Celebrities starting to show up Mercedes BlueTec diesels
Emmy Rossum filling her ML320 BlueTec
In recent years, turning up at high profile events in a Toyota Prius has become almost de rigueur for Hollywood celebrities who want to show off their green cred. However, for someone who's made obscene amounts of money for playing pretend, tooling around in something as mundane as a Prius doesn't do much to show the world that you've made it. For that you need something with a little more substance and perhaps a three pointed star.
Since most of these Hollywood "beautiful people live in California, any viable alternatives have be available for sale there. Mercedes-Benz is now offering an option to these folks which is by no means as efficient as the iconic hybrid, but certainly delivers more of the ostentatiousness that might be expected in this market segment. Recently the likes of Naomi Watts, Kyle MacLachlan and Gary Oldman have been turning up driving Mercedes-Benz BlueTec diesels like the ML320 and E320. While these vehicles are not in the same green class as the Toyota, the do offer the other attributes of a Benz with much better fuel efficiency than gasoline-powered alternatives.
[Source: Mercedes-Benz]
Hollywood drives BlueTEC: Stars from Motion Pictures, Television and Music Go Green with Mercedes-Benz BlueTEC
When Academy Award Nominee Naomi Watts celebrated her 40th birthday in Los Angeles this fall, her partner Liev Schreiber ("X-Men," "The Manchurian Candidate") surprised her with a spectacular present; a Mercedes-Benz ML320 BlueTEC. Liev and Naomi are among the actors and musicians to discover the exceptional performance, efficiency, and high cruising range of Mercedes-Benz BlueTEC models, the world's cleanest and most advanced diesels.
In addition to Liev Schreiber and Naomi Watts, fellow BlueTEC drivers from motion pictures and television include "Desperate Housewives" star Kyle MacLachlan, "Sex and the City" siren Kim Cattrall, Academy Award Nominee and Golden Globe Winner Gary Oldman, and "Phantom of the Opera" star and singer Emmy Rossum. "My ML320 BlueTEC has all the power and luxury you'd expect of a Mercedes-Benz, plus the efficiency and low environmental impact of an economy or even hybrid vehicle," says Emmy Rossum. "BlueTEC really is the best of both worlds." Also from the world of music, pop superstar Gwen Stefani and her husband, musician Gavin Rossdale, have a BlueTEC parked in their driveway, as does singer Josh Kelley (husband of "Grey's Anatomy" star Katherine Heigl).
Seven-time Grammy winning artist Alanis Morissette chose the fuel-efficient Mercedes-Benz BlueTEC for the video of "Underneath", the first single and video from her latest album, "Flavors of Entanglement." In the video, Alanis is sitting at a bus stop wearing a "Save the Earth" t-shirt and distributing fliers to encourage concern for the environment. When a Mercedes-Benz E320 BlueTEC passes by, Alanis salutes the Mercedes driver in appreciation for their environmentally aware choice. "Making green choices on a local level is important in creating global change," says Alanis. "I'm glad that Mercedes-Benz has introduced a great option with BlueTEC."
BlueTEC have also starred in some of the hottest television shows and series this season, including "90210" (CW), "The Amazing Race" (CBS), "Privileged" (CW), "Starter Wife" (USA Network), and "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno" (NBC).
About Mercedes-Benz BlueTEC
The BlueTEC wave began in October 2006 when Mercedes-Benz introduced the E320 BlueTEC sedan; it immediately captured accolades from consumers and critics alike and was voted "2007 World Green Car of the Year." Now Mercedes-Benz has expanded the BlueTEC product range with the introduction of three new SUV's - the R, ML and GL 320 BlueTEC - the first diesel SUV's to meet the stringent emissions standards of all 50 States. The term "BlueTEC" is derived from the revolutionary AdBlue process that injects a reducing agent in the vehicle's exhaust line, thereby clearly reducing emissions.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
1985 Gripen 10:08PM (12/06/2008)
Note that the two license plates you can actually see look suspiciously like "manufacturer" or "dealer" plates, not typical plates. I wonder if Mercedes is providing these Bluetec vehicles to celebrities free of charge so they can arrange to have pictures taken of the stars in Mercedes cars for PR purposes. Sort of like how BMW was loaning-out their hydrogen 7-series cars to celebrities and then using the PR. Something smells fishy to me. Why did the papparazzi just happen to be at a filling station to snap these pics of the celebrities?
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UH2L 1:43AM (12/07/2008)
SUV's this large, whether it's diesel or not, are still wasteful if not used exclusively to haul many people and cargo.
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Jim 1:33PM (12/07/2008)
I really wish people would stop paying attention to these useless airheads. It doesn't make a damned bit of difference that some celebritard shows up here and there in a certain car, when they expend a hell of a lot more energy flying around as much as they do.
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Kunikos 3:18PM (12/08/2008)
Not every "celebrity" flies on a private jet, you know. Plenty fly on commercial aircraft that would be flying regardless of whether they are on them or not.
Also, if celebrities driving more fuel efficient vehicles is a way to bring attention to those models then I don't really have a problem with a little coverage. It's better than yet another report of a new car in Leno's garage.
finley85 5:21PM (12/07/2008)
How old are these pictures?
When was the last time someone paid $3.79 for regular gas, even in California?
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iiid 9:04PM (12/10/2008)
Diesel, not gas bub.
why not the LS2LS7? 6:46PM (12/07/2008)
Unless they're rolling with a car full of people and a trunk full of gear, they're still wasting fuel by driving ML320Ds. The ML320D gets 20 combined. Add in the extra 15-18% of fuel/carbon per gallon and it's as if they are getting 17.25mpg.
Woo-hoo, let's all cheer.
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Sam Abuelsamid 7:07PM (12/07/2008)
Actually, it takes the same amount of oil to produce a gallon of diesel as it does to produce a gallon of gasoline and it requires less refining. There is 15% more carbon per gallon in diesel but the 30% improvement in efficiency yields a 25% net reduction in carbon emissions.
As for fuel economy the real world efficiency of an ML320 is more like 24-25 mpg. As with the Jetta the EPA numbers underestimate the real world performance.
why not the LS2LS7? 5:07PM (12/08/2008)
No, there's 15% more hydrocarbons in Diesel than gas. That means, given the same feed stocks, if you wanted to make Diesel instead of gas, you'll get less of it out.
What you're referring to is that when you separate a barrel of oil in the "normal" way you get the same amount of Diesel as gas. Which is only true by a broad approximation. But that's just because you're putting the already more energy-laden portions of the separated oil into the Diesel barrel and the less energy-laden portions into the gas barrel.
The short version is this: If we decide to produce more Diesel fuel and less gas, we'll lose 1.15 gallons of gas for each additional gallon of Diesel we make. And that's just plain because Diesel has more H-C-H molecules per gallon.
Finally, Diesel is not really simpler to refine anymore. Much like the process gas went through over time, Diesel is no longer just medium/light fuel oil, it takes many steps to turn oil into Diesel fuel now. Just like it does for gas.
As to the reduction in emissions, the biggest thing that reduces carbon emissions is that Diesel vehicles are made to be crap slow. If M-B made a GL320 gas vehicle, it'd produce less carbon too. Look at something like the VW Touareg V10. By the time you put real performance into a Diesel vehicle, the carbon gap has narrowed.
montoym 4:29AM (12/09/2008)
Quote from LS2: -
"As to the reduction in emissions, the biggest thing that reduces carbon emissions is that Diesel vehicles are made to be crap slow. If M-B made a GL320 gas vehicle, it'd produce less carbon too. Look at something like the VW Touareg V10. By the time you put real performance into a Diesel vehicle, the carbon gap has narrowed." -
Way to choose an outdated diesel V10 to base your argument on. The V10 TDI is an old design(PD compared to the newer Common-Rail TDIs) and will soon be replaced in the 2 applications it was available in(Touareg and Phaeton). The US will instead see the same 3L V6 TDI that will also be in the Audi Q7. Overseas, the 3L V6 TDI is already available.
But, back to the performance side of it. Let's look at a more performance-oriented vehicle than an M-B SUV. BMW just happens to be flaunting its 335d that will be available in the US.
The 335i does 0-60 in about 5sec and is rated at 17/26 by the EPA. According to the UK BMW site, it is rated at 218g/km for CO2.
Compare that to the 335d. Tests show that it does 0-60 in about 6sec and is expected to be rated by the EPA at 23/36. Again, according to the UK BMW site, it is rated at 177g/km for CO2.
So, on to the comparison part of it.
The 335i bests the 335d to 60mph by 20%(keep in mind that 0-60 times are not diesel's best showings, in-gear acceleration figures are much more impressive. Plus the 335d is available only with an auto while the 335i has a 6spd manual)
The 335d bests the 335i in EPA city mpg by 35%
The 335d bests the 335i in EPA hwy mpg by 38%
The 335d bests the 335i in CO2 by 23%
So, a 20% penalty in performance for a 23-38% gain in efficiency seems like a fair trade to me. Especially when that 20% penalty still results in a 0-60 time of 6sec which is very good by nearly any car's standards and beats out any other gas 3 series except the M3 and the 335i.
Plus, it's common knowledge that diesels are underrated by the EPA and they tend to return much better real-world mpg figures. In this case, that is true as well. I found a R&T road test of the 335i. They claimed a test mileage of 18.9mpg for their 335i. That's slightly less than the 20mpg the EPA gives the car as a combined figure.
There was also a recent test in Road&Track of the 335d. In their test, the 335d achieved 30.9mpg. That's 63% better than the figure returned by the 335i. Not to mention that the figure for the 335d came after 120miles of Munich traffic, 120mph Autobahn blasts and 80mph highway cruising. Expect more pedestrian driving to result in even better figures.
Those numbers(percentage-wise) are also similar to the advantages that the TDI Jetta maintains over the gas version(s) and that's with a diesel engine that's decidedly less performance-oriented than the twin-turbo, 265hp/425lb-ft version in the 335d.
For more comparison, I also have some data for the BMW 328i.
0-60 in 6.4sec
EPA rated at 18/28
BMW UK site lists the CO2 output at 170g/km(this is inaccurate though since the 328i is not offered there, this figure is for the smaller 325i, so I would expect the 328i to be a bit higher)
Real-world mileage from Edmunds road test - 22.5mpg
Compare those figures to the 335d
The 335d bests the 328i to 60 by about 6%
The 335d bests the 328i in EPA city mpg by 27%
The 335d bests the 328i in EPA hwy mpg by 28.5%
The 335d bests the 328i in real-world mpg by 37%
The 325i bests the 335d in CO2 output by 4%(again, on the smaller 325i, not the 328i).
So, what is the huge disadvantage of driving a diesel over a comparable gas version?
conor 7:57PM (12/07/2008)
we got 30 in ours.
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Killroy 12:40PM (12/08/2008)
Sam Abuelsamid,
I think your wrong. Diesel was back in the day more simple to refine, but once they started removing the sulfur from the fuel, its the same. I asked this specific question of the SAE International President and this is what he told me.
Also, the 30% more efficient is BS if the car is 30% too big like the Jetta. Cost and emissions are a issue with diesels.
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Hassan 7:36AM (12/08/2008)
I would love to know as to what are the emission rates on the BlueTec, why isn't it mentioned here? hmmmmmmmmm....i smell fraud...
Hassan
http://www.motoflare.net
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tekd 4:47PM (12/08/2008)
lol, looking at those quotes I'm guessing the MBs were free and then some.
But whatever, if you handed me the keys to a BlueTec and 200 grand I'd proclaim it's merits too.
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TopaZ 9:34PM (12/08/2008)
I guess I'll acknowledge the elephant in the room and say that she looks absolutely gorgeous!
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1985 Gripen 11:55PM (12/08/2008)
Good eye, Finley85! That pic has to have been taken at least three months ago.
It looks like these pictures were taken at an ARCO (Atlantic Richfield Company, owned by BP) and a Shell station. That means they're pumping the ULSD, which is good to see, but it would have been nicer had they been pumping B100 at Conserv Fuel (http://www.conservfuel.com/). Since these pics were obviously staged by Mercedes-Benz, I don't think that Mercedes has certified their vehicles to run on B100 though... :-(
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