DarkFury

Yup, they've done it again... they ASSume they know what we want and they pick and choose what they want to provide...

http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com...ell-in-us.aspx


I mean.. DAYYUUUUM!!! I'm pissed at Mercedes Benz too for not offering diesel options for cars when they owned Chrysler. Hell, I wouldn't mind paying a little bit extra for diesel (since it is usually about 70 cents per gallon more here than premium) to get a 25% to 40% improvement in gas mileage for the same size car for little to no decrease in performance.

One of my co-workers has a Volkswagen Jetta TDI diesel that he boasts gets 46 MPG. So what if the diesel costs more since the equivalent sized/classed gasoline car usually gets only about 28 MPG.

I swear, whoever is in charge of making these kinds of decisions needs to be FIRED!!!! Just fire the whole lot of them....and clean house. GRRRRRRRR...

__________________


DarkFury's Pimptopia - Don't Hate the Playa, Hate the Game!
Home of the Original OG Pimp (accept NO imitations)

johnnymk

Blame it on the steenkin' environmentalists. Maybe Ford is trying to force their hand.

dsuds

I agree. WE NEED DIESELS!!! I'd love a car that gets 60+ mpg and doesn't require the maintenance and disposal headaches of a hybrid.

Build the bodies in Mexico and ship the engines in from the UK. Assemble the cars here in the states and everyone could be happy. I'd rather see them built here but with the tooling costs, It would be easier for Ford to utilize existing facilities.

Jeffbx

That's stupid. VW is bringing their 60MPG diesel here - why in the heck is ford ignoring the market? It's not huge, but there IS a market for these.

http://blog.wired.com/cars/2008/04/coming-soon-to.html

DarkFury

Because that's what Furd is good at doing... Ignoring what people actually ask for...

Remember the old Furd saying... "Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black..." (Henry Ford may or may not have actually said that, but their actions sorta support that kind of mentality sometimes.)


On a side note, did the diesels of the 80s really scare the American public so bad that they won't give them a fair shot now? With cleaner diesels now, why is there so much apprehension to bringing that tech to our cars here (in light of the obvious benefits). Is there still that much of an environmental concern? Or is this just another way "Big Oil" and the US Automakers are controlling the market here?

guiseppewv

If they are that is a risky gamble. They are already losing money hand over fist; they really should be doing everything possible to make money including bring a hot commodity like this to the market place.

attgig

I'd think they'd want them here, so they can make all of them biodiesels. That's the fuel of choice for the true environmentalists.

__________________

johnnymk

I believe that there is a very limited supply of biodiesel and especially the infrastructure to provide it to the public.

Prngr44

I thought the biggest reason was that they can't produce them locally and make a profit on it? To retool the plant in Mexico (or was it to completely build a new one?) was going to chew up 300+ million dollars just for that particular car. (I think that was so they could produce the engines locally instead of shipping them over from UK.)

__________________
http://otthouse.blogspot.com

LPMiller

I dunno that ford is actually ignoring what the people want. Seems to me ford is making a lot of noise about a car they aren't going to sell here. I'm guessing there is a lot of traditional resistance to diesel, and they are currently feeling out the market. If you look there are suddenly a lot of reports on this car.

Keep in mind too, they are bringing over the non diesel Fiestas over here. If enough people make enough noise that they want the other kind, well then Ford looks great when they announce it.

Too many americans think of the older, 80's version of diesel cars, and Ford and VW might feel they need to change expectations a little first.

__________________
lpmiller
Chief News Editor
Nobel Prize Nominee
Reverend in the Universal Life Church
Once Shot A Man For Snoring Too Loud
Way Too Lazy To Change His Signature

"The strength to change what I can, the inability to accept what I can't, and the incapacity to tell the difference." - Calvin and Hobbes

DarkFury

VW already has diesel cars here... maybe you mean Mercedes Benz (Although MB has a few of their cars that you can buy as a diesel, they just didn't share that with the Chrysler brand when they had them under their control).

And they are selling quite well I might add...

guiseppewv

This car has been highly anticipated as the first vehicle of many to come that were produced with a joint "Euro" Ford and US Ford design team. The car has been talked about in mainstream media at least since Dec of last year.

smeakim

20K in US dollars. No smaller than the mini cars coming to the US already. Read their FAQ. We can't sell in the US due to current legislation. 60miles on one charge. Give me a break the big auto companies and oil control it all. Why else would this not be a good idea. Give me a break.
Oh and its already in production. Politics at its finest.

http://www.nicecarcompany.co.uk/my-car.html

dsuds

You can blame GM for poisoning the U.S. diesel car market back in the 70's. The 5.7L they sold out was J...U...N...K... Plus anyone who had a diesel when they were "popular" back then had problems finding a filling station that wasn't a truck stop. I know because my family owned 2 diesel Mercedes back then, a 220D and a 240D. The 240D got over 30 mpg and we flogged that car. Very comfortable, reasonable power, built like a tank, ran for 300,000 miles with very, very few problems. Gawd I miss that car.

Mercedes & VW have done very well here with their diesels. The Big 3 have sold a lot of diesel pickups so the infrastructure already exists. To me it's silly not to be selling diesels here again. I'd love a simpler car that has good performance and gets 40+ mpg. And I know I'm not alone.

DarkFury

Well in all fairness... 60 miles max range then you have to charge it up for 5 hours really isn't that appealing to me (not to mention its size... too small for me to even give it a serious thought.)

However, put a diesel in a midsize car to get around 30 to 35 MPG and you have a true winner there. Why won't they do this now? Amost every Shell station I use now sells diesel and as of yesterday, the diesel fuel was only about 30 cents more expensive than the 92 octane gasoline that I buy today. Pretty much, for the extra MPG, I'd fork over that extra 30 cents at today's prices.

Why won't the auto manufactuers realize this?


Now I'm mad that Fall/Winter is coming... because I won't be able to ride my motorcycle in the snow. Guess I'm stuck like Chuck until next Spring/Summer.

mechmike0034

Part of it, as alluded to towards the end of the quoted article, is emissions regulations that are unfriendly to diesel autos (Light duty diesel trucks have a completely different set of emissions and fuel economy standards), and part of it is lead time.

Csaba Csere did a recent column in Car and Driver that illustrates the lead times necessary to introduce a new vehicle:


I would be willing to bet that, had Ford been able to predict the future at the time of the ECOnetic's development, they would have taken steps to make it a vehicle that could be sold profitably in the US. The costs associated with changing their course of action now would erase any potential profit. Hence, the statement "can't make a business case" for selling the vehicle here.

__________________
"The price of progress is trouble." (C. F. "Boss" Kettering)
"50% of the American public has below-average intelligence. 70% of the American public now has regular access to the Internet. Do the math." (unknown)
"I have vision, and the rest of the world wears bifocals." (Paul Newman, as Butch Cassidy)

dsuds

I haven't seen the diesel emission specs, but I wouldn't think that emissions is the problem. European cars are currently some of the cleanest in the world with extremely low carbon emissions. Yes, I know there's more to overall emissions than just the carbon coming out the tailpipe. But the NO and unburned hydrocarbon numbers can't be that far off.

I also know that one of the big reasons European diesels pulled out of the U.S. market had more to do with our crappy high-sulfer diesel than lagging sales. Now that we finally have cleaner fuel, we should be able to import these cars again. Cars that are already designed and in production.

Question: Do all different engine combinations for a car require new crash test certification? If not then these cars could be imported NOW.

Near mechmike's link on Car & Driver is an article from the Paris auto show talking about new DRIVe Volvo C30, S40 & V50's, which are smallish mid sized cars coming out with a new, very clean, 1.6L diesel that will get 53 MPG instead of the 28 MPG of the U.S. gas models.

Why the F#$K can't we get these cars here? Volvo comfort and safety plus 50 mpg. I know an awful lot of people that would sign-up for that car right now.

Cubsfan

Hopefully this isn't a stupid question, but are there any plans for a hybrid diesel? Seems like of diesel gets so much better gas mileage, putting it in a hybrid would be a double-win, right?

johnnymk

Yep, I have been saying this for years.

__________________
Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it. - Ronald Reagan (1986)

DarkFury

Seems like a big case of not looking at the trees for the sake of the forest that is in the way.

mechmike0034

NOx, specifically, is the problem in California and other states that have adopted California emissions standards (Maine, Massachusetts, New York, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington)

Mercedes Bluetec is the first new diesel car sold in California in almost ten years as of a year ago. More info here...


Sort of... stringent emissions (NOx) regs plus low sales numbers due to cheap gasoline are mainly to blame. Low-sulfur diesel fuel is one of the keys to meeting the Cali NOx standard.

Crash test and emissions certification are both required for US sale. I am not sure what USDOT and USEPA regs define/specify as "different".

mechmike0034

The two hurdles are emissions and coming up with an engine start-stop system. It takes more battery power to start a diesel because of its higher compression ratio. Most hybrids turn their engine off at stoplights, and restart instantly when the engine is needed.

Neither of these is insurmountable, but see my other post about lead time. Plus, there has to be a market where the R&D and production costs are lower than the profit potential.

Keep in mind as well that hybrids don't get any better fuel mileage on the highway than comparable conventional vehicles. The hybrid powertrain is more fuel-efficient during stop-and-go driving, but the electric motors do not contribute at highway speeds.

dsuds