Apr
3

5 Reasons of Choosing Diesel over Petrol Cars

By bhoot  //  Cars - Automobile  //  5 Comments

Checking the increase in the price of petrol this month left me in regret of the 2.0 turbo diesel Toyota car I just sold for a 2 years newer 1.5L petrol car. Yes I’m paying less road tax, it’s supposed to be smaller and more economical engine but… it’s not as powerful… not as economical… and not as torquy…

Here are 5 Reasons why Mauritians should buy diesel cars instead of petrol:

1. For the same capacity, modern common-rail diesel engines (as sold in Europe) are about 20% more economical than petrol engines. Gone are the myths about expensive maintenance of diesels.
2. Diesel engines are almost always sold with a turbo charger. That means that they’re usually as powerful or more powerful than petrol engines.
3. Diesel engines give more torque at low range, meaning you don’t have to press hard on your pedal to say, overtake a vehicle. You can change gears earlier as well.
4. Europeans buy 50% of cars as diesels, not just because of economy, but also because of lower CO2 emissions. Meaning Maurice Ile Durable…
5. German luxury manufacturers prefer to promote diesels instead of hybrid-petrols. Just check out the number of benchmarks e.g. BMW 118d Efficient Dynamics winning over Prius, VW Jettat TDI making as much economy as the Prius (except in traffic jams).

There is one big problem however, Japanese don’t buy diesel cars. So you won’t find a second-hand car from Japan with a diesel engine! Not since mid 2000. Last one I know is the 2001 Corolla CE120 (many people use the misnomer NZE to refer to this model, when it should be E120: NZ is the engine). Taxes might be the reason? Like in Dubai diesel is taxed making it twice the price as petrol.

We do see diesel BMW 320d, 520d, Peugeot 307 HDi on our roads… and many 1990′s Toyota Corolla and Corona. Once duty becomes based on CO2 emission, I hope, we’ll start seeing more turbo diesel cars sold here.

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Tags: blue, bmw, ce120, common rail, corolla, diesel, economy, engine, europe, gas, german, hdi, hybrid, petrol, price, vw

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5 Comments to “5 Reasons of Choosing Diesel over Petrol Cars”

• 
  Yashvin 3 April 2010 at 22:41

  I run a petrol driven car but I learnt my driving lessons in a diesel car. Yes, I do confirm, the diesel one is more easier to handle. You said it, diesel powered cars are difficult to find in Japan. Since the majority of the cars on our roads are japanese, that might be one of the reasons why we don’t have them here too.
  I don’t know if I am the wrong, but diesel motors make more noise than petrol ones. Can you confirm?
  One thing I hate about diesel vehicles -> the black smoke!

  I can see another topic following this one. Why not talk about manual and automatic transmissions? That would be an interesting one if people participate.

  [btw, please install a "subscribe to comments" plugin. thanks.]
• 
  bhoot 4 April 2010 at 19:40

  Yes, they’re hard to find in Japan now. I often browse the japanese websites of Toyota, Honda and Mazda, just to keep in touch with the latest models that are out. None of the cars have diesel.

  Black smoke happens when there’s unburned diesel in the exhaust. Reasons for that can be many e.g. dirty air filter, badly tuned engine. My old diesel use to give some black smoke with the turbo running (means when I hit hard at low speed, or when I just started it). Blue smoke means that engine is taking it’s toll and burning oil.

  Noise? Yes, my old car was very noisy, it had 330,000 km. I can’t confirm whether it applies to newer generations. In the early 2000’s Common-Rail diesel started to replace the earlier diesel engines. That’s about the time you stopped getting diesel from Japan. However, you have these from Japanese brand made for Europe. The Toyota Yaris, Avensis, Honda Civic and other that are built in UK for Europe have 1.4L, 2.0 and 2.2L common rail diesels.

  You can read about the reviews for these cars from sites like whatcar.com and topgear.com

  Manual and Automatic, another change in the way people see them. Wrote about it here.
• 
  bhoot 25 May 2010 at 23:20

  A good article on technically explaining how diesels are more economical and I say they should be encouraged as much as hybrids in Mauritius.

  http://www.autozine.org/technical_school/engine/diesel.htm#Diesel
• 
  yogesh 14 March 2011 at 11:47

  There is one thing that all of you have missed: The quality of the diesel here is not that great,in fact its the worst.

  I happened to speak to someone from Iframac,during the launching of the SLS.
  They are very worried about the carbon content of the diesel we import.[Iframac has decreased their import of diesel cars!]

  Too many complaints about diesel engines that fail here in Mtius.
  The Mercedes cars here in Mtius are supposed to run on diesel with 50ppm carbon and the diesel we import contains about more than 2000ppm.
  Hence why the black smoke.
• 
  bhoot 14 March 2011 at 22:33

  Yep, but older japanese diesels still hold strong. I think there’s a degree to which you can use European diesel vehicles if you remove the catalytic converter. Let’s hope that with the green move, and upcoming taxation by CO2 emissions, govt might decide to bring clean diesel to Mauritius, finally…