GregW / Oregon

From Autoweek, August 22, 2005, by Denise McLuggage.

"A Green Gumball Rally

This guy from Auto Bild, Germany's largest car magazine, has a thing about driving across the United States. Joerg Maltzan has done it several times and may again soon. And not leisurely blue-highway meandering but I-80 straight shots. Recently I was involved in two legs of one of his crossings along with a clutch of other motoring journalists and two Mercedes-Benz, Stuttgart, people.
Apparently it had all begun with Joerg dissing the Toyota Prius. The most it had to offer a driver, he said in effect, was playing games with the gas-mileage meter. A protective Toyota promptly offered him a drive across the States in something he might find more fun, more performance-oriented: the Lexus RX400h.
For comparison, two American SUVs were included in the Safari: a Lincoln Novigator and a GMC Yukon. Guess which got the best gas mileage? The hybrid scored somewhere in the low 20s; the American SUVs were in the mid-teens. Duh. In an ongoing journal, Joerg chronicled the experience and the mileage on Auto Bild's website.
Aha, DaimlerChrysler then made an offer: roughly the same route across the States to be driven in a Lexus RX400h and two Mercedes M-Class diesels! Okay: hybrid vs. diesel. Now you're cooking. We speak of the 2006 ML 320CDI that is not available in the States. I had driven it in Europe after the Geneva show in March. And I watched sedans with the same V6 diesel setting records over 150,000 miles at the Mercedes test track near Laredo, Texas.
I joined the Merdedes-Benz expedition in New York. It included Joerg; Kyle Fortune, a Brit, and Greg kable, an Ausssie who lives in Stuttgart (where he is [i]Autoweek's[/i} Germany correspondent). Bolker Corell, another German and longtime resident, was the photographer. (A particularly excellent one.) The DCX people were Joerg Zwilling, product PR manager, and engineer Holger Enzmann with his ubiquitous laptop keeping constant tabs on fuel consumption.
Oh, yes, fuel. The country will not have clean diesel fuel until next fall, so what's a CDI to do? We rendezvoused in rest stops with a Ryder truck toting European diesel left over from the Laredo record event.
That Friday evening saw lots of driving about Manhattan looking for New York-ish photo ops. Lots of hybrid-pleasing regenerative braking. But Saturday was the comparative open road on the way to Cleveland. A sop off at Pocono Raceway to, maybe, find some race cars to shoot with ours. Yes. Stock cars selling track experience rides.
Cleveland. Ah, sharp and clean-lined and a pleasant surprise to the foreigh visitors. Active night life, good restaurants and the river doesn't catch fire anymore.
Sunday morning found us trolling for photo ops, several good car shows in small towns nearby. And a Piper Cub at a tiny airport.
My colleagues were collecting bumper sticker legends and colorful quotes from chance meetings. They asked an old man waiting for his son to take him up in the Cub about solving the energy crisis. His solution: more wars to keep the population down. I have a prejudice: Never seek opinions from anyone whose beltline is closer to his chin than his crotch.
Chicago next. The M-B diesels were getting 27 mpg and the Lexus hybrid 21 at that point. I left for home after Chicago. The guys would continue on to Lincoln, Nebraska; Cheyenne, Wyoming; Salt Lake City; Reno, Nevada; and San Francisco by Friday noon.
I missed the rain and dust storms, 108-degree heat and a 14-hour day. But I had driven the quiet, smokeless, odorless diesel and the comfortable Lexus hybrid. Final mpg? One diesel, 25.8; the other, 25.6. The hybrid, 23.
Another trip, Joerg?"

Caveat--I hand typed this, so please excuse typos.

AutoSaurus

I just read this the other day and found the article very interesting. All the more reason to wait for the diesel if you can. Maybe I'll trade up for one next year.

GregW / Oregon

It's not assured the US will get them next year. The increasing emmission standards pose a challenge.

Curious George

I hate to be a contrarian here, but I wonder what the actual fuel costs were. In most places around here diesel is more expensive than gasoline. That's plain old #2 diesel, not even this stuff that was so special they had to truck in their own.

GregW / Oregon

The "special diesel" will become standard in the US by the end of next year. As to the cost of diesel, it is less expensive than petrol in most of Europe, but I'm not sure if that is due to tax structures or the fact that higher demand there has resulted in a better supply situation. It should be less expensive here than gasoline due to less refining.

cdiken

Wait long enough and we WILL have a diesel hybrid. That would be a hybrid worth buying. So easy to create with current components, should have been built yesterday.

A gas hybrid is still a stupid gasoline car. Diesel makes the world go round.

Even better would be a diesel hybrid with plug-in capability....recharge at home, and you are "buying fuel" at an equivalent of $.50/gallon. Why manufacture electricity on a tiny scale under the hood of your car when it is mass produced? Why....because you need range. So a plug in hybrid would be a huge benefit for short trips, with a diesel recharge motor to give you range.

Better still would be exportable power...plug your house into your car in the event of a power outage.

GregW / Oregon

That last is a whacky but good idea. I know of at least one pickup that produces AC power that you can tap into. I have a $1,700 generator for power outages that I've used a couple times in 5 years. It would be perfect if your car could perform this function, producing 3.5 - 5kw that you could send to your house. It would be pretty inexpensive to provide this feature, I think.