[urq] Future Audi : is there a TDI planned ?

[Mark Rosenkrantz]

George is not wrong, however there should be a presumption that the diesel engine will have a higher resale value and therefore changes the total cost of ownership.  That said, from memory it's not uncommon to have around 100,000 miles be a realistic number.  I ran the numbers a few years ago when thinking about a Jetta TDI as a company car. From memory, break-even was roughly 2.5 years at 35k miles per year.  Of course, a diesel has more torque and that is a benefit with loads, such as towing.  To get good data on a recent US spec VAG product, how about A3 TDI or 1st generation Toureg TDI numbers?
Mark Rosenkrantz
Typos sent from my BlackBerry.

-----Original Message-----
From: George Selby <gselby4x4 at earthlink.net>
Sender: quattro-bounces at audifans.com
Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2011 16:16:53 
To: <quattro at audifans.com>
Subject: Re: [urq] Future Audi : is there a TDI planned ? 

At 03:00 PM 4/13/2011, you wrote:
>The better mileage works out to the fuel being cheaper per mile in most
>cases. For example an A8 TDI gets 40mpg where a gas A8 is nearer to 20mpg.
>The fuel isn't twice as expensive, around here it's not much more than 93
>octane (maybe 40 cents per gallon more).

Plus you have to add in the normally significant premium to obtain 
the diesel engine on top of the base price of the car.  For instance 
from a base Jetta to a Base TDI Jetta is nearly $8,000 - 50% of the 
purchase price of the base car.

According to my calculations based on mixed highway/city mileage and 
current gas/diesel prices, it costs $152 in gas to drive 1000 miles 
in a base Jetta, $122 in diesel in a TDI.  So you would have to drive 
266,000 miles to make up the diesel premium!  That's assuming you pay 
cash for the car, not finance it.  That's a long payoff for a high 
upfront investment in diesel.

George Selby 

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