it had incorporated a hybrid system to produce 50 miles per gallon.

In 448k miles, I would have saved about 2070 gallons. If I'd paid about $6500 more for a diesel-hybrid, I would have now reached the break-even point. Going forward, fuel prices are higher than what I've paid on average these last ten years. So it seems likely that the break-even point is somewhere around an $8000 premium for a hybrid system.

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But no accounting in your numbers for having to replace the hybrid's battery once or twice or more times which is expensive. I still find it hard to justify the expensive batteries for hybrids if a vehicle is kept for very long. It's not made up for in fuel mileage.

I agree here, it will be the death of a more affordable vehicle. At some point we will probably be required permits to drive certain trucks that do not meet fuel requirements and have to justify it.

Daekar said:

Precisely... so if the pickups are going to get 17 combined, then the entire rest of the fleet will have to get 53 mpg combined. That pretty much indicates the death of the affordable performance car, among other things. Kinda sad.

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Ooh, drool!..

http://www.edmunds.com/car-news/2014-audi-a3-16-tdi-ultra-deals-out-74-mpg.html

I wonder why they're using a 1.6L engine instead of the 2.0

MPLSTDI said:

My Jeep Liberty CRD gets 29MPG (with a tune) even with me driving at 70-75MPH (in the summer), Only 4x4 able to tow 5,000 and get close to 30MPG I've seen (340tq close to a v8).
I bet we see a lot more pickups with small diesels (dodge has one coming this fall) I'll be watching closely as the only reason I bought the Jeep was for the engine.
I also doubt we see many real 4x4 SUVs in the future, AWD crossovers will be as close as we get.

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I am really liking the new EcoDiesel Ram1500...I recently seen it as part of a show at the dodge/jeep dealership and they let us test them out around town after the show and the 17.1 mile random all city route i took netted 31.3 based on the gauge.. which to me is amazing for such a size truck in city.. its just like the tdi is sold with a sticker saying 29city/39hwy and they get way more....

LarBear said:

But no accounting in your numbers for having to replace the hybrid's battery once or twice or more times which is expensive. I still find it hard to justify the expensive batteries for hybrids if a vehicle is kept for very long. It's not made up for in fuel mileage.

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That depends on how the battery lasts, though, and the hybrids that get a lot of mileage quickly seem to do well, whereas ones that sit apparently don't last as long.

I drove a Jetta Hybrid today while I was waiting for service to take care of something on my daughter's Routan. I was seriously impressed with the smoothness of the entire system. It was almost impossible to tell if the engine was running without looking at the dash or radio display. I stayed completely within town, heavy traffic, and the dash display was showing over 40MPG. I was working for mileage, but still keeping with the traffic. I wasn't being one of "those" people

If they added this system to the Tiguan, I would seriously consider it over a diesel. For a first effort, VW really did a good job on the entire hybrid system.