Has anyone else noticed how the gasoline diesel price gap has gotten really wide. I just passed a station this morning that had $3.29 regular and $3.99 diesel. That makes diesel 21% more expensive. That really cuts into any mileage gains that the diesel engines make. I can't wait to see what diesel prices do when all the diesel 1500 pickups and car come out around 2010.

 

I've been noticing that myself. It used to be that diesel was cheaper than regular unleaded, but now it's more expensive than premium. At the station up the street from where I work, regular is 3.02 and diesel is 3.55. It's gotten ridiculous and now it's surging up beyond ludicrous.


(Spaceballs)

 

es muy loco

 

I remember those days....

Consider this...

Gas is "supposed" to have a national average of $4 this year.... so maybe... they've been slowing ramping diesel up so that it's "already there" and there won't be a "shock" to the shipping industry when fuel cost shoot up in the next month or two?

 

Diesel gets more expensive in the winter. Something to do with the refining process, which is very similar to heating oil (which, obviously, also gets expensive in the winter).

 

Diesel was still much more expensive than regular unleaded over the summer last year...

 

Or it's just price gouging.

In Europe, diesel and gas is about the same, so the manual diesel vehicle that gets 2mpg better than the manual gas vehicle is a steal there, while here it would have to be more like 5mpg difference, I think.

Just imagine little 1.6L diesels in toyotas, lol.

 

Csaba Csere had an interesting article in C&D about diesel. IIRC, some problems associated with it where our refinery structure (developed mostly to support gasoline - and alot of conversion or building new refineries would be needed to affordably handle an increase in diesel production/consumption) and the fact that the world at large uses more diesel vehicles precentage wise than we do, creating a greater demand for diesel on the world market.

In europe, gasoline is still cheaper to produce, but they tax the crap out of gas to make diesel equiped vehicles more attractive.

 

Refineries can handle the load of increased diesel production. During winter is when refineries perform maint. & repairs on production units (turn around). They usually make extra gas/fuel oil/diesel etc. early in winter in preparation for unit down time. Jan-Mar are the months these repairs usually take place.

 

Since the largest consumers of diesel are truckers and they just pass the cost right on to the consumer, we have to pay whatever price they set the cost of diesel at. We have very little say in the matter if we want to continue buying the goods that are shipped via truck.

 

Yup, regular was $2.89 when i filled up last night, diesel was $3.44.

 

I was always under the impression that the gap started with the transition to ultra low sulfur diesel?

I'm starting to feel the price difference. Every station around me is about 389-400. Two weeks ago it was 355.

 

IIRC diesel is on average 10% higher than premium and 20% higher than regular around here.

So if I was looking at, say, a gasoline burning econo that could get me (real world mileage) 30 city, 40 highway on regular unleaded, then for diesel to even break even for me it'd have to get 36 city, 48 highway... and that's not accounting for the extra cost of getting a diesel engine in a car (though some might argue that could be offset by improved power train reliability, I'm not so sure about that, especially with some of the newer emissions equipment that requires maintenance down the road.
That's also not really accounting for the fact that diesels, while much improved from the past, are still kind of noisy, rough around the edges, and somewhat lacking in higher throttle power when compared to their gasoline counterparts in economy cars.

 

http://www.homebiodieselkits.com/homeprocessors.html

 

That is a good point. In the past diesel always floated between the price of regular and premium. never really went above or below those two points.

Just think of the added demand from demand from new diesels from Honda, Ford, GM , Nissan, Jeep, Dodge, Toyota. It will be worse than winter all year long unless they can change the ratio of diesel that comes from each barrel or bio fuels can make up some slack.