i think one of the main reason for diesel being more popular is that europe isn’t oil producing and therefore doesn’t subsidise its fuel on the same level. the uk and norway produce oil but they also don’t subsidize as much as as the us. and diesel is just a lot cheaper to produce. in the 90s there was a lot of research into biodiesels like HVO which basically went nowhere because diesel was so damn cheap. then we got 2008, then dieselgate, then covid and evergreen, meaning it was suddenly extremely expensive, and now we’re seeing HVO stations put up everywhere. then again that turned out to be bull anyway; when diesel went up to 27SEK/l in 2021 (that’s $12/gal in todays money, compared to $6/gal today because we scrapped a bunch of environmental protections 🎉), HVO went up with the same amount.

the main advantage of diesel engines is of course that you can run them off of most liquids that burn and they are therefore a more resilient infrastructure. the main disadvantage is that we never moved on from diesel oil. i wonder how much cooking oil is wasted that we could recycle into fuel.