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Originally Posted by Honda100
The Rangie is a fantastic offroader and you can see I actually use mine off road.  |
Don't see any shots of it either off road or dirty? The only off road picture you've posted is a dirt road where a W124 was sufficient.
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And also then referring to the U.S., a lot of the fleet vehicles are things like Ford Fusions or Dodge Charger V6s (at least where I live). There are a few E-150 vans (box vans), but besides the presidential Cadillac limos and such, I don't see many SUVs as fleet vehicles. They're always the throwaway midsize sedans.
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I don't mean fleet vehicles I mean the entire US auto fleet (all cars/ suvs in the US). A lot of big vehicles that needn't be so big.
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I'd speculate that the 09 Rangie is much cleaner than most cars that are on the road today, and if you take into account all the cars that are illegally passed for smog (a problem here at least), then I'm doing so little damage in comparison. Not saying I'm trying to justify diesel over petrol in this aspect, just that when you look at how many Range Rovers are on the road vs. your run of the mill family runabout in average to poor shape, our impact is rather small.
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There are a LOT of RR's on the roads, and one from 1976 is still worse than a family hatch from 1976. An 09 RR is getting close to the average age of a car on the road today, so half the cars you see will be newer, and half will be older. It will still be in the dirty half. Smog failures seem to be a thing of the past (almost), and nowadays cars come with pretty long smog warranties in the US.
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If my e-350 was petrol, I'd be sitting at 5 mpg and lost money so fast it'd make my head spin. At least at 14 mpg and a working motor after 300,000 miles, I have a van/truck that's served my business well. Also for basic errands, the Transit diesel has been excellent, as well as the TDI Jetta sportwagon before it. I don't know what I'd do without my TDs.
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I accept that businesses need big vehicles, and big vehicles need to be diesel. In my experience with my TDI Transporter, the fuel savings are eaten up by the higher purchase cost of the vehicle, higher fuel cost per litre, and vastly higher service costs ($120 just for low ash oil), just did an injector pump at 30,000miles from new, DPF cleaner additive with every fill, oil changes every 5k miles to keep the turbo happy (before we consider the eventual DPF replacement bill). But you just can't buy a petrol van anymore
A diesel isn't three times as efficient as a petrol if you look at EPA numbers it's about 40%, which is the same as the 'gain' I got from switching to a similar sized/ weight TDi from my (broken down) Mercedes petrol (it's more aerodynamic, has an extra gear, and has LRR tyres - so only a portion of that gain is from the engine itself) This is 100% city driving with a 16.7mph average speed. With a petrol you can use EOC and turn it off at lights, can't often do that with a TD. A petrol with auto stop would basically close the gap.