“Europeans get 45-55 mpg without batting an eyelid from their turbo diesels “ – dbq
Is the “g” imperial? 7.5 L/100 km equals to 37.9m/imp and 6.1L/100km is 46.6m/imp. One thing we have to take into consideration when talking about gas vs. diesel is that gallon and litre are volume units. Since diesel is packed with 5+ percent more energy per volume than gas, this fact alone should give diesel engine vehicles at least 5 percent advantage when fuel economy is expressed in per volume. Also, this means diesel’s CO2 emission per volume is 5 percent more than that of gas. Diesel engine’s fuel/air mixture swings widely by nature, from very rich (soot) to very lean (NOX), thence complicated and expensive exhaust gas cleaning devices such as DPF and urea injector. On the other hand, cost of gas-electric hybrid’s battery is coming down very quickly now. Therefore, premium for clean diesel and gas-electric hybrid is getting very close. Besides cleaning of NOX and soot, now the industry must meet stringent CO2 emission regulation, reduction of which is only possible by burning less fossil fuels. Because of this reason I think we will see more and more hybrids from European automakers. Diesel-electric hybrid is ideal from this standpoint, but you have to pay both diesel premium and hybrid premium.
I also think European hybrids will be more like Infiniti M35h and Hyundai Sonata hybrid since they can accommodate both manual transmission and conventional automatic. Honda’s IMA system is also a coaxial-parallel design. But, unfortunately it does not have a clutch between ICE output shaft and the “flywheel” electric motor. Therefore, when coasting or stopping if you want to turn the electric motor into generator, it has to rotate the ICE and its ancillaries at the same time not being able to turn kinetic energy into electricity efficiently. This becomes more serious problem as automakers put higher capacity batteries to extend EV range. Honda must find the way to put a clutch to separate ICE and electric motor.
