Good to see Toyota expanding its diesel line-up. They only offer a single Lexus model with a diesel so far, but all Toyota models except the Aygo subcompact and the Prius are available with diesels.

Increased competition from the Far East will force European carmakers to once again focus on the initial quality of their vehicles. The most recent J.D. Power survey on initial quality gave all European brands (except Porsche) that are active in the US market poor marks for either functional design or manufacturing quality (or both).

Carmakers that are not active in the US, such as Citroen PSA, Renault and Fiat are not known here for Japanese levels of quality, either. However, their cars are not as overloaded with features as those of their German competitors VW, Mercedes-Benz and BMW.

Allen:

You mean for light-duty diesel. Main battle for clean heavy-duty diesel is happening in US.

Si.

Lou states that the problem is that "American's won't buy diesels."

Well, the problem really is that Americans *can't* buy diesels, in the sense that very strict emissions regulations currently in place in the five-state CARB area (and soon to be in place in the rest of the country) basically prohibit the sale of most diesel light duty vehicles of the sort that have taken Europe by storm.

Americans might buy diesels, if the vehicles and the regulations can be tailored to permit a wide range of affordable models to be put on sale here. The state of current diesel regulations in the United States is a large and well-explored topic in this forum, and I will decline to rehash it too much now.

We need to keep in mind that a major reason that Americans are down on Diesels is because of the damage GM did by producing a bunch of junk twenty years ago.

Takes years to build a repurtation. Only a second to ruin it.

It makes my brain hurt. How EPA can demand bin5T2 NOx of .05g/m when the fuel required to even have a chance to meet this really(STILL)isnt available yet. Even Euro5 is doable at .2g/km. Then theres the debate on just how bad an actor NOx really is. EPA/CARB-quit sniffing the calibration gas.

Diesel cars are stil sold here in Canada. They are not very popular, because in market not distorted by artificial fuel overtaxing diesel car should travel at least 50K km a year (double the average rate) to produce some savings. I do not even touch smoke, smog, noise, turbolag, nose-heavy understeer, anemic engine braking, etc.

Allen:
Detroit (luckily) has nothing to do with heavy-duty (big rig) engines. Main players are Caterpillar, Cummings, and whole bunch of European companies like Volvo, Man, Scania, etc. They are working hard to comply with incredibly tough emission regulations, way more stringent then in EU. Look, for example at dieselnet.com for reference.

JRod:
Modern diesel does not produce visible smoke, but still emit a lot of harmful diesel soot.
Also diesel engines emit 10 times more NOx – smog forming pollutant.
I did drive couple of modern diesels in Europe, and found them to be OK for regular driving. For anyhow performance driving diesel is inferior. Automatic transmission, most popular in US, have nice habit to double effective engine torque at stand-still start - beyond tire grip, so advantage of low-end torque (inherent to any turbocharged engine, gas or diesel) is not of such advantage here.

It's true that Diesels have a greater NOx emissions, but they also have lower emissions for other dangerous things like benzene that is very carcinogen. The higher NOx emissions are also offset by lower HC emissions, so the potential to provoque smog is not tenfold like Andrey sugested.

Some years ago I had the chance of driving my friend's Audi A4 with gas engine (V6 3 Litre and 220Hp), I was expecting a total diferent world from my modest 1.9 Liter TDI (4Inline 110Hp), but no, my TDI had more aceleration (at least it felt like that) in normal driving conditions. Of course at 160kph the Audi was still far from the red line and could easly acelerate to the 230kph, my TDI toped at 195kph. These speeds are all far from legal speed limits and aren't used often. The main point is that diesels give to the "normal" driver a better experience, the engine looks much bigger and the mileage it's very good (average 40mpg), and when you have to pay 6$ per gallon the diesel clatter (at idle) it's not so bad.

About torque converters, it's true that they multiply the torque during launch, but after that any degree of slip reduces efficiency, some converters have a lockup mechanism so you loose that advantage, diesels keep that grunt power for a large rev band. The BMW 535d give 400nm at 1000rpm, from 2000rpm to redline you have 560Nm and it's "just" a 3 Litre 6pot.

"The reason diesels dont sell here is because of the strict emission standards for California and 4 other states."

I wonder if CARB or at least the 4 NE states could be persuded to back off for diesel engines smaller than 1.5L. I'm all for clean air but I am also for greenhouse gas reduction, and encouraging the sale of small diesels in the US strikes me as something that should be persued.