Thank-you BHO and CAFE standards. That attacked a very small segment of the market. Then Ford just said, I sell enough F150 truck, make a killing on them, so let that be the commuter vehicle which is exempt because it it a truck. Run flat tires due to weight savings from not having a spare tire, who loves that great idea also? CAFE, another unintended consequence.

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Yes hilarious the number of "cars" Ford will sell this year in the US of A.

Lots of truth here from my perspective.

The OM651 is only approved up to B5, I've run a couple of tanks of B20 through mine in a pinch with no ill-effects but I don't think I'd do a steady diet of B20 without some sort of approval from Mercedes.

The OM651 and OM654 are an amazing technical accomplishment. Thermal efficiency for these high-tech Diesels are in the low-mid 40% range which is also around what commercial thermal power plants achieve to charge the vaunted, game-changing, revolutionary EV's that are constantly hyped by everyone in media, and around here. There is a 7-10% transmission lose on the grid and a 10% lose going from the batteries to actual work so it's kind of unclear that EV's fueled by conventional thermal power plants reduce C02 at all compared to a vehicle fueled by a high-tech diesel.

Of course you could generate the electricity by nuclear plants, which would be a meaningful reduction in emissions but we're long-down the path of killing the nuclear industry in this country. So you're down to windmills, solar panels and hydro if you really want to utilize the emission-reduction potential of widespread EV adoption. I think those sources are about 15% of our power grid at this point.

You're not the only one that doesn't seem to want an EV, its very hard to find unbiased information on EV or Tesla issues but it appears to me that EV sales, at least in the USA, seem to have stalled since 2018.

Here's a typical example of the impeded hype you find in most EV 'informaiton'

https://cleantechnica.com/2020/10/30/forecast-2021-us-ev-sales-to-increase-70-year-over-year/

In the graph you'll see a huge jump in 2021 sales, of course this reported data point is 'a projection'. From my looking around this is pretty typical when you go looking for data on EV sales, lots of hype and a paucity of facts.

Audi and Jaguar have had EV's on the market for a couple of years, they both aren't selling and its kind of looking to me that the market for the Model 3 is approaching saturation at the point. You could certainly blame covid for the 2020 sales level but how do you explain the 2019 sales plateau? I was under the impression that the Model 3 was the most significant and revolutionary car ever made by man?

The EV story is certainly far from done and the landscape could radically change based on government mandates but its far, far from a huge success at this point.

I've also thought about some engine swaps with the OM651 and OM648. Things get very complicated if you want to use the Mercedes ECU and emissions hardware - if there were stand-alone substitutions for these systems it would be a lot easier. The OM651 in particular is very compact and would fit in a lot of vehicles, a OM651 powered Jeep would just be killer.

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98 Dodge-Cummins pickup (137K)
13 GLK250 (157k)
06 E320CDI (341K)
16 C300 (89K)
82 300GD Gelaendewagen (54K)

I’ll give you a hint at my nut-jobbery on this stuff. If I had Jay Leno's money and garage, I'd like to put the 654 into Factory 5's Mk 4 Roadster kit car, their Cobra. Would probably have a car that gets 45 mpg or more and do 0-60 in under 6 seconds. That car weighs about 12 to 1400 pounds less than the Mercedes E220D. Would have a better weight distribution than with the monster 7.0 liter, which for the average person is really good for spinning out/piling up anyway. I had read about that and actually saw it happen once.

And I unfortunately agree with you completely about adapting the ECU and emissions hardware to a new vehicle. You would really have to know what you were doing. Furthermore, if you find a good crate engine, unlikely that is going to have that stuff with it, you’d have to go hunting for it.

I’m really dreaming here, I’ve never done an engine transplant, I’ve had a few engines out of cars and back in, mainly my old Saab V4s, virtual toys compared to an MB 6 banger. I spoke with the long lost H20/Zeitgeist up in OlyWA about two years ago, he told me he was putting a 606 in an older car, I forget what the donor vehicle was. I have zero experience with the 606, but they do have a pretty good reputation. I happened to see one, a turbo. for sale online from a Mid90s Mercedes truck/SUV. The significance of that being that you handily beat the ‘97 cut off date for emissions testing in California. I gather that you can get a diesel engine approved transplanted into a gas car in California, if the engine is newer than the car. You work with a referee or something like that. I can only imagine that the engine serial number would be useful. Given the difficulty of making the new smog hardware work on a transplant, it could be pretty handy.

And the 606 with a turbo would be a step up in cars such as my nearly dead 300SDL, which reportedly is tailor made to accept a 606. One can even jump up the turbo, but it takes some doing, you need to upgrade the injection pump.

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Te futueo et caballum tuum

1986 300SDL, 362K
1984 300D, 138K

ROFL Tesla sales stalled?

Tesla US market
year number. %change
2015 18,742 - 0.11
2016 26,725 42.59
2017 50,067 87.34
2018 197,517 294.51
2019 195,125 -1.21
2020 292,902
https://www.goodcarbadcar.net/tesla-us-sales-figures/

Tesla worldwide sales
year number.
2017 50,067
2018 197,517
2019 365,232
2020 509,737

The diesel car is history. It's too bad the gerans wasted so much time and energy on diesels in the last decade only to have to throw it all away. Now they're playing catch-up on EVs.

Fun fact: In 2009 Mercedes invested $50m in Tesla for a 10% share of the company. In 2014 MB sold it's 10% share of Tesla for $780m and ploughed the proceeds into it's diesel engines. Today that 10% shares would be worth $65b. All of MB has a market cap of $90b. Imagine how much further along MBs EVs would be with Tesla's technology?

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Hard to say. Freeh makes some good points. You do as well I'll admit. A friend has a Tesla model 3, one day we looked up the stats for comparative mpg: somewhere around 140. And never needing to gas up could be nice. If you only commuted locally - many people do - and had a 220 station at home could work.

OTOH, imagine 90%+ EVs on the roads and a Texas style grid disaster took off. Oops. And there is a pollutant cost from battery manufacture and disposal. Will no doubt be improvements in that though.

The US is not crazy about diesels at the moment but that could change. The Achates technology is pretty wild. They claim to get 44% thermal efficiency from auto sized CGI (gas compression ignition) engines. Can't find it now, but I gather the diesel versions are slightly better. This is not some pie in the sky tech. Not that it's going to be in autos any time soon:

https://tinyurl.com/yhe74ucx

I'm not a real mechanical engineer, I just play one on the interwebs, but I can see some wild developments in our future. I had a Suzuki 150 twin, 2 stroke of course, in the mid 60s, had friends with 250 twins - Yamaha and Suzuki (the X6, six speed) and those were fast bikes. Two stroke bikes whooped the cam and valve british bikes in racing for most of the decade.

Two stroke engines could soon be coming into their own. The Achates opposed piston engine being developed in conjunction with Cummins is pretty impressive. They claim it will comply with the 2027 CA Nox emmissions standards. One imagines that auto applications will eventually be installed in boxster fashion, similar to the Cummins in this vid.

I can imagine a two stroke engine with Koenigsegg pneumatice valve tech, perhaps one or two valves for the exhaust stroke to prevent hydrocarbon loss to the atmosphere during the scavenging process. Achates seems to have largely solved that in their design however. But in other two stroke designs, such valves as well as fuel injection and more traditional oil pressure lubing could be used to get around 2 stroke pollution issues.

One of my favorite 'out there' fantasies made possible with the camless tech is to have 'jake brake' style compression braking available. Much, much more power than engine compression braking as we know it as there is no compressed air to push the piston back down. Instead, I would route that air to tanks, perhaps have a series of 3. When one is near max pressure it would be capped and the air would move onto the next tank. This would give the previous tank time for it to bleed off the heat from the compression.

Would be some complicated software and engineering needed. Imagine your tanks had a max of 150 psi. Once those tanks cool to ambient temps, letting out 30 psi air would yield some cold air. Would be way superior to what any intercooler could pull off. More like those dry ice heat exchangers that I gather dragsters sometimes used. Not sure if that's even allowed by rules. I'm sure there are limits to just how much ice cold air at X pressure could be used without blowing the engine. But I could imagine more power per liter in an engine designe to use that sort of air.

Of course there wouldn't be infinite amounts of it. Perhaps only use it for acceleration. Ideally when you shut the engine down you'd still have one or two of the tanks with remaining compressed air for use on starting the next trip. Also, could well be there would be enough compressed air from braking to fill tanks to much greater pressure than 150psi. It's sort of a complicated idea, could well be utterly impractical. OTOH, you'd also have monster braking with no wearing of brake pads. Would be more engine wear and tear though. In the noisy Jake brake setup compressed air at TDC is released all at once into the atmosphere. My fantasy design would need to find a way to continue to use engine braking after all air storage tanks were full, and do so without the loud jake brake fart. Would prolly need some software so that conventional braking would kick in when needed.

With this method boosted air would be obtained pretty much for free, albeit with some need to control the whole thing and of course, the added weight of the air tanks. But as you'd be saving weight with the valveless setup; and turbos, supers, and intercoolers weigh something, could be some balancing out.

I just saw this update from Koenigsegg on his new tech. Wow:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3cFfM3r510

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Te futueo et caballum tuum

1986 300SDL, 362K
1984 300D, 138K

I was just reading that Mercedes has built more of the OM651s than any other engine. That in a thread on a Sprinter forum raving about their superior design and construction.

One thing that occurs to me in the midst of all this motorhead ambition - the OM648 and I'm guessing all the engines since the 606 are drive by wire. Correct me if I'm wrong, that's a lot of why mounting a 603 mechanical injector on a 606 is attractive, can go to older style fuel control. No experience in adapting a drive by wire engine to another vehicle, I gather that was one of the big obstacles in putting an S54 into the BMW E30, something many E30 geeks dreamed of but few actually pulled off.

__________________
Te futueo et caballum tuum

1986 300SDL, 362K
1984 300D, 138K