Diesel Honda Gets 63 MPG!

Diesel Honda Gets 63 MPG!

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Feast your eyes on this, car technology and high-mileage nuts. It's a Honda Accord that runs on diesel.

Honda expects to bring the clean-diesel car to the U.S. by 2010. It gets 62.8 miles a gallon on the highway, but otherwise looks and feels like a regular Accord. At that mileage level, the car is about as "clean" as a new Toyota Prius. But if you run it on biodiesel, a form of diesel made from vegetable oil or animal fat, it would be even cleaner than a Prius (Priuses get 60 in the city).

The advantage of diesel cars, however, is that they pack a lot of power.

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Why out of diesel? I always thought that diesel cars traditionally were quite polluting....?

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(visit the link for the full news article)

I would Google advances in diesel engine design, if I were you.

They are no longer like the "stinky semi-tractor trailer" types you might be thinking of.

And if you know how an engine works, you know that instead of pulling air into the pistons to create the explosion, the fuel is consumed in the mechanical compression of the piston...as the pressure becomes greater, the fuel ignites and the force pushes the piston down, turning crankshaft, etc.

Unlike gas engines that need valves and carbeurators to complete the air-fuel mixture, with spark plugs offering the ignition of the fuel, diesel engines keep going after starting up with the help of glow plugs.

Now that's how I understand the difference. And if diesels require no air exchange to make the "explosion" happen then the process can be controlled a lot better.

The problem comes in finding the precision in the engine block and the type of fuel. Biodiesel will cut the emissions from petro-based diesel fuel considerably, but it will not be as clean as electric - obviously.

Sign me up! Diesels have made amazing leaps from the stinky ol nasty, and noisy heaps of yesteryear. I would like to see a diesel/electric hybrid hit the market. It would work great for a pickup truck becuase you would have all of the torque needed with the diesel and electric while cutting the current horrendous MPG that pickup trucks are known for.