system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5:How are diesel and gasoline engines different?

In Tom Scott's most recent video he was going over the radio silence zone in west Virginia and mentioned that "Within a mile ... Only diesel trucks are allowed, gasoline cars generate too much (radio) interference."

How?
(Reposting with flair, since I forgot)
gpt
In a car powered by automobile gasoline there is a thing called a spark plug in every cylinder.  The spark plug creates a powerful electric spark, which ignites the gas after it's sprayed into the piston - this is what causes the explosion and drives the piston down, making the engine go.

In a diesel piston engine, the piston squeezes the air ~~and fuel~~ ^\(see ^reply ^below) mixture much harder (called compression).  Compressing air heats it up, and a diesel engine squeezes so hard that it heats to the point where the fuel explodes on its own. Modern diesel engines can be much more complicated, but at its most basic form a diesel doesn't need any kind of electricity to run at all.

In context to the video you watched, the interference is probably caused by the spark plug and electronic ignition in a gasoline car (not speculating on if the video maker is correct, but those can be sources of radio interference in cars).