El Cid

Not so sure, I have heard diesel taxes are often higher than gasoline.
As of today, Greenville SC shows Reg-2.15, Prem.-2.45 and Diesel-2.29. Usually diesel is more than premium.
Regardless if fuel savings is so important, maybe an MB (or any luxury make) at all is not a good idea. The intial cost, cost to maintain, property taxes, insurance, etc. will be much higher.

HAILERS2

http://www.gaspricewatch.com/web_gas_taxes.php

Federal and state tax on a gallon of gasoline/diesel are shown in the link above. Dated material since it was last updated in 2012.

I bought my ML350 diesel not so much for the 'gas' milage but the distance I can travel on a interstate without stopping. Plus the diesel version of the ML, prior to 2015, beats the gasoline versoin hands down on performance, or as Car and Driver magazine put it years ago 'the diesel is a no brainer' as to which to buy. Can't beat the Torque of the diesel.

The history of WHY the tax on diesel is more than gasoline, lies in this link: http://www.businessinsider.com/why-d...soline-2013-10

El Cid

Reminds of the 1970's during the Arab oil embargo. Detroit had mostly large cars getting less than 10 MPG. Advertised them for the "range" they could go between refueling because of the huge gas tanks each had.

E 200 CDI

Unbelievable and crazy!
Why?
Here in Europe we can choose Diesel engines in every model, Every Mercedes from A class to S class, all BMW models, all Audi models, all VW models except vw up.
All Volvos, all KIA and Huyndai except picanto and i10.
All Opels, all Fiats, all Peugeot, Citroen and Renault.
All Dacia models, all Seat and Skoda except mii and citi-go.
All Smarts.
And many more..

El Cid

Not just old diesel myths. People in US just plain don't want them, so the auto companies can't sell them. So why make them or import them?
Incidentally, back in the '60's, MB was known primarily for two things in US. MONEY and diesels.
Of course, you also got it from your Studebaker dealer.
Happy Motoring!

ezshift5

FWIW Department:

1. I have a really good looking MB coupe

2. I would be remiss were I not to indicate my VW JSW TDI (diesel) is such a counterpoint to its' coupe MB garage-mate.

Seriously, the VW averages 44; the beautiful little coupe 27. My point:

Counterpoint.

The JSW is REALLY fuel efficient (and hauls plenty of anything in the pickup sized rear section).

The MB coupe is so damn classy I feel guilty when I drive it. (I was a sailor after college. Classy I am not).

Great website.

ez

Arrie

Man, how could people want them when nobody have advertised for them and they have not even been available? People really think the diesels are what the old Volvo 244 diesel was. And the MB D300 from the same time period.


People just don't know and this is why people "don't want" them.


Look at your sentence 10 years from now when people know and can buy a car with same size diesel engine that outperforms the gasoline version in both fuel mileage and performance. And there will be minimal price difference between them, like MB diesel is just slightly higher priced today (or at least was in 2011). Audi charged $5000 more for the diesel, which is just plain milking money as the diesel replacement engine for the Q7 cost about 1/3 compared to the 3.6 L gasser.


Again, people in the U.S. are living in times when gasoline cost half or less than what it costs now and during those days it did not make sense to drive diesel cars. And something needs to use that gasoline that essentially is a by-product from the process of making diesel. It just is that oil companies merging killed the competition and they just jacked the gas price up because they could do so doubling their profit. Talk about a cartel..., yeah, OPEC...we have one much closer.


This country will turn into diesel cars unless oil companies come to senses and stop this stupid milking with gas pricing. It probably will change when less gasoline cars are on the roads. But this will take some years.


But I can say that if I buy another vehicle it will be a diesel.

Trancebolt

Using that old e320 dyno graph; move the hp peak back to 3400 or 3000 depending on your i4/v6 choice of engine and essentially thats the same curve...

It provides v8 perforamnce from launch and cruise speeds, and even at the limit of redline (which is its lowest torque output) it still gives you essentially as much torque as the e350s have at peak torque.

It is slower than the gas version but it runs to redline without drama. a gas car is better for people who like to redline 9k to quell their anger issues. You step on a diesel if youre an adrenaline junkie and it does not saitfy. That is purely choice of feeling of an engine. Thats also a big decision between the diesels. I4/V6 or the old I6.

I actually get up to 27city/41hwy so that could be thanks to the new adblue and everything sapping a full second 0-60 but saving you money and engine life.

Arrie

It is so funny people always talk about the horse power. It IS NOT horse power that moves the car. What moves the car is the FORCE, i.e. THE TORQUE from the engine.


Horse power is a man maid unit. It is NOT a basic unit like force is. Power tells how much force you take out from the engine in a time unit.


As the engine power is always displayed as the max power from the engine it can be so misleading. If we take the E350 with the 3.5 L engine (like 2011 model that I had) it was rated higher for horse power than the 3.0 L diesel version but when you drive them the diesel does not fall behind. It would fall behind at maximum speeds that these cars can do but these speeds are not "possible" here in the U.S. Only in Germany you can legally drive the max speeds for these cars and surely on an Autobahn the gasser version could shake the diesel.


There is nothing that beats a good diesel engine especially in city traffic where it is way easier to drive. If you have a manual transmission even the lousiest clutch user can make a diesel go without stalling the engine three times first.

Trancebolt

To clarify: The horsepower adjustment you must make that I mentioned was in regards to what is different from THIS Graph and your engine (350/250 bluetecs). So, the peak hp was 3800 . 3400 for 2012-13, and 3000 for the i4s.
That is an adjustment you have to make to use this. The torque stays almost the same.

However you slice it, 350bluetec 7.5 0-60. 350gas 6.4 0-60. Stopwatch timed myself Owned both. Still prefer the diesel, and thats why i mentioned how even in the cars least powerful part of the band, it produces as much torque as the gas at optimum level.

And youre right, in a real race/track scenario where its not about drag times, the torque could possibly eek out a win or 'not be far behind'. and thats good enough for me to get double the gas mileage.

Raymond Lee

$2.85 per gallon/diesel in Lake Forest, CA! That is about $1.50 per gallon cheaper than premium gas. I don't know what is causing it but I love to drive e250 diesel running more than 800 miles on a thankful!

listerone

I've stared each of my three diesels once in extremely cold weather in the same small town 200 miles northwest of Montreal.In 2011...-30F,in 2014...-40F (which is also -40C as it turns out),in 2015....-20F.


Each one sat for 12+ hours,no garage,no block heaters,no battery chargers yet they all started like a champ at 8AM.


A healthy battery and locally blended diesel are,IMO,the keys.I filled up a local station the evening before each startup.And I wanna tell ya that a gasoline pump's metal filler hurts the hands when it's been sitting in -35C temps for a while!

listerone

The Chevy Cruze offers a 4 cylinder diesel.I drove one...a pretty impressive car overall.Particularly the drivetrain...the sticker said that both the engine and transmission were made in Germany.Jeep also offers a diesel and IIRC its engine is made in Italy.


Italy?

Arrie

All U.S. car makers have the selection of diesel engine cars in Europe. If they did not they would not sell any cars in that market area.


It is so WRONG that the U.S car companies have been selling diesels in Europe with well proven technology for decades and still refuse to sell them in the home market where they really now are needed. And some of these companies took lots of tax payer's money to survive not so long ago. In my opinion they owe the American people the truth in what the engine in the car should be but they are not talking.

ibeforreal

Truth be told I believe the oil companies and car manufacturers here in the US are in cahoots to make the diesels less popular. I haven't owned a diesel car since back in the 80's (300SD and 300SDL's) and even then I really enjoyed those cars albeit they had the glow plugs and every cold morning I would cross my fingers when I turned that key to start it. My brother owns a couple of fairly new diesel Mercedes and laughs every time I fill up my premium gasoline car.

There is no reason why diesel fuel should cost more that regular or even premium gasoline but at just about any station here it does.

michael61

While diesel has been higher in cost than regular gas around here (central Ohio) up until recently, with the refinery problem in Indiana gas shot up so that unleaded cost more than diesel. (unleaded is $2.51, while diesel is 2.32 at UDF)

I expect that will reverse when the refinery gets fixed.

looney100

What evidence is there of this conspiracy?

There are many reasons why diesel might cost more than gasoline. Taxation is a big one. So much of the price of fuel is taxes, so depending on how they vary between fuels, it will greatly impact their net prices.
Diesel and gasoline, despite both being made from crude oil, serve very different markets. Gasoline is used almost exclusively in vehicles used for commuting purposes. Diesel is the fuel of industry. As such, they see very different demand profiles. Production can also be impacted independently depending on which parts of which refineries are up or down. Seasonal demands and refining costs also differ.
In short, prices move independently, as they should.

ibeforreal

We haven't had any refinery problems where I live and diesel is still averaging around $2.80 a gallon and premium is in the $2.50 range.

looney100

Not sure what that is meant to support, certainly not a conspiracy theory. There are many reasons why diesel might be higher than gasoline. Refinery production is just one.

If the conspiracy exists, it isn't working well where I, michael61, and many others live.

El Cid

There is no conspiracy. People in US just don't like diesels, except for those realitively few that love them.
The manufacturers would make them and market them if they thought people would buy them. Same with diesel fuel.

Arrie

The simple reason diesel cars are not popular in the U.S. at the moment is that they never needed to be in the past. Gasoline pricing was so low that there simply wan so need for diesel cars.


Since the big oil companies merged and the number for them went to about half "magically" the gasoline prices at the pump shot up very fast. They started cashing in on the gasoline for no other reason than just because the real competition went away and they can do it. This now has brought some interest towards diesel engine cars as with close to the same gasoline price to diesel price the diesel wins as the fuel mileage is so much better. Easily 50% better.


The only conspiracy here is what the oil companies did and are doing. We talk about the oil cartel OPEC but we have one here much closer now.


Gasoline pricing used to be at the "real" price level when we had about 8 oil companies drilling and refining oil. Gasoline is a by-product of the process to make diesel fuel and it should be cheaper to buy as such but since the country is full of gasoline engine cars the "half numbered" oil companies simply jacked up their profits by more than doubling the price at the pump. The real price for a regular should be somewhere around $1.30 if the normal inflation adjusted price development had happened but it still is much higher.


It is so amazing how the media is part of this "cartel". When the gasoline prices we climbing up it was always reported to be the result of higher crude oil prices. Moving from $60 a barrel to $65 was a huge news. Now oil is down at around $40 and nobody says nothing in the media. Based on the news reported before they should be reporting super low gas prices as oil is super low, but they don't.


High gas prices put this country on it's knees for a big part of it where the low income work force suddenly could not afford filling up their cars like they did before.


I also remember a few years back when Walmart had a plan to start drilling oil but they could not get permits to do it. Wonder why?


The ONLY conspiracy with all this is the oil companies jacking up the gasoline pricing just because without real competition they can do it. This will actually improve the popularity of the diesel powered cars.

El Cid

Gasoline prices went up way before the oil company mergers. At one time, US and European oil companies were paying Middle Eastern, African and South American countries/producers less than $10 bbl, when it was actually worth $40 bbl. OPEC ended that. The Arab oil embargo in mid-'70's also affected prices.
However, the oil companies are making very high profits.
If Wal-Mart wanted to drill for oil, they would be doing it. Probably did not make business sense.
Price of gasoline and diesel is based on many factors after the oil comes out of the ground. Transportation to and from refineries, efficiency of refineries, profit for oil company, transporter, wholesaler and retailer. Then add on federal and state taxes.
Not to mention, the basic rule of supply and demand. If we use less, we pay less per gal.

Arrie

The below link takes you to a page showing a nice gas price chart.


http://www.randomuseless.info/gasprice/gasprice.html


I may see it differently but for me it looks like the gas price started going up at end of 1998 or beginning of 1999. Interestingly the big oil company mergers started 1998 and were done somewhere 2001 or so which after the gas price really took off.


There is an interesting dip in the price at the end of 2008. This I believe is because of the presidential elections. High gas price is bad for Republican party during elections especially when it was an "oil man" in the office during that time. Well, after election the price shoot back up very quickly. Explain this with crude oil pricing...


Again, gas pricing is high because there is no real competition after the big oil mergers.

thefisch

Thanks for sharing that link - that's interesting data. Although looking at the inflation adjusted prices, it all doesn't seem like a big deal to me at least.

looney100

This thread has just become obsurd. We've gone from one conspiracy to another.

This data is from one guy's fill-ups, not any substantial market data. Who knows how many different things went into what that individual paid for gasoline. It can't be considered representative of the market as a whole.

Thinking that elections had anything to do with the pricing is ridiculous. Thinking that the govt controls it is even more ridiculous. Think about what was going on in the economy at the time. We see a bit of a dip in this individuals data during the 2001-2002 recession, and a much more significant dip during the credit crisis. In between we see steady increases due to an industrial/commodity led economic expansion that increased demand for fuels.

..and I almost forgot to mention regulations in the early 2000s that reduced sulfur levels in fuels and forced the inclusion of ethanol/biodiesel in many jurisdictions, or the move to top tier gasoline stocks - all which add to the cost of fuel. The fuel we're buying now is considerably different than that a couple decades ago. 1979 gasoline had lead and crummy detergents and additive packs.