One of the reasons Americans don’t see the benefit is that diesel is generally more expensive than gasoline (right now is a temporary exception). Diesel is expensive because of taxes. Government taxes.
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Um
1) Historically, diesel has been cheaper from gasoline. It’s a less refined product.
2) Diesel engines are more efficient than gasoline engines.
3) Diesel prices spiked for some time of recent times in U.S. due to a number of factors including
a) increased demand for diesel fuel worldwide
b) U.S. recent change to requiring diesel having ultra low sulfur emissions (not enough production capacity for this)
c) Its distillate that also used to produce heating oil, which during past couple of years we had a few sprouts of cold winters in the NE pushing up demand for heating oil.
Part of reason why diesel isn’t popular in the U.S. was (1) emissions issues in the past and (2) old perception that diesels are those smokey cars from the 80ies that stink, which generally isn’t the case no more.
Germans lead in diesel engines, bluetec diesel and VAG TDI, and those TDI products have been selling pretty well. Some can easily be converted to your biodiesel animal fat burners.
Diesel also poses a minor problems in cold weather as it gets interesting once it reaches 32F or below without additional additives.
