All - electric cars have many less
parts than a gas engine care counterpart, so expect much less in terms of repairs / maintenance.
Diesels may benefit even
more than gas engines with the proliferation of multi-speed automatics, the extra ratios going a long way to disguising their relative lack of top - end power, not to mention keeping the revs down so that noise, vibration and harshness is minimized.
The gear ratio is 3.42, which seems tall until you consider that the powerband of the Duramax diesel is considerably
lower than a gas engine.
Diesel engines produce more
torque than gas engines, and the 3.0 L produces 420 lb - ft of torque and 240 horsepower.
A hybrid system borrowed from Lexus The hybrid system will be more
powerful than the gas engine in the regular RAV4, although Toyota doesn't yet have official horsepower or fuel economy numbers.
(Typical of diesels, this one has a lower
redline than gas engines — 5,000 rpm — so the 1,250 rpm span actually makes up a respectable segment of the rev range.)
Most importantly for our purposes: in cars, a diesel engine is 20 % -40 % more efficient but it may cost $ 2000 more
than a gas engine car.
The auto media and the green vehicle auto media in particular, have loved diesel engines for years, but there are those skeptics, like me, who note that diesel engines do not produce less CO2 per
mile than gas engines that provide the same acceleration.
But diesel engines don't rev up very high, so they make less horsepower on
average than gas engines, which is why they aren't many sports cars with diesel engines.
The diesel automatic transmissions typically used a different torque
converter than the gas engine automatics, although there seems to be some exceptions (which relate to the truck's GVWR) in which this is not the case.
After all, these small electric vehicles are convenient, easy to park, and cheap to operate, and are arguably cleaner to
use than a gas engine, especially at the «tailpipe», and getting more people riding could be an effective pollution and climate solution, but most existing transportation infrastructure and regulations aren't really encouraging their adoption.