Is hybrid cars greener than diesel powered vehicles?

Question

Is hybrid cars greener than diesel powered vehicles?

Answer 1

Like for like yes

unfortunatly marketing & media tend to do things like compare a small diesel with a big Lexus and say look how bad hybrids are (there seems to be a lot of people wanting to knock any attempt to move to more sustainable lifestyles, most of their advertising revenue comes from promoting excessive consumerism).

Diesels may get better mpg/lower CO2 in some circumstances (eg long motorway journeys); but have higher levels of particulate emmissions which are very dangerous - killing hundreds each year in UK, especially along the queuing urban arterial routes. which is why there is £0 London congestion charge for hybrids.

There is also more noise pollution from diesels; one of the joys of driving a hybrid is it is silent when stoped, which makes traffic jams much less stressfull.

Maybe not as good as a pure electric vehicle, but best available at the moment.

Answer 2

Actually, due to the greater refining efficiency of diesel fuel, when you look at the total energy budget, the direct injection turbo diesel is the most efficient system.  The total pollution from diesel is lower than for gasoline, except for the particulates. .  Particulates are admittedly a problem, needs to be fixed.  Unfortunately, ni-cad batteries are a mess due to the nickel mining and energy cost of making the battery.  Maybe we can do better with Li-ion.

Answer 3

yes.

Answer 4

Yes, but not by a lot.

Many people seem not to be aware that diesel has gotten much cleaner in the past few years.  They've introduced this ultra-low sulfur diesel (ULSD) which reduced much of the pollution associated with diesel fuel.

When it comes to carbon dioxide emissions, diesels are better than regular gas cars, but not quite as good as hybrids.  In a recent Swiss study, they found the greenest car on the planet was the Prius.  However, numbers 2-5 were all very small diesel cars.

http://www.reuters.com/article/environme...

So basically a very small diesel car is almost as green as a midsized hybrid.

Answer 5

definitely, diesels are worse than petrol cars for pumping out emissions

Answer 6

Ofcourse, diesel is such a bad air polluter

Answer 7

Fred - you make some good points, but you miss some things too.

Generally hybrids are about the same as the new clean diesels, but both use internal combustion engines which are inherently polluting and require complex pollution controls which makes their pollution barely tolerable, if that.  Fred seems to favour electric vehicles, ignoring that their pollution is made at the electric generating plants and the fact that if all cars were EVs we would need twice as many generating plants, doubling their pollution.  EVs also have inherent problems.  If built to get the same range as an IC auto, they cost more than twice as much [25,000 Pounds], so many people could not afford EVs and only the rich would drive.  If built cheaper the range drops drastically.  Hot and cold weather also reduce their range as people want AC and heat, which uses electricity.

An open flame with forced draft produces more heat and less pollution per gallon of fuel than in an IC engine even with all its pollution controls.  To use the heat you put water into a water tube boiler, which cannot explode, and make steam to run a small steam engine to power a generator.  Install this in a short-range inexpensive plug-in EV to charge the batteries when they get low.  The car would go about 25 miles from home and return just using electricity.  That accounts for 80% of your driving and the steam engine would never need to start, using zero fuel and in itself making no pollution.

The rub in driving a short-range, inexpensive plug-in EV is in the other 20% of your needed driving, because it can't do it.  Any distance over 25 miles from home requires finding an outlet for several hours of recharging.  But by making it a steam-electric hybrid you could drive any distance simply by refuelling.  That is the other good thing, it could use any available liquid or gaseous fuel [one type at a time].  You could use furnace oil, vegetable oil, ethanol, propane, natural gas just by providing the right fuel tank and burner nozzle.

If all cars were steam-electric hybrids fewer new electric generating plants would be needed, mpg would be very high, pollution would drop drastically, people could still afford cars and they could travel as easily as they do with IC cars.  As an added bonus, if a storm or other disaster knocks out the electric utilities, you could use your steam-electric hybrid car as an emergency generator.

Answer 8

Yes Much cleaner but more expensive.