Diesel is great now - but can Audi convince Americans to buy it?

LOL @ Audi trying to get HOV access for single-occupant 3.0 V6 TDI SUVs.

Actually, closing all but the right two lanes in dense areas to inefficient (per passenger) vehicle traffic, and opening lanes to the left to more efficient (again, per passenger) vehicles would be interesting.

HOV lanes in the metro Toronto area are on the left side.

Right, and putting them on the left is normal, but usually it's just a couple lanes out of 5 or 6, when a place does HOV lanes. And, often, they are only accessible at certain points (I don't know if Toronto does that).

This is rather off-topic, though.

It all about value for the $. In my opinion, I don't think that fuel economy is number one in their target market. I think VW will see more long term success with diesels than Audi.

Diesel prices vs gasoline prices

Europe : 0.8 euro vs 1.3 euro

USA : $ 4 vs $ 3

In US , the diesel is dead

Dimitri16V said:

Diesel prices vs gasoline prices

Europe : 0.8 euro vs 1.3 euro

USA : $ 4 vs $ 3

In US , the diesel is dead

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huh? where I live it's been priced about the same for the last 6 months. And occasionally diesel has dipped below RUG.

Our diesel is priced to premium gas in the socialist state of CT. Still gives you a better cost per mi. Plus the gas cars that get the same or close to diesels in mileage are boooorring.

Dimitri16V said:

Diesel prices vs gasoline prices

Europe : 0.8 euro vs 1.3 euro

USA : $ 4 vs $ 3

In US , the diesel is dead

Click to expand...

In our socialist state (that creates a lot of wealth and cracks A LOT of molecules for fuel, by the bye), there's parity in pricing in most places and falling diesel on the highways. Just like the old days before 2008 or 2009, and every year before.....

showdown 42 said:

Plus the gas cars that get the same or close to diesels in mileage are boooorring.

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Single greatest comment in this thread. Now if VWOA could just put together an ad campaign that stresses the the intersection of drivability and economy. Then maybe they could sell more units. I'll take fun and Fahrvergnügen everyday over driving a golf cart or econo box.

Dimitri16V said:

Diesel prices vs gasoline prices

Europe : 0.8 euro vs 1.3 euro

USA : $ 4 vs $ 3

In US , the diesel is dead

Click to expand...

I just compared average price per gallon via fuelly, between my diesel, and a friend's gasoline:

2012
Gasoline - 3.41
Diesel - 3.71

2013
Gasoline - 3.63
Diesel - 3.67

Cost per mile:

Passat TDI
2012 - .089
2013 - .90

Civic si
2012 - .105
2013 - .111

Civic si is not a "Economy car". My old 00si never got better than 26mpg. A hx model got about 15mpg better

mustangnick88 said:

Civic si is not a "Economy car". My old 00si never got better than 26mpg. A hx model got about 15mpg better

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No one said it is an economy car. In fact, the word "economy" wasn't even in this thread until you chimed in.

This is more of a comparison between the cost of gasoline, and the cost of diesel. I threw in the price per mile just to show that the price of a gallon of fuel is not necessarily correlated to how much it costs to actually drive.

The fuel cost debate is quite lame, if you ask me. I only notice when I pump nearly 40 gallons into my F350's tank, and it only manages about 18 miles on a gallon of it.

But since I drive a 51+ MPG Golf every day, it is hardly of any concern. And my only gasoline fueled vehicle that gets driven with any regularity gets fed premium anyways, which is within pennies one way or the other of diesel here.

oilhammer said:

The fuel cost debate is quite lame, if you ask me. I only notice when I pump nearly 40 gallons into my F350's tank, and it only manages about 18 miles on a gallon of it.

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Exactly! You drive what you need. Oh, and FWIW, we were in England last year (2012) and paid nearly $10/gallon for petrol. I was happy to come back to CA and pay "only" $3.00/gallon.

The problem is not that Americans don't want diesels. They do.

They just don't put diesel engines in the cars that Americans want!

For example, I want a Tiguan TDI. The gasser is about $26,000. The TDI is a $1500 option in the cars that offer it, such as the Passat or Jetta. If they could sell a Tiguan TDI for $1500 more, plenty of people would buy it. But they don't.

What they do have, and I looked into it yesterday, is the Audi Q5 TDI, but it starts at $48,700!

So yes, Americans (and Canadians) want diesels, but they want them in the cars that they can afford, not in the cars that they cannot afford.

When you take the base model version of any car, and compare it to the diesel version, there's about a $10,000 price difference. They have to hide the cost of the diesel engine in the overpriced options. Even in the Q5, if you choose not to get a diesel, you save about $8000. That buys a lot of gas.

The Tiggy TDI would not be $1500 more. It would be more like $5k more.

I think a lot of Americans and maybe Canadians look at nothing but the price of diesel compared to gas of whatever quality they see advertised. "Wow, RUG is $3.55 and diesel is $3.85," thus the reasoning goes that a diesel will cost nearly 8.5% more to operate. They never consider that (good) diesels give much better fuel mileage than gas engines. Some of the opposition to diesels may be due to the crap diesels that GM tried to make from gas engines in the 70's and 80's or the old MB diesels that were painfully slow until they got moving, and belched smoke like a garbage truck.

The dealers and manufacturers are going to have to promote the (usually) vastly improved fuel mileage, wide power bands, and calm driving experience that a diesel gives. I never thought I'd ever write about a calm driving experience, but driving on the highway in a diesel is much more relaxing than in a gasser even when the gasser has the power that's needed to do the job. The "economy" gassers can't match diesel mileage on hills or into a strong headwind, and if they're sticks need to be rowed through the gears to keep up. It may take time, but if manufacturers and dealers stick with it I think that the sales of diesels will increase. This will of course upset the electric/hybrid folks, but electrics are still impractical and/or expensive and hybrids suffer from (generally) tiny gas engine with not enough power.

My wife was in the, "look at how expensive diesel is," group until we got the Jetta. She doesn't look at the car books I keep in both vehicles to see that every fill up for the Jetta costs maybe $8-$10 more than for the RAV4, BUT she does know that she can drive and drive and drive in the Jetta before it needs refueling, about twice as far for 20% more fuel cost. The Jetta also only needs its oil changed half as often as our Passat or the RAV4 so those costs about break even.

The last time I bought gasoline was for my motorized schwinn bicycle. Given that I paid about 3 dollars to fill it up, the price of gasoline is pretty much irrelevant to me. In the 3 years I have owned my Jetta I have never paid below $3.20 a gallon and basically have paid the same price with every fill up. The tank is too small to notice a difference in prices. I still give the attendant a $50 and say "fill up on 8."

oilhammer said:

The Tiggy TDI would not be $1500 more. It would be more like $5k more.

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If it was $5000 more than a base model, which is $24,995 here, I guess that would be reasonable. If you have to buy the $29,900 version AND add $5000, then that's a no-go.

Americans buy diesels when they think it'll save them money. When it won't, they don't, except for fanatics.

Diesels still don't really save you money, but people still buy them. I think the reason to buy one is that you can still have a nice car AND not spend too much on fuel. If spending less money was paramount, as I've said before, there is only one model on the VW dealer showroom floor right now that can be labeled an excellent value, and it has spark plugs.

And the reason is simple: due to the expensive emissions compliance equipment, Volkswagen (and others) will only sell diesels linked to the higher trim level vehicles. So you are forced into spending [often signifigantly] more money. The Audi brand of course doesn't really have that problem, since EVERYTHING they sell here is pretty tarted up. And to that end, much of the Volkswagen brand's lineup is, too. We don't get an entry-level Golf here, let alone a Polo, or anything below that.

So if you were going to spend ~$25k on a car anyways, and the diesel was a little bit more AND you drove enough to justify that extra expense AND the driveability of the diesel engine in question was indeed superior as they often are, then certainly the car is right for you.

Just to give some food for thought regarding the Audi A6 (which I drool over like a dog with bacon):

There are 3 trim levels, Premium, Premium Plus, and Prestige. The Premium starts at $43,100, and is only available with a 2.0L gas engine. Premium Plus is available with 3 engines, the 2.0L for $47,400, the 3.0L (gas) for $55,100, and the TDI for $57,500. So you see, right off the bat, if you want a diesel, you'll spend a whopping $10,100 more to get one. However, it really in this case, since it IS a 6 cylinder, and it IS only available on the higher trim level cars, it really should be compared to the Premium Plus 3.0L, in which case it is only $2400 more. That, to me, is not bad at all. So if you were going to spend the coin to get into the higher trim A6 anyways, sure, you'd be stupid not to go for the TDI. Not only is $2400 a reasonable figure to recoup on fuel costs alone, but that value will probably stay with the car easily for many years to come, maybe even more since the gas version will probably depreciate faster. BUT.... you'll never recoup $10,100 that you could have saved had you just gone with the 4 cylinder Premium. And we won't even go into the Prestige pricing.... but rest assured, the most expensive version there also has no spark plugs. No more V8s are available for us.

Mind you, VW and Audi aren't supposed to be value brands, Skoda and SEAT are.

Really, the Jetta and Passat are the first Skoda-like US-market VWs since, oh, VW bought Skoda and made it their budget brand.

bhtooefr said:

LOL @ Audi trying to get HOV access for single-occupant 3.0 V6 TDI SUVs.

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Driving the company Chevy Volt on gasoline, I can still use the HOV lane by myself. I'll bet the TDI gets better economy.

BTW, diesel is normally cheaper that RUG in Ontario. Roughly $1.32/L for HUG and $1.29 for the good stuff at the moment.

When I was in Manchester, UK last month, RUG was £1.40/L and diesel was £1.50. So uhh... 1.5x1.6 (£ to $) x 3.78 (L to US gal) = about $9/gal.

What is HUG?

Depending on where you go you can get diesel for even cheaper here... I paid 1.23 today versus 1.30 for RUG. Now leaving Audi aside for a minute, take a look at Mercedes

The GLK 250 Bluetec starts at 43,500 where as the GLK 350 at 45,500. For what Mercedes has to offer in the N.A market, the bluetec will always be cheaper no matter what, so you can't even make the argument that you're paying a premium for diesel in this case. Had they offered a 4 cylinder gas GLK, then sure it would be cheaper then the diesel version. Same goes for the new E class. E250 Bluetec starts at 57,800 where as the E300 V6 starts at 58,800.

RUG went down to #3.13 today while diesel stayed at $3.63 at Murphy's Express in Gautier. That $0.50 split is the largest that I remember since I bought my JSW las December.

LarBear said:

I think a lot of Americans and maybe Canadians look at nothing but the price of diesel compared to gas of whatever quality they see advertised.

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I don't think that's the problem. The problem is that most people here are not aware that diesel versions of modern passenger cars even exist. I know I wasn't. I knew VW and Opel (GM) and Ford were selling them in Europe, I rent them when I go there, but I thought they simply didn't exist here.

I always have said that diesels would have to be the premium model (at least at first). Anyone Jones-ing for a low priced diesel is going to have to think about moving to Europe. In North America, the only way to hide the price of putting in a higher cost to produce diesel is by camouflaging it with extra add-ons. Deal with it. You get most of it back when you sell it, if you do.

Diesel is competing with electrics and hybrids, not plain gassers! The cost of going diesel is going to be higher, but the engine will give you hybrid-like range and electric-like power (after chipping it). All three have better resale value than a gasser. Period. So much of that added cost is recouped when you sell it. If you sell it.

My boss is talking about buying a Prius C for himself and a Passat TDI for his wife. Sigh, those mixed marriages!

That makes sense if his commute is a lot of slow going, and then the Passat for longer trips and such. Sounds like the perfect mix to me (if I had/needed two cars).

scrubber said:

huh? where I live it's been priced about the same for the last 6 months. And occasionally diesel has dipped below RUG.

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for the diesel car sales to boom , diesel has to be priced at $ 2.50 -$3 range
yes , you do get slightly better cost per mile with the diesel but that gap has been narrowing . In Europe it is wider. the fuel savings , even slimmer can be rewarding if you drive 60K miles per year but how many people really do that ?
and we are not taking the hubrids into consideration. I spend 3 weeks in Europe and did mostly city driving, small distances , i would have killed for a hybrid

I love my diesels but reality is hard to argue with