But why is diesel more expensive?
Because it’s cleaner. The additional refinement and regulation of diesel requires additives and techniques that are simply more expensive. Think of it in terms of a hotel room. I’ll be willing to guarantee that a 150 dollar a night hotel room is cleaner than a 40 dollar a hotel night room. But, people want cheap. So much so, they tend to ignore the fact that diesel cars get an average of 40% better real-world fuel economy simply because a gallon of diesel costs 50 cents more.
You can’t expect people to do the math on that. They have pictures of food to post on Facebook, so I’ll help them out.
VW Passat TDI Clean diesel -794 miles on $72.00 Dollars of Diesel
Toyota Avalon- 527 miles on $65 dollars of Gas
7 dollar difference for an additional 267 miles.
Another thing that needs to be considered along with the raw fuel economy, is that diesel is more expensive because of demand. Less diesel is refined because of the demands for gasoline. Shift that paradigm, and history shows us that price of diesel will go down. In fact, in other countries where diesel is more popular, it is much cheaper than unleaded gas.
The technology exists today to even refine the current diesel engines that are in production. There is an entire market out there specific to lowering diesel emissions and increasing economy. By implementing aftermarket parts like a turbo or block warmer, the diesel engines on the road today can be made more efficient and cleaner.
Transportation is the heart that pumps blood into the American way of life. Because of our infrastructure of highways and the ability to ship across the country with ease, we expect everything right now and at a reasonable cost. As long as our standards of living call for a dependency on petroleum, we’re going to get the side effects. The least we can do is to make better decisions on transportation, fuel consumption, and emissions regulations. We have an alternative at our disposal right now as it is, but because it doesn’t have the “Green Leaf” or “Hybrid” badges that our current cultural consciousness expects, it’s still to a large degree; ignored.