“No birthday celebration: 125 years of the diesel engine”
The diesel engine has little reason to celebrate its 125th birthday, Welt Online reports. “Cheating software, driving bans, and declining prices” all tarnish the image of an invention Rudolf Diesel filed with the Imperial Patent Office in late February 1892, calling it the “new rational power heat machine,” Welt Online reports. Although the diesel engine today powers millions of passenger cars, lorries and ships, its share among newly registered vehicles in Germany has been in constant decline, the newspaper says. While it is technically feasible to reduce the harmful emissions of the diesel engine, this would greatly increase its price. “It’s these costs that will eventually drive the diesel engine into a niche,” Welt Online writes.
Read the article in German here.
For background, see the CLEW dossier The Energiewende and German carmakers.