Reading a back issue of TDR, I came across Robert Patton's thoughtful review of outside voices commenting on the future of diesel. Forbes and Car & Driver magazines were among those to assert that diesels just weren't going to matter in North America.
On the same day, I read a news item headlined "Diesel Vehicle Demand Expected to Soar in U.S." The article began, "The U.S. market share for diesel-powered cars and light trucks will almost quadruple by 2015 as automakers meet fuel-efficiency demands and as state emissions rules become uniform, J.D. Power & Associates said Thursday. "
From where we sit, it would seem that the car magazines might be a bit behind the times, and that JD Power is just a little bit ahead. We see a convergence of technology and opportunity, driven by changing global priorities that will indeed grow the diesel world in North America. It is, indeed, a perfect storm of factors that will accelerate diesel growth in North America. New Products Create New Demand:
Along with expected refinement of the big diesels already available in domestic trucks, there will be many new power plants arriving from companies like BMW, Mercedes, VW, Audi, Toyota, and Nissan.
Mercedes will be among the first manufacturers to commit to the investments that will be required to bring new diesel power plants to the U.S. Their business case is based in part on the early success of the Jeep Liberty CRD. According to Frank Klegon, VP of product development Process and Components, "Dealers report that the Liberty stays on the lot less than a month, about one-third the industry average." So far, the Liberty CRD total sales are modest, something like 5000 units-but significantly higher than Jeep's original estimate. Regulation forces innovation:
Stricter emissions standards force manufacturers to build cleaner, better, and more efficient engines. It's the same thing we went through in the '80s with gas engines. After a period of moaning and hand-wringing, manufacturers buckled down to studying combustion and improving the process, working miracles along the way. The end result was cleaner, more powerful engines that used less fuel-something we'll be seeing on the diesel front in the coming years. Once diesels are recognized as fun and efficient, more people will be willing to pay for the technology.
Therefore, however painful in the short run, we think that tighter diesel emissions requirements will actually lead to more units sold in the future, not fewer.
Concerns about Imported Oil
A byproduct of the drive for cleaner diesel is creating an opportunity to reduce oil imports. The move toward low-sulfur diesel is making biodiesel a hot growth industry. Low-sulfur diesel lacks the lubricity that some diesel engines require to protect the fuel injection mechanism. The easy cure turns out to be B2, B5 or maybe B20, which is practically the only alternative fuel to integrate seamlessly with diesel technology in North America. Farmers have known this for years. But lately Americans have become very aware of dependence on foreign oil. When national security is an election issue, you get action in congress. So getting re-elected means doing something about oil-and it never hurts to get along with the farm lobby, either. So we predict that national politics will let the bio-diesel industry grow, and that people will see diesel as a way of being in tune with national energy priorities.
FYI, reader Martin Tobias turned us on to biodiesel.org, where we downloaded a list of retail fueling sites where we could get bio-diesel for our project truck. The list was 36 pages long when printed out. Over 700 places already exist where you can buy some form of bio-fuel, some in every state, with more small-scale operations coming on line every day. We may be able to foresee the day when fuel is purchased not from a multinational corporation, but from your local farm co-op.
Reading a back issue of TDR, I came across Robert Patton's thoughtful review of outside voices commenting on the future of diesel. Forbes and Car & Driver magazines were among those to assert that diesels just weren't going to matter in North America.
