Sold my TDI - This is why......

[dok]

I thought the price of crude oil in Jan. 2000 was $9.00/barrell. Back then, I drove a Ford Ranger, it had a 20ga. tank, which I filled for less then $20.00. I believe RUG was going for .99/ga. The good old days.

 

[FL2AK-tdi]

I thought the price of crude oil in Jan. 2000 was $9.00/barrell. Back then, I drove a Ford Ranger, it had a 20ga. tank, which I filled for less then $20.00. I believe RUG was going for .99/ga. The good old days.

You know, I've heard some conspiracy theorists hyposthesise that the low oil prices of pre 2000 were related to the Saudi's "oweing us" for defending them against the Iraqis in the 1990 Gulf War. I'm not sure if the Saudi's have the kind of sway in OPEC to modify global prices over the long term, however.

Additionally, some of those same theorists suspect that the low low prices immediately after 9/11 (like fuel<$1.00/gal.) were the result of the Bush administration "making a deal" with the Saudis to keep our economy afloat while we weathered the economic ramificiations of the attacks, which makes no sense considering that the Saudis funded the attackers.

Anyway, food for thought, and something to laugh at perhaps.

 

[TornadoRed]

on a side note
I thought tornadored was being sarcastic about the dollar rising.
BUT guess not.... we gained a penny against the euro! BuhhhYaaaKaaaaShaaa!
And the crude droped like $4!

I left for work this morning right after the EIA report came out, showing crude inventories down 8 million barrels, gasoline down, distillates up a little. WTI was about $2 higher on the day.

I come home and find out the market turned around right after. When the oil market falls sharply on bullish news, that tells me something important is happening. What I think is, some very big traders took advantage of bullish news to get out of their long positions.

I think this will continue -- every rally will be seen as an opportunity to sell.

RBOB (regular gas for blending with ethanol) was up 0.6 cents today, ULSD was down 13 cents. July heating oil is now 32 cents below the record high set last Thursday.

 

[Rod Bearing]

Buying gasoline nowadays is also buying ethanol at 10% if what I heard that all gasoline is now being dilluted this way. So you can chop off some of the gasolines potency and mileage, right off the top.

Seems like a ripoff to buy a gasser or a hybrid gasser and use gasoline that gets worse mileage than without ethanol.

Cost per mile is how everyone needs to approach their decisions to dump the oil burners because factoring in everything my Jetta is a better value than my friends Prius if you take the time to actually figure out the entire scenario, start to finish.

My Jetta gets better mileage overall than the Prius too..

Going upside down on a trade-in and losing longevity and value at the same time is a sure fire recipe for worse off trading than holding even with D2 higher priced.

You might be surprised to find out just what kind of difference there really is, even now, with D2 priced where it is. The oil burner margin of savings is actually going up, not down, compared to a gasser or hybrid.

You have to look at this beyond the price of that next tank of fuel.

 

[txsuperlooper]

I purchased a 2002 Jetta TDI recently for the mpg advantages, but also for a couple of other reasons that gas vehicles cannot compete with. One is the longevity of the engine. A diesel will last MUCH longer than a gas motor, so the need to get another vehicles is not as frequent. Also, here in the Ft Worth area, it can get very humid during the summer, necessitating the use of AC. The compressor will pull down the mpg of a gas engine much more than a diesel, which would affect the cost per mile when calculating for a year period.

 

[TornadoRed]

I purchased a 2002 Jetta TDI recently for the mpg advantages, but also for a couple of other reasons that gas vehicles cannot compete with. One is the longevity of the engine. A diesel will last MUCH longer than a gas motor, so the need to get another vehicle is not as frequent.

Earlier this week a member on the SoCalEuro.com forum asked whether it would be okay to chip his "high mileage" GTI with a 1.8T engine. He said it had about 110k miles, and I asked "is that really high miles for a 1.8T?"

TDIClub members clearly have no reticence in modding engines with 200k-plus engines. I've never heard any of the experts advise against modifying any engine because of a concern about high miles.

 

[1995vr6]

Everyone knows that the diesel prices will come down it is all because of the american gas cars stockpiled and the government does not want to bail them out so he inflates diesel so that the gas cars will sell. In the end sales are up for audi vw honda and toyota
the final reason is why does the government want to lose money if the market is down noone is buying from retailers so he does not collect as much from them so he squeezes a sure thing sad but true

 

[4Gman]

Ohhh snap....

An ill wind for gas prices

Traders say that even though you're already paying for the hurricane season, the price could spike to $6 a gallon if catastrophe strikes.

By David Goldman, CNNMoney.com staff writer
Last Updated: June 1, 2008: 10:09 AM EDT

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Batten down the hatches: hurricane season starts on June 1. It's expected to be a rough one, threatening to upend refineries and disrupt pipelines in the southern United States.
And that could send gas prices, already nearly 20% above what they were last year, soaring even higher.
That's what happened three years ago when the Gulf Coast was battered by two hurricanes - Katrina and Rita - in the span of a few weeks.
"With the market the way it is now, a move in crude because of a hurricane could really be exacerbated," said MF Global energy analyst Don Luke.
Peter Beutel, oil analyst at Cameron Hanover Beutel, said if a Katrina-like hurricane were to hit in July, gas prices could go as high as $5 or even $6.
"The last thing this market needs at this time is a hurricane, because we can't afford to lose any of our refining capacity at this point," said Beutel. "If anything bullish happens with the market in this state, it would make it go absolutely crazy."
Like any disruption to supply, when a hurricane takes out drilling platforms and refineries, supply and demand principles lead to a jump in crude oil gasoline prices.
But even before the start to hurricane season, speculative traders have started to send oil and gas prices higher in anticipation of a hit to supplies.
"We're already seeing a hurricane premium on gas of about five to 10 cents per gallon," said Alaron Trading energy analyst Phil Flynn. "Especially since Katrina, we've seen traders build that into prices."
The last huge gas spike caused by a hurricane happened in the late summer of 2005, when Katrina and Rita brought many Americans their first glimpse at $3 a gallon for regular gas. The destruction from Hurricane Katrina alone led gasoline prices to jump 46 cents, or 17%, in just one week to a national average of $3.11, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Though we may never again see two Category 5 hurricanes enter the Gulf of Mexico in the span of only a few weeks, it may not take a similar occurrence to see a similar boost in gas prices again. Oil prices have soared through the roof on seemingly any kind of bad news recently, so analysts admit that this hurricane season's effect on gas prices is difficult to predict.
On the other hand, if no hurricane hits this season, Beutel said gas prices may fall off a bit. But with hurricane season ending Nov. 30, we'll have to wait until December to find out.
"That would have some downward pressure on prices, but who knows where we'll be at that point - we could be a dollar higher or lower than where we are now," he said.
The perfect storm
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) released its tropical storm forecast Thursday morning, saying there is a 65% chance of a stronger-than-average hurricane season and only a 10% chance that it will be weaker than normal. The outlook indicates a 60% to 70% chance of 12 to 16 named storms, with six to nine becoming hurricanes and two to five turning into major hurricanes.
But it doesn't take a strongly active hurricane season to cause major disruption to oil drilling and gasoline production in the Gulf.
"The makeup of a storm can have all the difference," said Flynn. "Slow moving storms have a tendency to churn up underground pipelines, so you don't need a category five to do a lot of damage."
Andy Radford, policy adviser for oil industry trade group American Petroleum Institute (API), said the average hurricane halts oil drilling production for over a week. Rig workers are forced to evacuate two to three days before the storm hits, and as soon as it's safe to return, they have to check for damage and restart production.
"When the offshore oil pumps get shut down, it takes a lot to get them back on," said Radford.
iReport.com: Are you taking extreme gas-saving steps?
He said those big storms in 2004 and 2005 did considerable damage to oil drilling platforms in the Gulf of Mexico, severely cutting into supply to gasoline refineries on the shore.
Though slow-moving, weak tropical storms over the Gulf of Mexico can halt oil drilling, powerful hurricanes that hit land can knock out refineries. That's because about 40% of U.S. refining capacity is located on the Gulf Coast, namely in oft-hit states like Texas and Louisiana. After Katrina and Rita, 30% of Gulf Coast refineries were shut down or operating with reductions.
"Because refining of crude oil into gasoline and other oil products is critical to meeting our nation's daily energy needs, disruptions in these operations can have an immediate impact on the nation's gasoline supply and petrochemicals," said Royal Dutch Shell Plc (RDSA) spokeswoman Robin Lebovitz.
And even though NOAA predicted a high number of strong, named storms for the 2008 season, no one can tell whether or not they will make landfall.
"You can have a very active season but none will make landfall, or a very inactive season but they all hit land," said NOAA spokesman Dennis Feltgen. "There's no way to predict if they will hit yet, because that science just doesn't exist."
It's rare for a refinery to be totally knocked out by a hurricane, but many are susceptible to wind and water damage that can limit supply to and from the facilities. Similar to offshore drilling platforms, refineries are sometimes shut down for more than a week before they can return to full operability, according to API Refining Issues Manager Cindy Schild.
Part of the reason Katrina and Rita led to such a spike in gas prices was that there weren't enough functional facilities to make up for the lost output. Although capacity at many U.S. oil refineries has been expanded, there hasn't been a new refinery built in the United States in three decades.
First Published: May 22, 2008: 4:51 AM EDT

http://money.cnn.com/2008/05/22/news/economy/hurricane_season/index.htm?cnn=yes

 

[TurbinePower]

Buying gasoline nowadays is also buying ethanol at 10% if what I heard that all gasoline is now being dilluted this way. So you can chop off some of the gasolines potency and mileage, right off the top.

It's been that way for quite some time. E10 is "regular gas" these days, and the ethanol percentage is so small that it's benefits from oxygenation of the fuel and improved octane counterbalance it's miniscule drop in BTUs per gallon.

E10 and E00 will run the same in a modern car.

 

[mchapek]

Part of the reason I bought my TDI almost 3 years ago (used, it's an 03) was for the flexibility. SOMEDAY when biodiesel really takes off and is available everywhere then thats all I will run (Green Algae seems to be the coming thing over soy and whatever else they use now). I like the thought of NONE of my $$ going to foreign countries for oil. I am considering making my own BioD and blending w/ dino D, but having a hard time locating a source of WVO in my area. But just the fact that I can run B100 in my car w/ no mods whatever (well, maybe a fuel filter or 2 will bite the bullet as it cleans out my system) is a real bonus in my book. AND the fact that I now put right at 800 miles on every single tank (16 gallon fillups are my routine @ 50mpg) is just the coolest thing I can think of, except maybe getting 900 miles on a tank! AND I have yet to do any real upgrades to my engine (nozzles, chip)...which I actually plan to do soon, to get even MORE mileage AND power. How can you beat that! In a gasser, increased mileage and increased power aren't going to be accomplished by the same mods...it's one or the other.

 

[TDI1220]

ha

should of got a moped

 

[MethylEster]

The answer is pretty simple really: 1 higher profit 2 one of the few end products we can EXPORT 3 overall, a balance of trade issue.

Vast majority of exported diesel is of the HIGH SULFER type which can no longer be sold as on road diesel.

 

[TurbinePower]

Vast majority of exported diesel is of the HIGH SULFER type which can no longer be sold as on road diesel.

Where are we selling high sulphur diesel to? Vast majority of the diesel market in the rest of the world has sulphur standards equal to or tighter than our own.

 

[Bob_Fout]

Are we talking actual high sulfur fuel, like 3000 ppm from the early 90s, or LSD, 500 ppm?

 

[RKSTDI]

Yeah right now it is, ive owned the civic for a while, but hate driving it. Its a 97 HX, i average around 40mpg, the TDI i was around 44, i do the majority of my driving around town and through lights - LA traffic.

civic: $3.99/40= 0.09975
tdi: $5.19/44= 0.01180

Per the EIA, California spec retail ULSD is averaging $4.99 right now. $5.19 is way overpriced in this market. Shop around.

Also, California retail reformulated regular gasoline (sold in LA) is averaging $4.48 right now. I don't see how anybody could sell it for $3.99. Seems like they would lose a boatload of money doing that.

 

[MethylEster]

Are we talking actual high sulfur fuel, like 3000 ppm from the early 90s, or LSD, 500 ppm?

I know of a number of Gulf Coast refineries that are exporting the 500 ppm sulfur diesel. China is one of the countries I know about.

Main reason for the diesel export is the diesel hydrotreaters are all maxed out in these refineries but they still have higher sulfur diesel left over. Gotta sell it somewhere. They are getting a much better price than downgrading it to offroad diesel State side.

 

[McBrew]

500ppm is "low sulfur diesel", as Bob_Fout mentioned above. Just trying to keep the terms straight.

 

[Russell G.]

Many Reasons To Consider

The price is high right now, but that is not likely to change much in the near future. It's still a supply and demand situation; with a slight bit of greed on the part of the oil companies. That being said, the reason I bought the TDI in 2001 was not only economy---which has really been pretty good. I also considered the fact that I would own it for 8-10 Years, the reliability was there, even in the Winter (I live on the "Frozen Tundra" of Minnesota, and it is a fun vehicle. There are times you have to look at the "love/hate angles of anything, including your TDI.

Best of luck with the Civic.

 

[Rod Bearing]

So who really cares why he sold it, or that he sold it? Don't let the door hit ya.

 

[bikegeek]

Drivers vary, mpg varies, EPA numbers vary, opinions vary.......different cars(trucks) for different needs of different drivers.....

 

[wv tdi]

Just a couple hundred miles & the warranty expires, it is going to need resoled in the fall, but the only way i'd get rid of mine is if the Tiguan becomes available with the diesel.

 

[RobbieTDI]

Per the EIA, California spec retail ULSD is averaging $4.99 right now. $5.19 is way overpriced in this market. Shop around.

Also, California retail reformulated regular gasoline (sold in LA) is averaging $4.48 right now. I don't see how anybody could sell it for $3.99. Seems like they would lose a boatload of money doing that.

I hate to break this to you, but fuel prices change!

did you happen to look at the date i posted that?

yes gasoline has risen and D2 has stayed the same, but i dont think they will every be equal again. just wait until winter rolls around.

im still happy with my decision, civic is running great with a lifetime average of 41mpg on RUG

 

[nicklockard]

civic is running great with a lifetime average of 41mpg on RUG

I call "magical imaginary civic" bull crap.

Sorry...there's no civic besides a 1987 CRX HF that can get that kind of mileage, especially in Southern California stop/race/stop traffic.

bulllllllllcrap.

 

[RobbieTDI]

I call "magical imaginary civic" bull crap.

Sorry...there's no civic besides a 1987 CRX HF that can get that kind of mileage, especially in Southern California stop/race/stop traffic.

bulllllllllcrap.

you can call BS all day long buddy, but obviously you know nothing about the Honda Vtec-E (economy) cars of the 90s.

Started with the Civic VX (92-95) EPA window sticker with 47/56
was replaced by the Civic HX (96-00) MY CAR! 37/44

My civic VX averaged over 50mpg on highway trips, LA traffic only saw about 44mpg, i think it needed a tune up.

My civic HX has averaged 41mpg in LA about 50/50 highway/city driving. I dont even have a scangauge yet. Almost every tank is like clockwork 40-42mpg. I drive this thing normally, not with an egg under the pedal, just as i drove my tdi.

i suggest anyone with doubts towards my mileage claims or any of these hondas - check out www.gassavers.org - pretty much all VX owners, most getting >50mpg. Both HX and VX used honda's "lean burn technology" to achieve the mileage they did.

Next time do some research before you call BS. TDI's are great, but they are not the end-all as far as efficiency/$.

 

[TurbinePower]

i suggest anyone with doubts towards my mileage claims or any of these hondas - check out www.gassavers.org - pretty much all VX owners, most getting >50mpg. Both HX and VX used honda's "lean burn technology" to achieve the mileage they did.

And probably slammed into the same NOx brick-wall that diesels have.

 

[MCathcart]

you can call BS all day long buddy, but obviously you know nothing about the Honda Vtec-E (economy) cars of the 90s.

Started with the Civic VX (92-95) EPA window sticker with 47/56
was replaced by the Civic HX (96-00) MY CAR! 37/44

My civic VX averaged over 50mpg on highway trips, LA traffic only saw about 44mpg, i think it needed a tune up.

My civic HX has averaged 41mpg in LA about 50/50 highway/city driving. I dont even have a scangauge yet. Almost every tank is like clockwork 40-42mpg. I drive this thing normally, not with an egg under the pedal, just as i drove my tdi.

i suggest anyone with doubts towards my mileage claims or any of these hondas - check out www.gassavers.org - pretty much all VX owners, most getting >50mpg. Both HX and VX used honda's "lean burn technology" to achieve the mileage they did.

Next time do some research before you call BS. TDI's are great, but they are not the end-all as far as efficiency/$.

I'm with you Robbie and what you're saying is true. The car manufacturers "could" have done something other than Pee on our legs about Hybrids. I think the 1980's Honda HF's 50-60 mpg were the direction we should have gone. I commend you on changing to the Honda. For fear of what's going to happen I just located a 1990 Ford Festiva that has a EPA rating of 41 mpg. (Most consertiave drivers are getting 48 mpg with the little 1.3.) The Festiva's compared to Honda's are cheap (but just as hard to find). $600.00 for a one owner, 165k, 5 speed with A/C that works.

Guys don't be so condeming. What works for you will not necessarly work for everyone.

 

[Croberts]

I owned a '88 Festiva back in the early 90's. Drove a lot of hwy miles, 5-speed (4-speed?) manual and averaged in the low 40s mpg. Fun little car.

 

[nuke]

We owned two TDI's at one point, my 01 Golf and my wife had a 02 Beetle. Mine was a 5 speed, hers an auto. I like the engine a whole lot and got 43 mph in the 5spd Golf all the time, no matter how I drove it. What got me was two things, I just wasn't happy with the car and it had a lot of quality problems that had nothing to do with the TDI part (window regulators, ABS recall, electrical problems, etc.) I sold it and got into an 02 Corvette convertible that I still have. Love it very much and it has been trouble free, except for one headlight lift motor that was replaced at 5 years. While it doesn't get anything like 43 mpg, it does average about 20.

My wife held on to the Beetle for a lot longer. Her short trip, city only driving cycle along with the automatic transmission left her long time average mileage at 30-31 mpg, which honestly, isn't all that impressive. She really liked the car, in spite of the repeated quality issues. She was on first name basis at Sunnyvale VW. To their credit, they did fix everything promptly and other than overfilling the oil (every time) got it right. But man, it was in the shop a LOT. Again, nothing to do with the engine and drive train.

She swapped for a Lexus RX400h hybrid last year. It too has been just fantastic and Lexus service is wonderful. Her city driving cycle is ideally suited to the hybrid and she's averaging 28 mpg in it. A little less mpg, but given California fuel prices, not much different in fuel costs than her Beetle. Considering though, that it is huge by comparison, extremely cushy and loaded with luxury features and has 3 times the horsepower, it is pretty impressive on the mileage it gets.

I like diesel engines and I'd sure as heck consider another diesel car or truck in the future. VW though, is off my list unless things change hugely from my experience.

I just dropped in to see what's up. I wish all y'all the best.

 

[TornadoRed]

I like diesel engines and I'd sure as heck consider another diesel car or truck in the future. VW though, is off my list unless things change hugely from my experience.

All those trips to the dealership suggest to me that problems weren't being solved the first time you reported them. That's more a dealership quality problem than a Volkswagen quality problem. It might still be a reason to avoid VWs, but the criticism should be directed where it belongs.

How will you know if VWs improve, quality-wise?

 

[RobbieTDI]

to tell you the truth, i loved my golf tdi, but there were those things "non-tdi" related that did bug me. electrical had to be the biggest issue i had. stupid little things like cc and windows.

but as far as the engine/style, the car was a major winner in my book.

i would be %100 on top of an '09 sportwagen if VW would just offer a service plan like BMW.