Diesel has been the drug of all nations (perhaps except for the US, Venezuela and UAE countries).
It's been so for all the wrong and all the good reasons.
Diesel has always been a child for the industry.
The fact that Diesel was a by-product of OIL refining, composed mainly from grease, meant it was a cheap fuel.
Also, the type of slow burning combustion, made the engine design long in stroke, and the injection cycle successive instead of a sudden violent explosion like the gas powered engine. This means it's got torque because of the long stroke design, but also because of the constant explosion happening all the way down stroke, one after the other.
In order for this to work, the engines quickly evolved from the pre-chamber indirect injection design, into the Direct Injection phase of design where you could control the injection much better.
Since the Diesel engine inputs just air and then squeezes the diesel fuel into the chamber by injection, it reaches very high compressions...20:1 for instance. The air will not detonate on it's own and the higher the compression, the higher the temperature, resulting on an easier combustion of diesel as it gets into the chamber (or pre-chamber on old ones).
The slow explosion and constant supply of grease down stroke also meant that the output generated less heat, but more emissions, as there is only so much residual oxygen left to burn as the explosions succeed each other, and fuel coola down the chamber... you see those tuner diesels generating clouds of black smoke, some are bad tuningz wome are on purpose to avoid hmthe piston to melt...depends on how extreme it is tuned.
This means one thing: Diesel was a perfect fit for the TURBO charger. It can input air at huge pressures without detonating, compress it further and then, the extra air, means extra oxygen to burn, and less emissions (this, of course, until the hillbilly tuner comes along and ups the injection map, creating some disastrous cuttlefish on wheels).
Emissions aren't really a problem on the industrial diesel. The exhaust temperatures can be sustained high and the burn process completed at the catalytic converter, while the filter grabs most of the carbon dust.
The problem becomes when you miniaturize the Diesel and put into your car! The catalytic converter can't run at the same temperature or have the same length, the filters need to be able to endure between maintenance cycles and we end up adding urine to the thing and call it ADBlue... yes AdBlue is just pee! expensive pee.
Das AUTO
Back in 1993, Mr. Ferdinand Piech (grandson of the great Ferdinand Porsche), was onboard to VW (in ruins) and picked it up from the ground floor, up.
His great ace: the TDI. The diesel that has both the power, the torque and the size for a small car.
Sure you had small diesel engines in cars, but they where... well bad! They were used in cars that needed to transport heavy loads and at a low consumption form a cheap fuel.
VW TDI spawned the new Diesel with the lively feeling that all other cars didn't have.
Sure pollution standards where a problem because the diesel car doesn't have industrial sized catalytic and filter to make it clean.
This lead to the now so well known Diesel-gate. Why? simple... it's not industrial, it's not clean. In order to be clean it would have to have much less output for the non industrial catalytic converter and particle filter to run efficiently. This meant burning less, inputting less, so less diesel and less air = less power and no one likes the TDI as the old diesel it's been marketed to replace!
And BOOM goes the scandal.
Scandal was out, VW was cheating the certification tests making the car run really lean, and nothing to do with what you'd find out to be the performance (and resulting emissions) on the road.
Surprise surprise, all other brands, that managed to follow the TDI trend with more "interesting" diesels, where cheating too.
And the reasons are not hard to understand: If you comply with emissions, you create an engine that is just as un-interesting as any normal turbo-diesel where before them.
But the problem was:
That the scandal generated news pieces and documentaries, so all the sudden, the sheep population had the knowledge that: Diesel engines produce NOx, NOx reacts with Ozone in upper atmosphere and generates smog and anyone coming into a metropolis can see the smog dome form the distance. OOOPS the sheep had awaken a tiny little bit.
VW had been selling the CLEAN Diesel Idea and it was just a lie. Go figure... a big company and their marketing department lying to public... tststs.
Now? Diesels are bad! Simple
guess what they've always been!
But people like their SUV's and Minivans, and trucks... so, if you're pulling 2 tonnes of metal around, you're gas engine will not be good to use unless it it huge. If it is huge, it takes up more space, needs more cooling, drinks more gas, needs bigger catalytic... the scaling becomes a problem.
AND THAT IS WHY small engines with big turbos are a trend. Manufacturers look to use the Turbo as a replacement for displacement and make the engines smaller, to pull the necessary weight us monkeys have gotten used to go around in!
But this doesn't have the low end torque that every one got hooked on with the TDI.
So what's to happen to the world now?
There is a new kid on the block.
The Electric car! A bad idea made public, much like VW's clean diesel. The electric car is not really the problem. The marketing is!
musk has been selling his teslas as a green solution! however the lithium in it's batteries is a real problem for ground contamination, the electricity it runs on is not clean at most countries and the battery suffers from memory degradation, meaning you'll be changing batteries every 2 to 4 years, and it will need to be discarded and new ones need to be placed in. That means more lithium and cobalt mining and pollution.
However the Electric motor has a very high torque and it's instantly available. That is why trains use them.
Electrics are then the new Diesel: torque as hell and bad for the environment.
And this is without considering the safety hazard. Lithium batteries tent to explode and burn for weeks, and by doing so, not only they cook people inside the cars, they also exhaust VERY HARMFUL GASES that can harm anyone breathing them.... from fire fighters to people living nearby the fire.
Fires in lithium battery factories are well known (recurring fires actually), fires with crashed electric cars are common and normally they are left to burn for a week inside a warehouse with vents and filters, as is next to impossible to put out a fire on a battery that generates it's combustible components.
There is also an important thing to consider - The electrical grid!
If everyone starts using electric cars (and if you ignore the suicide rate increase due to the non masculin experience of driving them) then it means that people get turn on the lights, the oven, the computer, the tv, the music amplifier and the car charger. So when people need more electricity will be when everyone will be overloading the grid while charging inefficient lithium batteries. Not smart. Would make more sense during the day as they are away at their work places. But if they start doing this at the workplace, the grid will suffer the hit of all those cars, computers, office lights, elevators, coffee machines... The works!
The solution: aside form carbon batteries, is using battery packs, that you leave home to charge during the day and then exchange when you get back home at evening. It's everyone's dream, to get back home and perform dangerous car maintenance while shifting a heavy, high energy packed with a direct voltage discharge hazard, power unit on your car... so no... not really a solution.
But there is a difference!
You see, the Diesel engine produces torque and pollution, but with electrics, the engine does not produce pollution, it's the battery that produces pollution and potentially, the generation of energy to store in the battery that produces the pollution.
And this does open the space for a solution!
Welcome to sodium-carbon and solid-state capacitor-battery:
Some brands that do not have a private ownership of South-African lithium mines, diverted from the lithium-ion battery. As such, you now have BYD, Honda and Toyota working battery solutions that do not contaminate soils forever... of course this goes against musk agenda of contaminating the world with lithium using the Clean car message! seen this before? I'm eagerly expecting the muskgate scandal... got popcorn and all.
This means there are several solutions out there to fix the pollution problem and allow people that love torque to enjoy the electrics.
Solid state batteries live way longer than lithium ones and can charge in 20 minutes.
Sodium Carbon ones will be even more efficient and never need replacing... and then, then there is Toyota and Honda with Hydrogen fuel cells that can both be used to produce electricity and be burnt in combustion with a bang far more explosive than gasoline.
Meanwhile, in Porsche land
Porsche, as usual, is the last brand that keeps pushing boundaries instead of trowing in the towel.
Porsche has devices a carbon neutral fuel. It's synthetic gasoline used carbon pulled form the air, meaning that it will produce exactly the same that was pulled form the atmosphere... and hence neutral.
This will allow for the Gasoline engine to live longer as a viable option.
So, diesel (at least in the small car), seams is dead.
So, diesel (at least in the small car), seams is dead. Makes sense that it is. I've explained this over the years to several people and it was a matter of time until it became clear.
SO IF diesel is dead and electrics blow up and contaminate worse then diesel...
I believe the future is hybrid and Toyota and Honda are on the right track.
By having a fuel cartige of hydrogen, you can use it to light a fuel cell that produces electricity for a electric engine for all the torque needing functions, and then shift to internal combustion for high revs and hydrogen explodes even more violently and faster then gasoline.
There is also the fact that, if your car produces water as a result of either fuel cell or internal combustion, you can recicle them into a sodium rich deposit inside the car, and then use the ceiling of the car with solar panels to generate hydrogen and oxygen through electrolysis and either recharge that hydrogen cell or just plainly charge a carbon nanotube battery pack.
Carbon nanotubes are able to store 3x more energy under the same density as lithium oxide ions... and they are lighter, and being carbon, they can be also part of the car's structure... This means that your battery can be the same carbon monochoque that supports your car and saves your like if you crash.
The Diesel is dead, so is the electric lithium polymer battery, long live the hydrogen hybrid.
