The future went racing

The 24 Hours of Le Mans endurance race just ended.  Twenty-four hours of very fast racing on an eight mile circuit that weaves around the Loire.  On par with the Monaco Grand Prix, Indy 500 and the Paris-Dakar Rally, Le Mans is one of those races that sit at the top of the mountain.  Just about everyone has at least heard about Le Mans. 

The top two winning endurance racers were from Audi:  They build remarkable racing machines and quite wonderful street cars.  Externally, the winners looked sleek, powerful:  Low-slung, fat-tired, voluptuously curved, purpose-built weapons designed to violate the laws of aerodynamics, velocity, gravity and common-sense.  They are racing cars.  Brutes.  These two from Audi were very different under the skin. 

They are powered by Diesel engines.  Turbo-Diesel racing cars that pulled close to 300 kilometers per hour on the Mulsanne straight.  Turbo-Diesel racing cars that would pull nearly 2 G of lateral force in corners.  Turbo-Diesel racing cars that run on oil, not gasoline, or alcohol, or exotic fuels created by mad scientists. 

Audi winning Le Mans overall, with a Diesel, is the moral equivalent of winning the Tour de France on a unicycle, while drunk.   Then, nailing the Triple Crown on three-legged Shetland pony, hoisting the Stanley Cup with a team of eleven-year olds, and winning the Masters playing with an aluminum softball bat, a sod shovel and a snooker cue.

In the rest of the world, the Diesel engine is the engine of choice for family cars.  The reason the rest of the planet likes Diesels is simple:  The fuel costs a lot less and the engines will last, almost forever, with the usual maintenance.  Fuel economy is much better than gasoline and the pulling ability (torque) of the Diesel is huge. 

In North America, we relegate the Diesel to trucks, transports and heavy equipment because of their pulling power and their fuel economy.  There are the occasional eco-oddballs who run their personal diesel car on a mixture of recycled safflower oil, rendered goat grease and cat urine.  Diesels will burn just about anything in a pinch.

The Audi TDI’s proved that you can have a blindingly fast, reliable and proven Diesel engine that will out-perform the world’s best endurance racers.  This is cool.

There are two drawbacks to the Diesel, to North American sensibilities.  One is the odd clopping sound they make.  We’re used to the bang-bang-bang of a gasoline engine.  There is the smoke that Diesels produce.  We’ve imbedded the image of a smoky truck or bus in our brains filling the air with choking clouds of foul-smelling soot. 

The next time you’re on a highway, look at the exhaust stacks of most tractor-trailer trucks.  Modern Diesels very rarely smoke, unless under a big load, like starting to move at the stoplight and then only for a moment.  With engine control computers, particulate traps and turbo-charging, the Diesel is quite clean, compared to a gasoline engine.  Diesels only smoke when there is something wrong with them, meaning someone is not doing the maintenance, or has modified the engine somehow.

Roll down the windows too.  You won’t hear the screaming of a cage of angry bears coming from the truck.  The noise you hear is from the tires or the airflow, not the engine, especially at cruising speeds on the highway.  I was passed by a truck last week on the 401 highway.  He was flogging the truck unmercifully, running more than 130 kms an hour with a full 53-foot load.  The loudest sound I heard through the open window on my car, was the rear set of tires whining on the pavement. 

You can buy a Diesel passenger car from some manufacturers here.  Notably, Mercedes-Benz and Volkswagen.  The Asian imports, who sell thousands of Diesels overseas, don’t send their full line of engine choices to North America.  Domestic manufacturers only make Diesels available on their truck lines. 

Why?  That is easy enough to answer.  Gas engines are cheaper to make.  Gasoline is dirt cheap here, by world standards.  The oil companies don’t like Diesel.

Modern fuels all start from crude oil feedstock.  Crude, depending on which one, is thick and dark like molasses or heavy brown corn syrup.  To fraction, or break down crude into component fluids, you boil it, under pressure, in a big tower called a cracking tower.  The higher up the tower you drain off the fluid, the different type of fuel you get.  I am truly simplifying here, but that is the process, more or less. 

Look at a cup of gasoline:  Sort of a watery feel and very aromatic, meaning it vaporizes quickly.  Pour out a cup of Diesel oil and it just sits there like tan coloured, thin, corn syrup and doesn’t smell much, meaning it isn’t as volatile as gasoline.

Then, as a comparison, pour out a cup of Coleman stove fuel, which is naptha, or white gas.  It is clear like water, light to the feel and seems to evaporate before your eyes.  Naptha is drained off almost at the top of the cracking tower.

Bunker Oil, which is even darker and nastier than Diesel, is for ship engines and big generators.  It is only about one step removed from the crude oil that comes out of the ground, with the obvious rocks, gravel and small animals filtered out.

Here’s the Rule of Thumb:  The thicker and darker the petroleum product, the less work it takes to refine, which means the less it costs to make, which means the less you can mark it up. This means the less profit you can make on the product. 

We now have two big industries, oil and automotive, who have, shall we call it, a vested interest in keeping North America away from Diesel power for their passenger cars, as long as they can keep dancing.