Diesel Revolution Hits the United States

Audi and Rentech Driving the Future

Posted October 25 2010 03:35 PM by jason.thompson
Filed under: Diesel Car Reviews, Past Diesel Events, Alternative Diesel Fuel Chat

Last Thursday two Audi A3 TDI models were on display at the Petersen Automotive museum (every able body gearhead should make the journey to this museum at least once in their lifetime) after they drove 1,000 miles on Rentech's ultra clean fuels.

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Green Car Journal hosted a panel discussion at the Petersen Museum surrounded by historical alternative fueled vehicles. People who spoke up for diesel at this event included:

Jeff Breneman- US Coalition For Advanced Diesel Cars

Gale Banks- Needs No Introduction

D. Hunt Ramsbottom- President and CEO of Rentech

Brad Stertz- Audi of America

Don Hillebrand- Director of the Center for Transportation Research at Argonne National Laboratories

I'm glad to see such big forces that will finally give the U.S. clean and efficient diesel cars and trucks.

Reader Comments:

1. Have you reviewed the new EPA effiency standards for heavy-duty diesel trucks yet Jason??

Cant wait to see how the EPA will screw us next...

I did see an Exxon commercial about using blue-green algae to make biofuels for the first time. They did not mention the word biodiesel though..

SmokenGun - Posted October 25 2010 04:53 PM

2. http://yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress.nsf/e77fdd4f5afd88a3852576b3005a604f/9b3706622f4ac560852577c7005ea140!OpenDocument

I looked at it a little and I think their rules are too easy. (Here me out on this one.I know California tried to kill diesel in the 80's and that was a big mistake but what they don't relize is their plan failed and they inadvertantly made diesel stronger) I would like the regualtions tougher not easier.

What do you think our diesel engines would be like if there were no regulations or forces to make them burn fuel better? We wouldn't have common rail, VGT turbos, or 400 hp stock trucks. Pressure and heat make diamonds.

I don't think they would be as advanced. The regulations is what's actually driving the technology. Historically manufactures don't improve their product untill they are forced by standards. The benefit of an improved product over the competition would be small compared to the profits of keeping things the same. Espesically with cheap fuel. Why would they want to invest big $ when they can keep selling the same old thing as last year?

I've seen the future of diesel in data and talking with scientits so I know there is so much more unrealized potential in clean power. For me the cat is out of the bag and I can't convince myself to put it back in...even if I could hold the world back.

Have you ever been to a third world city without regulations? It is horrible.

Still I don't like out cylinder band aid fixes like DPFs and Urea. If they could just make the fuel burn right in the cylinder we'd be left with power and clean air. Not fumes and weak tits.

Yes there'll be growing pains but challenges is what improves us.

We've seen this show before with gas engines. Remember how crappy the 70's and 80's were for gas performance. Air pumps, low compression, and catalytic converters. Today's Corvettes, Mustangs, and what have you are light years better than the 60's carburator engines.

We might have emotional attachments to past technologies but I'm embracing the future. Here comes the Brave New World.

jason.thompson - Posted October 25 2010 05:48 PM

3. Jason what you just said is somewhat (not completely) like ripping the heart out of every engineer in the world and then spitting on it. (bad metaphor, I know) I know you don't mean that, but you're wrong. Tech comes out regardless of regulation. You seriously can not force innovation. That leads to people making crap to meet deadlines. That is what caused the suckiness of the 70's and 80's. And no, there is no way that the suckiness was necessary and there is no reason why any industry should have to go through that again. There are growing pains, but they don't look like that. That is just crap. Nearly all of the regulations come out after or just as the tech to meet them comes into existence, but the problem is no regulation is perfect. The catalytic converter was invented by Ed Cole I think int the late 60's, but cars sucked once they had to start using those. They didn't have the tech in place to justify the changes. Now we have that, but it took like 20 years. That's just wrong. You can't possibly be trying to tell us that innovation happened because of the regulations in the 70's. It was demotivation. It happened because innovators had breakthroughs that capitalism made the norm. Sequential EFI for example. Direct Injection also works. All these things brought greater fuel economy and power. But they were not brought on by regulations. To meet the regulations they used long gear ratios and over drives to scrape by until something better came out. The point is, regulations just make it worse. True innovation will become standard because we live in a (semi) free market society. If something is better, the failures of the past are weeded out through the very simple principal of survival of the fittest. Just look at what communist nations innovate. Nothing. I don't exactly think that the Yugo was the premier of the Soviet engineering forefront. Just in the last 20 years China is starting to get somewhere again because they are becoming much more of a free market, even though they retain the communist overlay.

My main point is that you can't force innovation, and increasing the government's grip on an industry has pretty much never improves it. It may be with noble intentions but when you give the government a control, it generally doesn't end well.

And have you read Brave New World? That book is horrible (ideologically; the moral arguments are actually a great study of man's philosophy). I don't want to live in a society where I worship Henry Ford, have shining abortion clinics on every corner, and have to take drugs just to make it through the work day. I don't want that to ever happen. I mean, if you have to make a reference, then by all means, do so, but come on man.

kingtoid - Posted October 25 2010 06:58 PM

4. ^^^ what he said.

Sure common-rail, VGT's, and 400hp stock trucks are all well and good. But give me the option of buying a brand new 2011 Ford Super Duty with the super high tech. 6.7L PSD or with a dumb simple 90's 12-valve Cummins I would pick the old tech. Cummins truck evertime. Maybe I belong in the stone age.

I would MUCH rather diesel trucks come from the factory straight-piped with emissions BS as an option.

More and more goverment control is NEVER a good thing. Look at our country today. Give the power back to the people is what I say.

Maybe we should reduce the amount of engines need instead of trying zany ways of reducing emissions. Im mean seriously, it seems like over 90% of the American population is not smart enough to drive for themselves. I cant begin to tell you how many stupid driving related things I see ever single day. We need some serious drivers license requirements reforms.

SmokenGun - Posted October 25 2010 08:58 PM

5. Regulations didnt give us fire, the sail, the light bulb, the radio, the internal combustion engine, etc., etc.

Regulations wont give use monumental breaks throughs....brillaint minds with freedom of thought will.

SmokenGun - Posted October 25 2010 09:07 PM

6. READ THIS AT YOUR OWN RISK SENSITIVE MINDS MIGHT GET HURT

I've read almost all of Aldous Huxley's books.He wrote Brave New World as a warning. It was his nightmare of the future. I used that book because I second guess myself because deep down I wonder if good clean personal transportation is creating a new kind of nightmare. Suburban sprawl, traffic jams, auto accidents because of numb skulls and isolating people. Still I love cars so I'm torn. I like public transportation for others just not me.

Since we're getting into Philosophy let's talk about another author. Ayn Rand. She is the most capitalistic thinker of all time. I've read all her books and at one time in my life I thought she was absoluty right.

Part of me still thinks she is right on many points. But her contempt for the environment is wrong and she didn't believe in God. Plus she got her philosophy from Nietczhe who got it from Schopenhauer who got it from the Hindus. When Openheimer saw his bomb go off he uttered a phrase from the Upanishads.

I'm an environmentalist because I think we live in an environment. I don't see the environment as something separate from myself. I don't like seeing our wild places exploited for a cheap buck. I dream of running of into the woods sometimes and living off the land. Get back to the soil.

Still lets look at the greatest achievments in human history.

The Great Wall of China= Communist because government control not capitalism.

China's Fleet that sailed around the world before Columbus was govt financed. So was Columbus.

The Vikings, Henry Ford, The Wright Brothers, and Mongols were capitalistic forces and they created some very influential things. Capitalism is probably cooler than communism but both systems have their goods and bads. If I could join any group in history it would be Genghis Khan or the Vikings. Did you know that if the U.S. accepted Mongolia and Korea as independent nations like Wilson said in his 13 points we wouldn't have gotten into WWII? I wrote a book about this when I went to Mongolia. If anyone wants to read it. I won't hold my breathe hardly anyone really likes history like me.

Take North Korea for example. When I visited there back in 2005 the city was imaculate not a scrap of trash. Too bad millions of people starve there all the time. On the otherhand they were able to fight off the Japanese and Americans. A very tough people. For example I saw a N. Korean circus and they didn't use nets. A bunch of bad asses really. I think tourism (a form of capitalism) will solve that problem.

US Military = Govt controlled ummmm sort of. I heard there were more government contractors than government soldiers fighting and working in our wars. Are we turning into the British who hired Germans to fight us in the Revolutionary War?

Going to the moon = Communist because Govt. controlled that program not capitalism.

Building the atomic bomb= Communist because Govt. controlled that program not capitalism.

The internet= you guessed it Communist becuase the US govt was behind that one too.

Satelites=Communist govt controlled program. Real commies remember Sputnik that started the space race?

This gets me to another rambling schizophrenic exhausted point. My roomate in college was from Siberia. He said the U.S. is good because you can make a lot of money but Russia is more free. For example the first few months he was here he got a whole bunch of tickets from the man. Apparently its OK to jump boats at a high rate of speed over there. He says there are too many rules here.

The U.S. does not have a captialist system. Since WWII the government and industry have become one. I'm not so naive to think business has my best interest at heart. That would be bad business. Plus I don't want to spit on engineers hearts. My best friend is an engineer. Still I know engineers don't run the show profit does.

The cat converter was devolped by this guy according to Wikipedia.
The catalytic converter was invented by Eugene Houdry, a French mechanical engineer and expert in catalytic oil refining[1] who lived in the United States. Around 1950, when the results of early studies of smog in Los Angeles were published, Houdry became concerned about the role of automobile exhaust in air pollution and founded a special company, Oxy-Catalyst, to develop catalytic converters for gasoline engines - an idea ahead of its time for which he was awarded a patent (US2742437). Widespread adoption had to wait until the extremely effective anti-knock agent tetra-ethyl lead was eliminated from most gasoline over environmental concerns, as the agent would "foul" the converter by forming a coating on the catalyst's surface, effectively disabling it.

Sounds like sulfer in diesel! History repeating.

When I went to Dhaka I saw something that terrified me. The pollution was real bad. I think the whole world will look like that if we keep on the path we're on.

jason.thompson - Posted October 25 2010 09:50 PM

7. I too dream of living off the land. I (rather sillily {I don't think that's a word}) pride myself in being one of the few who probably could do so effectively.

I think that our definition of communism differs. Just because something is government funded doesn't make it communist. And China didn't have communist government until the 1900's. A dynasty/monarchy is very different, but has many similarities as well. But as they approached the modern day, they were doing quite well until communism took over there. (The movie To Live does a really good job of showing this.)

I think that it is good that the government funds certain projects. Such projects have given us many great things, such as the modern freeway system, as well as has provided the base company to launch other great things. Howard Hughes is the best example of that, in nearly everything he did. He invented and got sattelites going. Not the govt. And Sir Tim Berners Lee invented the internet as we know it today and the propagation of it is the result of the free world contributing as well as capitalism because of the massive profit margins that come to once service providers get setup.

But what is important to remember is that the government doesn't actually do anything. What I mean by that is all the things that have been invented have been, invented, to put it simply, by inventors. I say engineers but I must be fair to include the scientists in that as well.

This goes to say that it is not regulation but rather special projects funded by the government that lead to innovation. Many of the articles on here highlight the fact that often the government funds programs and projects that provide the funding for innovators to innovate.

It is sadly true though that we don't really live in a capitalist society. We have a sad conglomerate of socialism, a hint of dictatorship (small hint), and what is left of the free market.

As a side note it should be said that capitalism is not an actual type of economy or government. It is nature. Socialism is government, and Traditional is what pretty much nobody has anymore that is more of a whatever gets the job done system.

And no one implied that business had your best interests at heart. Then it would be called charity. But what it does have is the beautiful factor of demand that drives every free market system. Why aren't all our vehicles pink? Seriously. Why don't they all run on air? Why do we have houses? According to other forms of logic these things could all be different, but in a demand driven economy, the consumers control the what and part of the for whom (deeper principal of demand). I feel like I am back in Econ again. hehe. Lets just take it there. You have the what?, the how?, and the for whom?. In communism, the government controls it all. In capitalism, true captialism, (nature, effectively), the government controls none of it, (except in the case of a Libertarian ideal government in which the government would ONLY step in if something was directly hurting the people.)

You say you are not so naive as to believe that business has your best interests at heart, so why would you even begin to trust your government? This is where I think things like the SAE are quite fantastic because they do, objectively, from the perspective of people who both care and actually know what they are doing, regulate the things that matter in ways that aren't biased towards any agenda at all. No government can do that. And as we all know, you eventually have to follow standard, or else nobody buys your product, in which case you can only sell to the wealthy, assuming they appreciate what you are doing, and if, at that point, you can keep your business afloat, you are no longer affecting the general populace.

I apologize for ranting. I like to get my logic out there to make sure I have some sanity left. There's not a lot of that sort of thing to be had these days.

kingtoid - Posted October 25 2010 11:33 PM

8. No need to apologize we're all just flapping with our fingers as a form of therapy.

I don't trust my goverment I like Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine and Ben Franklin.

I like how you talked about definitions. We need to nail that down first. I have a strict libertarain view of capatilism. No govt allowed John Stuart Mill and his Harm Principle was very good in my opinion.

I think innovations and ideas come from God or the Fountainhead or some higher power I don't have the brains to figure out. If a person provides the right atmosphere the God will flow in and provide all possibilities and solutions. Government gets in the way.

I think you came up with the right solution for the future when you talked about the SAE and orginazations like it. Perhaps we should put experts in charge instead of idiot politicians. We need to take our POWER back and live how Jesus and others like him told us to. Love your neighbor as your self. Teach a man to fish and feed him for life. That sort of thing the New Testament is full of great advice.

I better go to bed.

jason.thompson - Posted October 25 2010 11:46 PM

9. MMM....Audi's are good....mmmkaaayy??

Jason Sands - Posted October 26 2010 01:13 PM

10. Jason, Look what happened to favre when he joined the vikings.

linmup - Posted October 26 2010 05:55 PM

11. Good point. Right here is a pretty good spot talking about trucks and getting ready for the next project. Anybody seen that Ford Ecoboost engine? 3.5L making 420 lb-ft at 2,500 rpm. Yikes this is our competition for 1/2 ton diesels.

jason.thompson - Posted October 26 2010 10:08 PM

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