Quote:
Originally Posted by maswastage
The other problem with the volt is that when the gasoline engine is running it isn't especially efficient. Roughly 30-35 mpg. So if you decide not to plug it in and instead use the gasoline engine to charge the electric motor, you're still getting shafted on fuel economy. I'll never understand why they didn't use a small diesel instead; after all, the engine is only used to power the electric motor, never to actually drive the wheels, so a diesel would have been much better suited to the task than a gasser.
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I have wondered the same thing with hybrids in general. It may come down to an image thing, since these car all want to be as green as possible. Public perception in the US is probably that diesel = dirty, regardless of fuel efficiency. I have always wondered why put a gasoline engine that gets 35 mpg in a hybrid when you can put a diesel in that gets 50+.
Maybe in a regular hybrid there are other technical reasons related to the power curve, etc... but I don't know. Are diesels much worse that gas engines before fully warmed up... maybe the on-off behavior of a hybrid makes warm-up issues important?