There didn't use to be any "diesel fuel", Diesel designed his engine to work on plant oils and other renewable (for some value of renewable that's better than gasoline, but more at odds with food production). The oil industry realized that they could also produce something that could fuel diesel engines, and they called it diesel fuel.
Modern diesel engines are very different -- but for eg. industrial and military use, you'll still see some resilient engines that can burn pretty much anything you throw at them, from butter to diesel fuel.
Shame he fell of a boat in the English channel and drowned.
You can fuel a Humvee with JP-8, which is jet engine fuel. It's been a long time, but I remember there being problems if you switched fuels -- if you had been using regular truck diesel and switched to JP-8 you could have engine problems because you'd still have some residual truck diesel mixing with the JP-8.
> Diesel used to be something of a waste product from refinining gasoline
It depends, but anyway it's more certain that originally gasoline was a waste product from refining lamp oil (which is closer to diesel).
Re:Why do Americans not drive diesels?
by joshuapants on Tuesday March 24, 2015 @07:04PM
(#9260158)
I see, thanks for correcting me!
Today, refining technology and hydrocracking allows a barrel of oil to be refined almost completely into whatever end product the refiner wants. Diesel, kerosene, jet fuel (which are all pretty much the same thing actually) or gasoline. So now these refined products are priced more by their energy content which is why the pricing has flipped and diesel now costs more per gallon than gasoline (but can still be more economical overall).