Consumer Reports may have discovered why owners of clean diesel cars might feel a bit suicidal from time to time. They recently took a long-term tester Mercedes GL320 BlueTec clean diesel into the shop to have its urea-based AdBlue exhaust-scrubbing fluid refilled, and the results were… eye opening.
The total bill just for adding AdBlue? A stunning $316.99. We were down to 18% full on the additive at 16,566 miles. It took 7.5 gallons to fill the tank, costing an eye-opening $241.50 for the fluid alone. The labor to add the fluid plus tax accounted for the rest. None of this was covered by the warranty… At the current rate and cost of consumption, just the AdBlue itself (without the labor, which would probably be included as part of the routine service) would cost $1,457.80 for 100,000 miles of driving. That’s a lot of money, knocking about a third off of your fuel savings vs. buying a GL450 V8.
And you thought gas was expensive! From what we’ve been able to dig up, the $32/gallon price is a fairly typical price at Mercedes dealers. Are there any Mercedes or Audi clean diesel drivers in the house who can confirm?
First it was the Prius, now Audi has come out with an ad featuring failed suicide. In both cases, the intended message (our car doesn’t spew poison) gets a bit lost in shuffle due to the fact that consumers of these products are portrayed attempting suicide. So this is what Audi’s CMO meant when he said rational arguments don’t work in the marketplace. Unfortunately, as the California Air Resources Board helpfully points out, diesel fumes contain arsenic, benzene, formaldehyde, nickel, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. So, you know, professional driver on a closed course, and all that. Don’t try this at home, kids!
When I did my first work for Audi in the 70s, competing with BMW or (gasp) Mercedes-Benz was considered a cruel joke. The brand was thought ideal for high school teachers or tax collectors, who kept their hats on while driving. What a difference a few decades make. Not to forget the money a rich sugar daddy called Volkswagen can sink into the brand.
Audi CFO Axel Strotbek told the German Handelsblatt that VW will pour €7.3b into Audi, from now to 2012. “80 percent is earmarked for developing new product,” Strotbek said. The money will go to a noble cause: (Read More…)
It’s a strange world. Europeans are changing their already small cars for tiny ones. Manufacturers fall over themselves building ever smaller and cheaper cars. In the USA, small cars are suddenly big. Ford’s analyst George Pipas says that this year, small cars accounted for 21 percent of all U.S. vehicle sales. By 2013, Pipas predicts that compact cars, subcompact cars and crossover vehicles built off small car platforms will account for 36 percent of total new vehicle sales in the United States. Car executives that still have a job bemoan the times where big cars meant big profits.
A new frugality is rampant on the globe. Makers of luxo-barges, such as BMW and Mercedes are in big doo-doo. (Read More…)
Today, on the last day of media access to the LA Auto show, the mystic powers that be continued VAGs green run by selecting the Audi A3 TDi as the 2010 Green Car of the Year (The Jetta TDi won last year). In the running this year were the Audi A3 TDI, Honda Insight, Mercury Milan Hybrid, Toyota Prius and Volkswagen Golf TDI. According to the LA Auto Show,
The Green Car of the Year® award is a program that honors environmental leadership in the automobile field and recognizes vehicles that are readily available to consumers during the award year. Green Car Journal/ editors perform an exhaustive review of vehicle models to identify the five finalists. The winner is ultimately decided by jurors such as Jay Leno, Jean-Michel Cousteau, Carroll Shelby, Matt Petersen of Global Green USA and the Sierra Club’s Carl Pope, along with Green Car Journal editors.
Interesting then that this same bunch of car czars chose the Chevy Tahoe two years ago for getting 1 MPG better than the gasoline version. Anyone feeling some Volt love in 2011?
We all hoped/thought that Tron was a relic left to the distant 80’s acid trips, but Audi has decided to bring it back again. Shown at the Frankfurt motor show their e-tron concept looks strangely close to production to me. Supposedly debuting two years from now as a 2012 production model buyers willing to fork out huge sums of cash will be treated to more than 3,300 ft-lbs of torque and 313hp, for no doubt very limited distances between charges.
I won’t lie, I was expecting something a little more… dramatic from the new Audi A8. On the other hand, if it weren’t a fundamentally understated car, it wouldn’t be an A8.
It is said of Frank Lloyd Wright that he was an unbelievably annoying and offensive man; worse than that, every home he ever built ended up with a leaky roof. More than eight years ago, the first major gathering of North American TT owners took place, not at a racetrack or in the banal confines of a convention-center parking lot, but in the shadow of Wright’s residential masterpiece, Fallingwater. It was an apt choice for an automobile which has chosen form over function since its introduction. Among the quartet of small German sportsters — Audi TT, Porsche Boxster, BMW Z, and Mercedes SLK — only the TT is a transverse-engined front-driver, only the TT is currently supplied in North America with a four-cylinder engine, and only the TT features rear seats, improbable as they may be. Those of us who remember the Sesame Street song “One of These Things Is Not Like The Other” will have no trouble picking out the Audi as the one which, indeed, is not like the others.
Once upon a time, S was for Audis what M was for BMWs. A decade ago Audi took an A4, added a pair of turbos to the V6, stiffened the suspension, plus-oned the alloys, and tagged the result the S4. A special driving experience that became more special (if less moddable) when the 250-horsepower turbo V6 was replaced by a 340-horsepower V8 a few years later. The A4 was redesigned for 2009, and this year there’s a new S4. The V8 has been tossed in favor of a supercharged 3.0-liter V6 that kicks out 333 horsepower. Is the resulting car worthy of the S?
One of the enduring lessons of the car game is that good vehicles don’t always sell well. As a car writer who took on news analysis before ever getting manufacturer-sponsored time behind the wheel, this lesson can’t help but tinge my impressions of a road test. So when my first weeklong tester arrived in the form of a Q7 TDI, I felt no desire to justify Audi’s decision to bring the thing to market. After all, by any reasonable analysis, the brand built by Quattro wagons should have been the primary beneficiary of America’s SUV craze. Or, at least its worst enemy. Instead the Q7 showed up for the party fashionably dressed but fashionably late. And very few wanted to buy it. With the high price of luxo ute party fuel already killing the festive vibes, is switching to a new drink enough to make Audi’s SUV sales party like its 1999?
Living in Breckenridge, Colorado, you need some sort of All-Wheel Drive setup. Snow remains the small town’s primary reason to exist. This explains the multitudes of Subarus, Audis, Volvos, and SUVs all equipped with four wheel motivation. Most drive away blissfully unaware of how recent this feature came to market (as little as 27 years ago). In 1980, Audi introduced the first permanently engaged all-wheel drive system in the Audi Quattro. Prior to this, all vehicles had a part-time system where only two wheels were driven most of the time, requiring driver intervention should the going get slippery. Audi changed all this by putting one driveshaft inside the other, saving space and weight and making it possible for a complex, permanently engaged system to function on a small car. Vorsprung durch Technik, baby!
Audi’s quest to become America’s upmarket alpha has hit the wall. It might be the same wall Mercedes, BMW, Lexus, Cadillac et al. have struck, but it’s b-b-b-b-b-bad. You know sales suck when Audi PR doesn’t mention the actual percentage drop and headlines A5 and, worse (better?), R8 sales. “The Audi A5 posted a 76.3% increase over last January with 603 units sold in January 2009. The Audi R8 broke its January sales record with over 107 units sold, an increase of 75.4% over January’s sales a year ago.” Woo-hoo! Meanwhile, A4 sales evaporated, down 29.4 percent. The high profit A8 is DOA: sales off 65.1 percent. Sales of the TT roadster (-51.8%) and Q7 SUV (-44.7%) indicate two other dead models not selling.
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