Evidence of "clean" diesel

[minienigma]

Just made an observation. Everyone of my gasoline-power cars's exhaust tip invariably gets partially covered with thin black residue. I have my A3 TDI about 3 months now. I've noticed that the chrome exhaust tip does *NOT* have any black residue on it, even though I have not been cleaning and wiping it when I wash my car. I'm guessing that it must be an evidence of how clean the diesel is.

[xmachineheadx]

It's probably cleaner than a 2.0 A3.

[chittychittybangbang]

I looked at a few clean diesels, it really is quite amazing how clean the tailpipes are. There are a lot of modern gas cars which have dirty tailpipes. Dirty tailpipes = emissions.

For unknown reasons, there are a bunch of gas cars which switched to direct injection and now have absolutely filthy tailpipes. One example is the new direct injection Porsche engines - they'll turn sooty after a single drive vs. the older non DI engines. They aren't exactly Honda hybrids but DI should result in less emissions, not more.

[minienigma]

I would agree. Another example is the DI engines of the Mini Cooper -- despite reputed efficiency and cleanliness, still blackens the beautiful chrome exhaust tips. It makes me wonder whether there's a double standard against the diesel engines.