--- [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > Huh??? virtually any diesel car will run on > significantly less.
Very true, but there are very few diesel cars sold in the US! In the 2007 model year there will be ONE (!) diesel car sold here, a Mercedes-Benz E-class. And you cannot buy them in California, Maine, Massachusetts, New York or Vermont because we have higher emissions standards than the other 45 states and no diesel cars meet them. The 2008 diesel E-class is supposed to meet the standards in all 50 states. Part of the problem is that the latest emissions systems used in diesels, which would allow them to have emissions levels low enough to sell them in all the US states, need to be recharged every so often. US Federal law says that all emissions equipment must last at least 100,000 miles without needed any service, something that these systems currently can't meet. Supposedly the one in the 2008 E-class will be the first to comply with the 100,000 mile rule. This system was actually supposed to be installed in the 2007 E-class but it is not ready yet. Up until 2006, Volkswagen also sold diesel cars in the US. They will not sell them in 2007; they will start selling them again once they have their own system that can be sold in all 50 states. The VW Golf and Jetta were the last diesel cars you could buy in CA, ME, MA, NY and VT, in around 2003 or so. The E-class diesel hasn't been sold here since the 1990s. Even with the regulatory changes ,it is still likely that relatively few diesel cars will be sold in the US because American consumers tend not to like diesel cars. In the 1970s during the fuel crisis, diesel cars were quite popular here in the US but of course in those days they were rather smelly, noisy and slow compared to petrol cars. Our own General Motors made diesel cars in the 1980s - using an existing petrol engine design which was converted to run diesel - and they were especially bad; together with the collective experience in the 1970s, this left Americans with a bad impression of diesel cars. Americans still have these two bad memories stuck in our collective mindset so most will not consider a diesel car. New Doug __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
