Hi. I'm new here, and thought I'd dip my oar in.
Diesel - yep, great stuff. The engines can be a lot simpler, and once running they can keep going without electrical power. In this day and age, though, you find diesel engines with electronic fuel injection and other... 'improvements'... to allow easier control via the computer in the car/truck. They're not as bulletproof as they used to be.
Yes, just about every road hauler you'll find is diesel, but in my opinion that boils down to a few reasons including tradition (or technological inertia, call it what you want), torque, and efficiency at idle. Take two trucks, one gas powered and one diesel powered, and run them for a day at 60mph and you won't find a great deal of difference efficiency-wise. Yes, diesel has a bit more power per litre, but it tends to cost a bit more, too, in many areas. At idle, though, diesel wins hands-down. Important for taxi cabs and other vehicles that might sit in slow traffic, etc. and very important for a lot of industrial engines. As far as the torque thing goes, diesel is better at low speeds, that's just how it is due to the high compression, etc. Diesel tends to be noisey, and people complain about the smell of the fuel and exhaust.
Bio-diesel. Lovely. This is still my favourite bio-diesel link:
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http://www.veggievan.org/>; Some early diesel engines ran on seed oil directly.
Hybrids. Expensive? Yep. However, calculating in the cost of the new vehicle isn't necessarily fair. If you're buying a new car *anyway*, then you're going to have to deal with that aspect of it regardless of whether you're buying a hybrid or not. The difference between buying a car and a hybrid car isn't nearly as big as the difference between buying a hybrid and keeping your old car. They're still expensive, but not
that much more.
I totally agree about the reduced reliability, especially when they're still getting hybrids figured out. They still make lemon gas cars and they've been making them for well over 100 years!
I love the idea of a hybrid insofar as it can have a small IC engine to provide the
average load, plus a bit extra, and the battery provides extra power on demand for acceleration, hills, etc. This way a small engine can do the job that normally would require a large one. The way the current hybrids are made, though, with the IC engine feeding the wheels seems strange. I'd be inclined to build a super-efficient engine designed to run at one particular speed (torque peak, presumably) to charge the batteries, and have the wheels run solely by the electric motor(s). Basically an electric car with an on-board generator.
So I love the idea, except for the battery. Big batteries worry me. Heavy, expensive, prone to dying without regular maintenance... You need it, but I don't like it. I guess I can't have
everything....