VW's Jetta TDI - a diesel that the EPA estimates at 40 miles per gallon (Photo by Julie Grant)
If you’re thinking about buying a cleaner, more fuel-efficient
car, you might think a hybrid is your best option. But some
automakers want people to look at an older technology when
they’re looking for green cars: the diesel engine. Julie Grant
reports:
Transcript
If you’re thinking about buying a cleaner, more fuel-efficient
car, you might think a hybrid is your best option. But some
automakers want people to look at an older technology when
they’re looking for green cars: the diesel engine. Julie Grant
reports:
Lots of automakers make diesel cars – BMW, Ford, General
Motors, Volkswagen. But they sell most of them in Europe,
not the U.S. Diesel engines have a bad rap here.
Just ask Jerry Doble; he used to drive a diesel truck.
“They’re noisy and they’re smelly and they’re hard to start in
the winter. And that’s about it, I guess.”
But Doble hasn’t seen the new diesel cars making their way
from Europe.
Mike Omotoso is an auto industry analyst with JD Power and
Associates.
He says diesel carmakers have lowered their tailpipe
emissions. They’ve put in extensive filtering systems. Plus,
the fuel, itself, is cleaner than it used to be.
Diesel used to have lots of stinky sulfur – up to 500 parts per
million – now it has only 15 parts per million.
But Omotoso says when most Americans think of clean cars,
diesels aren’t the first thing that come to mind.
“When people think of clean vehicles they think of the Prius
first, and then they think of Toyota and they think of Honda
as well. The manufacturers, especially the German
manufacturers, are having to do a job catching up to the
positive publicity of hybrids. So they have to persuade the
American public that diesels can be clean as well.”
That’s why you may have seen those Volkswagen
commercials on TV – where one neighbor has a Prius, and
the other a new Jetta TDI-diesel:
VW: “A TDI set a Guiness World Record – 58 miles per
gallon.”
Prius owner: “58 miles per gallon!”
VW: “But this baby hauls. It’s like errr…errr… What does
your Prius sound like?”
Prius owner: (sound of quietly exhaling)
VW: “Oh. That’s cool.”
There’s a couple of things going on in that commercial.
It’s pushing the diesel as a green car. It’s also trying to
dispel the image of diesels being slow and clunky. They’re
trying to push diesels as green, muscle cars.
At this Volkswagen dealership, salesman Aaron Heinlein
says these commercials are having some success.
He says the only people who used to buy diesels worked
with the railways, in construction, or on farms. But this
week, he sold a TDI Jetta to a dietician.
“She would be the customer that, if she came in four years
ago, I would have said, ‘wow, you want to look at a diesel?
Cool, I’ll show you one.’ Now it’s just, that’s the norm. It’s
the lawyer, it’s the dentist, it’s the traveling salesperson who
is in their car a lot and needs better fuel mileage that you
wouldn’t have seen four years ago.”
Diesels cars still makeup less than 1% of the market.
Americans want power and speed and that’s not how they
think about diesel engines. Things are different in Europe,
where gas is upwards of $8 per gallon and consumers are
focused on good gas mileage.
Auto industry analysts are expecting to see a jump in diesel
sales in the U.S. in the next few years.
But JD Power and Associates doesn’t expect all this
marketing to make a huge dent in American car sales.
They’re forecasting diesel car sales at 4% to 5% of the
market by 2016.
That’s when the new federal fuel standards take effect.
For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.
