How does a bio-diesel engine match-up against a hybrid as far as mileage is concerned?
I drive about 100 miles a day and looking to find a car with good highway mileage and evironmentally-friendly as well.
I drive about 100 miles a day and looking to find a car with good highway mileage and evironmentally-friendly as well.
the bio-diesel has less mileage but alot more power.
You are better off getting a good small to mid sized car and skip the hybrid alltogether. The cost differences between hybrid vehicles and conventional versions, or their equivalents, are currently anywhere from around $4,000 – $16,000 dollars. In 2003, Consumer Reports compared the 2003 Honda Civic Hybrid model, which gets 36 miles per gallon and costs an average of $21,000, with the 2003 Honda Civic EX model that gets 29 miles per gallon and cost an average of $18,500. Comparing the cost of the vehicle, average miles driven per year, and holding gasoline prices at a particular value, the estimate clearly shows that it would take 21 years in comparative gas savings to recover the extra money initially paid for the hybrid (SmartMoney). At the time of the comparison, the difference was only $2,500 between the two auto prices. With current prices, the minimum difference is about $4,000 between the Ford Escape hybrid and the conventional version of the same auto. Holding gasoline prices at around $2 a gallon (CNN), assuming a 10,000 mile per year average, calculations prove that a consumer must drive 14 years to recover the initial cost of the hybrid. If gasoline were to increase to $3 per gallon, a consumer must drive 10 years to recover the cost. For comparison, just to make the two vehicles equal in cost savings within just one year, gasoline would need to increase to $29.99 per gallon for a full year!
Using Bio-diesel in a diesel engine will quite often provide a little more power and can yeild better fuel economy. Therefore for a VW TDI increase of 5-10% might be expected.
Hybrids you need to do some asking re fuel economy REAL numbers. The gov’t numbers are off a bit especially for highway. Hybrids do real well in the city driving as they utilize the brakes to generate electrical power for the electric motor (uses large battery). Electric works around town but not on the highway. Therefore the highway true mileage is not as great as it might appear as gov’t tests include start and run upto highway speed and stopping at end of test.
Yes it’s true that bio-diesel gives decreased fuel economy but a majority of the fuel will be from the US. If you do want to go with a diesel vehicle, I’d recommend the VW TDi motor (which is avalible in the beetle, jetta, gulf, and passat). It’s clean burning and gets great mileage.
A hybrid in my opinion is a better choice. It gets better fuel economy (especially in the city), burns cleaner, and will be more reliable. VW’s are known to be unreliable and worst of all very expensive to repair. Honda and Toyota are the top hybrid producers on the market. Hope this helps.
go with biodieseld! you can make your own.
No engine conversion is required for biodiesel, you just put biodiesel in a regular diesel car/truck.
That’s the whole point of biodiesel, modify the fuel and not the vehicle. If you wanted to modify the vehicle and not the fuel, you’d install a pre-heater kit so you could just burn veggie oil straight. That’s good too, but has a one-time cost and some minor operating hassle.
Biodiesel and veggie oil get the SAME fuel economy as regular diesel.
Don’t confuse it with ethanol, which gives worse fuel economy than gas.
Of course, diesel cars get better fuel economy than gas cars, and probably about equal to same sized hybrids.
1 gallon of diesel contains more energy than 1 gallon of gasoline so you’re not quite comparing apples to apples.
The favorites for biodiesel are VWs and Mercedes. Both are favorites for veggie-oil conversions as well.