Good stuff Dennis!

It's pretty amazing what the auto manufacturers can do when they are forced to do it. For more on the fuel economy/renewable energy subject see this: http://nyti.ms/1nS3PaX 

The next few decades will be interesting times for personal transportation.

Stuart

-----Original Message-----
From: Dennis Haynes [mailto:d23haynes57@hotmail.com] 
Sent: Friday, January 29, 2016 3:26 PM
To: 'Stuart MacMillan'; vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM
Subject: RE: Tonke-T6 camper van article link The future of Diesel for small vehicles-it's Friday.

With the current state of direct fuel injection and gearing now available the advantage for Diesel is dropping. Of course now that the price of fuel has fallen the justification for paying a premium for either Diesel or Hybrid technologies will drop except for the true tree huggers and those willing to pay for technology needed or not. Last year I rented one of those Dodge Ram 1500 extended cab pickup trucks (2WD), with the Hemi engine. Combined driving it did 19 mpg for the 10 days I had it. On the highway if I kept it about 60 the dash was indicating 26-29 mpg. I have to work to get that out of my Fox. The best I ever did was ~34 mpg. Sometimes small vehicles with small engines do not deliver proportional improvements in fuel economy.   Let's hope the manufactures continue to work on increasing the efficiency of vehicles and that folks demand that even fuel being so cheap. Otherwise we will be hostage again when fuel sky rockets again. 

Dennis

 Message-----
From: Vanagon Mailing List [mailto:vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com] On Behalf Of Stuart MacMillan
Sent: Friday, January 29, 2016 5:17 PM
To: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM
Subject: Re: Tonke-T6 camper van article link

Keep in mind that to be smog legal (low NOx) in the US diesels will pretty much need urea injection, a pricey maintenance item.  It looks like VW is going to buy back a lot of US diesels because of this: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/29/business/international/volkswagen-says-a-diesel-fix-may-not-be-possible-for-some-cars.html 

Bottom line is "clean diesel" and "affordable" are mutually exclusive here.

Stuart

-----Original Message-----
From: Vanagon Mailing List [mailto:vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com] On Behalf Of JonVO
Sent: Friday, January 29, 2016 8:28 AM
To: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM
Subject: Re: Tonke-T6 camper van article link

Well, I'll take the TDI with a 6 speed and the Tonke conversion, even if it looks a little like a standard minivan.
cheers!

On 1/29/2016 5:59 AM, Roy Nicholl wrote:
> But it’s not nearly unique enough … not round and homely, nor boxy and ugly … looks like a Grand Caravan with a camper interior.
>
>> On 29-Jan-2016, at 08:01, Dean S <predsmaniac@GMAIL.COM> wrote:
>>
>> http://www.outsideonline.com/2049546/tonke-t6-camper-van