Diesel engines are beginning to quickly becoming rather unpopular. With the advent of hybrid and electric cars, along with some scandalous emissions activity on behalf of automakers, customers are starting to be turned off by diesels. This is unfortunate, as diesel engines are very efficient, provide more torque and better fuel economy. Bu why? Why does such a crude oil, and one that has such a bad reputation, work so well?
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It’s explained in this new video from Car Throttle.
Both engines are four-stroke engines, meaning that each engine requires its pistons to make four strokes, two up and two down, to complete its operating cycle. However, both have one very distinct difference from each other.
Petrol engines (gasoline engines) use a spark plug to ignite their fuel/air mixture. Diesel engines use more extreme compression, as the more compressed the air gets, the higher the temperature gets. In a diesel engine, the compression ratio (the difference between bottom-dead center and top-dead center) is much greater, thus creating more compression, enough to ignite the fuel and air.
There are benefits to both engines. Diesel engines have the advantage of better fuel economy, more low-down torque and more effective engine-braking. Petrol engines have the advantage of being able to rev a lot higher and being capable of much more horsepower. In performance cars, petrol engines are preferred and in cars/trucks made for efficiency or torque, diesel engines are preferred.
Both engines have their place and have their purposes. Petrol engines are far more common nowadays and diesel engines are slowly on their way out. Though, many would say that even petrol engines are on their way out. But which one is better? Which sort of engine do you like to use better? And do you think diesel engines should die off before the internal combustion engine does?
“Petrol engines are far more common nowadays and diesel engines are slowly on their way out.” I’m laughing reading this living in Europe XD, where I live diesel is still over 70% of sells… and at worse it’s like 49%… Only countries where petrol is cheap don’t care about diesel.
Diesel vs Otto depends so much on the application and driving profile. Only thing that’s sure is the typical 2.0 litre inline-4 Diesel does not sound as nice as its Otto equivalent. In a SUV on a German nightly Autobahn with constant 200+ km/h for longer times an inline-6 Diesel is the only way to go since with an Otto engine you can watch the fuel gauge drop by the minute. But globally speaking, how many cars do that regularily? The German Autobahn is a benchmark and a curse for the automobile industry at the same time …
Aside from that we see heavy propaganda paid for by Tesla and the EV-crowd against Diesel engines – which are systemically more efficient and overall less toxic than current battery powered vehicles – and the German car industry as a whole. And their main story is that Diesel are bad as the Germans are the prime Diesel builders. Simple economic warfare laced with morality and safe-the-planet stories.
One thing I haven’t seen mentioned is the huge amount of diesel commercial traffic, which won’t just suddenly vanish. The anti-diesel campaign in the private sector does seem to be pro-electric propaganda by comparison. Of course, VW didn’t help.
The environmentalists will be able to use the particulate emissions of diesels to paint them as “bad” and the fuel consumption of petrol engines as “bad” so that we all poison the environment with the chemicals in hybrids and the coal fired power stations that power most EVs.