Diesels in anything other than large trucks are done in the U.S., and almost done in Europe.

Hybrids need to be driven "hybridly" to work right. That means slow acceleration and coasting to stops, or limiting braking to just enough to be done by the generator load. It's hard to get employees to do that, especially if it slows down their work.

I drove Frau Putzer's X3 30i into town a few nights ago, with two stops: Sam's Club and Cracker Barrel. Coming home, no stops, 10 p.m. light traffic, I got 41.4 MPG, and I'd just adjusted the MPG display for accuracy. With the stop at Sam's Club, I was at about 35 MPG as I got to Cracker Barrel.

The original Vega engines had all their problems at cold start-up. A classmate of mine in college was a lab technician at GM before going to college. He said that one of the tests they did was a continuous running durability test. He said that when he left GM, the record holder for that test was still the original Vega engine.

My Chevy Cobalt's aluminum block, timing chained, variable valve timing, 2.4-liter EcoTech engine is running like new at 125k miles, using about 3/4's of a quart of synthetic oil in between 8k mile oil changes. It has iron cylinder liners, though.