Wrong Fuel Chokes Presidential Limo 612
An anonymous reader writes "Fueling your car with the wrong type of fuel happens even to POTUS. This happens when you put gasoline instead of diesel in the tank. ...." And Yes, the presidential limo really is a diesel. What about clean, renewable solar?
Re:Um... (Score:5, Interesting)
I found it interesting to see that because of bad previous experience, Americans have a huge biais against diesel which is common in Europe. Meanwhile, because of bad previous experience, European have a huge biais against automatic gear shifting which is common in the US.
I guess everybody is just as biased :)
Re:herp derp trolling for more pageviews! (Score:4, Interesting)
Better for the environment but not better for people. Diesel exhaust causes asthma.
As it turns out, gasoline vehicles emit plenty of soot [slashdot.org], and the soot they release is more dangerous because it is finer. The finer soot is more difficult to expel from the lungs. If you can blame asthma on transportation fuel, it's gasoline exhaust causing it. We burn more of it (on the roads, that is) and more of it is burned in poorly regulated vehicles, and finally the soot that is produced is more hazardous. Further, since gasoline is more volatile than diesel fuel, when it is sprayed into the atmosphere unburned (as all vehicles tend to do shortly after start) it is more hazardous then as well.
Signed,
Asthmatic owner of two indirectly-injected diesels, whose asthma is readily activated by gasoline vehicles, but not by diesels, as repeatedly demonstrated when I have to move my lady's Astro and one of my diesels around on the same morning.
Re:Um... (Score:5, Interesting)
Because our NANNY GOVERNMENT has rigged the emissions and mileage games so that the only cars sitting in dealer lots are enormous gasoline guzzling full size trucks.
Not only that, Americans love having high torque at low engine revolutions, something gasoline engines are bad at but where diesel excels.
That's why all those trucks have 5-liter V8s in them where they should have a 2.5 liter TDi.
It's doubleplus-lose.
Re:Solar? (Score:2, Interesting)
570 mph [wikipedia.org] at one gallon per second would be a fuel eficiency of about 0.16 mpg. If that were applied to a standard 747 with a fairly low capacity of 350 passengers, that would be equivalent to each passenger riding a slightly subsonic motorcycle that gets 56 mpg.
A standard presidential family with standard security population is significantly less than 350 passengers, but I'd still rather have them in the sky than blocking off every road from DC to LA. There's room for a rant about presidential vacations, but the choice of vehicle is a fairly minor point when examined against the costs that would be incurred by any other method in current use.
Re:Um... (Score:4, Interesting)
Part of the reason for the US bias against diesel is the fuel taxes.
The US Government, and the States, have huge fuel taxes on diesel because "those big trucks do more damage to the roads". That could very well be true. But in my region, because of those taxes, diesel has been more expensive than gasoline for a long long time.
Most of our refineries have been modified to produce more gasoline than diesel now. If we were to switch the buying habits, they would have be be changed back.
Re:Um... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Um... (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, his statement is also factually incorrect.
No diesel truck driver pays what you see on the pump price for diesel.
They are all part of fleets and pay, in general, about half what you see at the pump as the diesel price.
Pump prices are high for diesel because people started switching to diesel to save money due to is increased milage. 30 years ago, in the 80s, after all that shit that happened in the 70s, you could be diesel at half the price of gasoline. And manufacters started producing more diesel cars ... and people bought them like made ... and within a few short years, the price per MILE (not gallon) for diesel and gasoline became almost perfectly aligned.
Again, truckers don't pay that much for diesel. Just a couple years ago I was doing a delivery route to help out some friends and they had a commercial account with a local fueler ... it was on my route, but about 1 mile off the main roads in an industrial complex (which of course has much trucking and no normal consumers) and the price per gallon there was less than 75% of the cost of gasoline. It would have actually been cheaper, but it was partial bio-diesel, so you pay extra to be another one of the ignorant trendy fucks who think corn makes a good fuel source.
The price of gasoline AND diesel is artificially inflated by the OPEC oil cartel. They charge the absolute most you will pay for it, and thats why diesel at the pump costs more.
Taxes are NOT the issue.
Re:Um... (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm Canadian, I drive a diesel. It starts unassisted down to ridiculously cold temperatures (hasn't failed me yet) in fact it will start when neither my gasoline powered work truck, nor my wife's gasoline powered compact car will.
People who think diesels don't start in the cold either have never used one, or have never bothered to maintain the one they had. If spark plugs burn out, people change them. if glow plugs burn out people complain about how hard it is to start a diesel engine (hint, even without the glow plugs, it will still start eventually, love you to say the same for a gasoline vehicle without working spark plugs!)