I'm just waiting until this blows over and they have a bunch of $26k 2015/2016 Jettas with SCR and a software patch that are 2 model years old needing to be BLOWN OUT for like $17k.

Then I will strike.

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RenaissanceMan Labs: where the future is being made today.

Garage:

2017 Chevy Colorado Diesel (nanny state emissions)
2005 Volvo S40 T5 AWD, 77k
1987 Mercedes-Benz 300D turbodiesel, 4 sp auto, 156k - 28.7 mpg
1996 Tracker 4x4, 2 door, 16v, 3 sp auto. 113k - 28.6 mpg

WARNING: this post may contain dangerous free thinking.

Many excellent points here. "Dirty" depends on where you drive and when you drive. I understand that NOx is mainly a problem in crowded, stagnant places like LA and big cities, in the summer when NOx reacts w/ hydrocarbons in the air to produce smog. Much HC comes from trees (think turpentine) and when I lived in Atlanta they actually speculated that cutting down pine trees to replace w/ hardwoods would decrease smog. Since the 1990's, we have had much more effective "3-way catalysts" that convert NOx in the catalytic converters so less EGR is needed, but I doubt that was even in the 1985 CA 300D converter.

Global climate change is a greater long-term concern and "net CO2" emissions is the main culprit. You can't burn any fossil fuel without emitting CO2, so the less burned the better (eat that SUV's and mega-trucks). Of course, this assumes climate change is man-made. I walk with my nose high because I now run my M-B diesels on the new renewable Diesel HPR, which is made from agricultural waste and thus releases no new CO2 like digging it up from the ground does.

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1984 & 1985 CA 300D's
1964 & 65 Mopar's - Valiant, Dart, Newport
1996 & 2002 Chrysler minivans

I'm right with you Renessainceman...I wouldn't mind picking one of those up for a bit cheaper as well... Reduced horse power be damned, it'll still beat a W123 at a traffic light...I still like the conservative look and the interior of a VW Jetta or Passat. They just look and feel nice, imho.

However, browsing Craigslist it doesnt' really look like the second hand prices for the Diesels have been going down at all...If anything, they might have actually gone up a bit.

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"The MB W123 is so bulletproof, you can drive them forever. Which is a good thing as it takes that long to get anywhere."
Betsie: 1984 W123 300D (hobby, 280k miles)
Myrla: 2001 Mazda Protege 2.0 ES 5spd (daily driver, 130k miles)
The Turd: 2007 Toyota Camry (wife's car, 118k miles)

Hopefully the new prices will go way down after the 2015 and 2016 models are again legal to sell. I've been watching VW stock closely too -- and may just pick up a handful of shares when it bottoms.

__________________
RenaissanceMan Labs: where the future is being made today.

Garage:

2017 Chevy Colorado Diesel (nanny state emissions)
2005 Volvo S40 T5 AWD, 77k
1987 Mercedes-Benz 300D turbodiesel, 4 sp auto, 156k - 28.7 mpg
1996 Tracker 4x4, 2 door, 16v, 3 sp auto. 113k - 28.6 mpg

WARNING: this post may contain dangerous free thinking.

uh,
What color is the sky in your world?

Are you really serious. This has to be a joke.

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Chris
84 280sl
82 300d euro

GREEN

In Tucson, we get all of our power from a coal fired power plant. Unless the individual has solar panels installed on their roof (which would cost as much as the new Nissan Leaf they bought) the car effectively runs on coal. Now, the good folks who live in the city of Tonopah, Arizona have the Palo Verde nuclear power plant in their backyard. Their energy is generated by the plant and burns no coal. Their only footprint is the emissions created by the trucks that bring nuclear fuel rods to and from the power plant. Everything else comes from the binding energy of the atoms that are split.

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'84 190D 2.2 5MT (Red/Palomino) Current car. Love it!
'85 190D 2.2 Auto *Cali* (Blue/Blue) *sold*
http://badges.fuelly.com/images/sig-us/302601.png
http://i959.photobucket.com/albums/a...0/sideview.png

Sorry this may be OD territory at this point.
I was mainly referring to the breathe less to lighten your carbon footprint comment.
By the way. A coal/electric powered car is way more efficient and clean than a petroleum fuel car. That is for sure. Everything has a carbon footprint when manufactured. Im not referring to that. Weather conventional automobiles or electric automobiles there will be environmental impact when they are produced in such numbers. Which is more is unclear. Nuclear is as environmentally unsound as it gets. You say no footprint. No carbon footprint, but a huge radioactive one. That is far from green.

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Chris
84 280sl
82 300d euro

The carbon emissions from charging/using an electric vehicle are higher than the (equivalent size) gasoline vehicle that it displaces, this is something that even my contemporaries in the electric vehicle industry admit freely when we talk engineering and electricity, there are a lot of losses in generation where it creates pollution, transmission and transformer losses, charging efficiencies (ever wonder why batteries and chargers need cooling?), etc. etc. It is not a totally green source and neither is the Lithium that is mined for batteries etc. The bright spot is that at every SAE conference I've attended for over 20years I've been told that it will be greener when power plants are all cleaned up, scrubbers and carbon mitigation processes, ... I prefer a good small-hp engine in a series-hybrid to the politically-driven hypbrid vehicles on the market today. We could be seeing 80+mpg combined if we really wanted to.

And yes, the breathing comment was "tongue-in-cheek" much like the rest of my posting, trying to contrast the political version of being green to the actual science, how absurd some people's perception is, and how it takes some really deep digging (not internet junk science) to analyze how much "greener" it is to eat soybean than beef, or whether one can reduce their "carbon footprint" by switching to an all vegan diet (especially if you don't research how each food is produced).

The original question of whether our classic diesels are dirtier than a new car? My company 2015 Tahoe averages 23mpg for me, that's better than my Son's W140 diesel did new.

And yes, this has probably moved to general discussion.

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Gone to the dark side

- Jeff

All the electric car haters seem to latch on to coal as if its the only source of electricity. If you're on the west coast where the vast majority of EVs are sold, very little of your electricity comes from coal. Our EV certainly doesn't run on coal.




And yes old MB diesels are dirty, in fact they are some of the highest polluting cars still on the road today in significant numbers. Much much dirtier than EVs and hybrids even when you factor in the production process. The only thing you can really do to alleviate the problem is run it on biodiesel (cough NOx cough) or renewable diesel but that's not really an option for most people. Unfortunately most states have made little go no effort to clean up their vehicle emissions. The residents of those states will pay for that short sighted decision with their health.

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CENSORED due to not family friendly words

... and I live in the Midwest, where the "ripe for retirement" plants are still operating and will be for some time, coal is still the largest source for electricity in the US.

Don't get me wrong, I like electric vehicles and would love to be able to justify/afford a new Tesla (pretty much any model), but the only Tesla owner I know who charges his almost exclusively from his own solar-charged powerwall is in CA where they don't have snow covering panels, nearly the cloud-cover we have here, don't need to use range-killing headlamps, heater and defroster on high, wipers constantly ... and the Tesla line is far from the greenest of electric vehicles from an energy-consumption standpoint calories/km or watts/mile compared to (for example) a leaf. I mow my lawn with a rechargeable mower, learned to drive in a plug-in (my favorite car in their fleet), have a small solar-powered 2.5kw inverter system in my house for fun, but for me it is more about enjoying the technology than actual practicality.

My argument isn't whether there are greener options than an older Mercedes diesel, but whether it is the exclusive means to make oneself greener and whether removing the aging diesel car fleet would be motivated entirely by science or more by politics.

As tjts1's chart from EIA shows, there are many assumptions about where our power generation will go in the future. I've been involved in these assumptions about electric power generation for decades and very little has changed other than the year at the bottom of the charts. We have had diesel power plants since forever, natural gas is not new either although gaining ground, nuclear used to be considered the absolute worst thing for the environment but now is considered preferable to coal, ... the people making the charts have changed but not the facts.

Please don't paint me as anti-electric, but feel free to paint me as anti-hype. If you have watched the university designed and built hybrid and electric vehicles evolve over the past 30 years as I have, and contrast them to the pathetic excuse for green that our currently available mediocre-mileage parallel-hybrid vehicles from GM et al offer you will understand my skepticism.

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Gone to the dark side

- Jeff

Be careful what trend you follow. Environmentalists have actually caused more harm than good re world climate change. The switch to R-134A refrigerant was to solve the "antarctic ozone hole" problem (or maybe no problem, read up), but it is a potent "greenhouse gas" so now outlawed in the EU, Canada, and soon U.S. The EPA strangely still requires converting to R-134A before converting to a HC refrigerant. Environmentalists actually started to embrace clean nuclear power as the best practical solution to CO2 emissions until Fukishima made them scurry back to their self-righteous comfort zone. Environmentalists have done tremendous good in eliminating smog, and cool LA people can even see the mountains from Huntington Beach now some days. Of course there is no set that defines environmentalists and I am kind of one, though older and slightly wiser. I bicycle 12 miles to work most days, which keeps the lowest carbon footprint imaginable. Re exhaling CO2, you can't sequester any in your body since it will all come out when you die and rot, unless they bury us very deep - now there is an idea, dump dead baby boomers in deep mines and seal the entrance. When we are all gone, the hipsters can change to nuclear power and fusion.

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1984 & 1985 CA 300D's
1964 & 65 Mopar's - Valiant, Dart, Newport
1996 & 2002 Chrysler minivans

Yes, when you cherry-pick examples which match your understanding of the world, it is possible to come to this conclusion.

On the other hand...
What fuel-economy would new cars get without CAFE fuel economy standards? Would combined-cycle power plants (at 50%+ efficiency, versus 33% for most everything else) even exist without concern for the environment? Lookup the per capita electricity usage in CA vs. the USA, and then tell me environmentalists have caused more harm than good regarding climate change.

To be ignorant is forgivable, but to propagate ignorance is not. Time to move this bloviation-fest to OD.

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1968 220D, w115, /8, OM615, Automatic transmission.
My 1987 300TD wagon was sold and my 2003 W210 E320 wagon was totaled (sheds tear).

Well, that was a fun read... Yea, they're filthy.

Personally, I drive a 240D because it's cheap, fun to tinker with, and I drove a 300D in high school. I only see it smoke in the headlights of tailgaters... and I'm totally cool with that. Yes, it's polluting, yes I live with the fruits and nuts in CA, yes I regularly get passed by lifted pickups with a roaring 6 inch exhaust, no I don't feel guilty.

Some folks just got legitimately conned, and VW will pay a bunch for that. But anyone who picked a 300D over a Geo Metro just plain didn't do their homework. Our diesels are a fraction of a slice of a percentage of the Mercedes on the road. And even if we plug the EGR back in and clean up what we can, there's still a couple folks adding 2 cycle oil to their tanks and wiping out any gains. Just enjoy the ride.