By Nick Chambers •
December 3, 2009
Audi of America President Johan de Nysschen accepting the Green Car of the Year Award for the Audi A3 TDI
At last year’s LA Auto Show, the Volkswagen Jetta TDI rather surprisingly beat out many non-diesel contenders to win the title of 2009 Green Car of the Year. And, if I were a betting man, I would have never guessed that the Green Car Journal would choose another diesel to win the 2010 title. But they have. The Audi A3 TDI was just named the 2010 Green Car of the Year.
By Nick Chambers •
September 18, 2009
Set your DVRs: The Science Channel’s “How It’s Made” covers Audi clean diesel technology. Debuting TODAY, September 18th, 2009 at 9 p.m. ET/PT, with an encore broadcast on the Discovery Channel on Thursday, September 24, 2009, 7:00 and 11:00 p.m. ET/PT.
“How It’s Made” is one of those head scratchers of a show for me. Take one part horrible muzak and one part kind-of-boring monotone narrator; mix it with some cool behind-the-scenes manufacturing footage of stuff that you normally take for granted; throw in some occasional history and you’ve got yourself… a winner? As much as the show bores my wife to tears, for some reason I love it. It’s so cheesy and cool at the same time.
So I was excited to hear that the show will be doing a segment on the building of an Audi V6 3.0 TDI clean diesel engine. Audi has recently started a push to bring their new clean diesels to the US and market them as a green alternative to gas cars and even electric cars. In fact, Johan de Nysschen, President of Audi America, recently got himself into a bit of hot water by extolling the virtues of diesel while insulting the people who would buy electric drive cars like the Chevy Volt.
