Land Rover Shows Diesel Hybrids
My local Land Rover dealer is the first car dealer in the country to buy carbon offsets for the first 50k miles of every new and used Landie they sell, in hopes of tempting green types into their Chelsea tractors. Now it seems that Land Rover has decided to offer more, erm, sustainable options for environmentally-minded ute lovers. LR is showing a new range of diesel hybrid engines at the London Auto Show. Motor Authority reports that Land Rover's new electric rear axle drive (ERAD) consists of a rear-axle mounted 25w electric motor which can power all four wheels in parallel with a four-cylinder diesel engine. The powertrain also includes a Crankshaft Integrated Starter Generator (CISG) mounted in the dual-clutch transmission, which acts as a supplementary motor for adding torque to the driveline and also for starting the main diesel engine. Both the ERAD and CISG can be used for regenerative braking, and together account for a 20 percent reduction in carbon emissions. The ERAD/CISG system is still in early development, and is not expected to debut for several years. In the meantime, Land Rovers are expected to get stop-start technology as early as next year. Which hopefully means that Land Rover of Portland can end its gimmicky greenwashing campaign sooner rather than later.
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Just another gimmick to try and sell diesel power as the cost of fuel spirals. Anyone who can afford this vehicle normally doesn't give a stuff about carbon emissions - image is everything
The comments here about the cost of diesel only relate to the states. This vehicle was launched in london, europes prices of gas and diesel are much closer so makes even more sense there. 20% reduction in carbon emissions, plus an increase on the better mpg for diesel over gas mileage makes great sense if you're in the market for this kind of vehicle. I guess the people against it here aren't though.
I live in the Portland area also, and I almost coughed out my morning coffee the first time I heard this Land Rover ad. My first thought was "Boy, that's gonna be a lot of carbon!" Maybe Land Rover of Portland has a big pit somewhere, where they buy unburned coal and rebury it. Would this count as a 'carbon offset'? As if to add a double-whammy second punchline to their joke, the Land Rover dealer buys lots of air time on Portland's green-leaning 'Air America' radio station, which spends much of its editorial time critiquing 12-mpg "Yank Tanks" and the automotive culture that spawned them. I wonder how many of the listeners fall for it.