Chevy Cruze to get a diesel engine

I'm surprised.

Positively surprised.

I'm quite sure that about 3 years ago, this thread would have been full of "We don't need no stinking, smoking diesel crap in our country" comments...

Way to go, folks :)

I think that if this was the comment section of say CNN then perhaps you'd be right, but I figure the enthusiast crowd has always been into the idea, especially if it were made available in more mainstream cars like the VW and Jeep efforts instead of pickup trucks.

Version 5 is catching you guys up on regs I understand. So do the regs apply to Trucks then? No, I bet they do not.

Trucks and buses also share strict emissions standards here. The latest models are required to be EPA 2010 compliant. Most use SCR to do the job, while International/IC Bus uses Advanced EGR.

I don't know if the standards are the same between cars and trucks though.
 
Last edited:
The drawbacks to diesel in the US have always been noise, emissions, servicing, and availability of fuel. The noise drawback has been reduced or eliminated with refinement of the engines. The emissions part has been helped by low-sulfur diesel. Servicing costs have been decreased due to better diesel engines, especially all-aluminum blocks. Availability...that's gonna be the Catch-22, especially in cities. Stations will only put in diesel pumps if there's demand, and there will only be demand if more diesel cars are sold, but those cars won't be sold if people know in advance that they're going to have a hard time finding diesel.
 
The demand thing is fairly simple. Barely anyone runs their car until it's on fumes, people tend to fill up long before that. Buy a diesel, when you want to fill up you still have a handful of petrol diesel stations to drive past until you run out, one of them is bound to offer your juice.

You as a consumer have the choice. Pumps will follow.
 
I'm surprised.

Positively surprised.

I'm quite sure that about 3 years ago, this thread would have been full of "We don't need no stinking, smoking diesel crap in our country" comments...

Way to go, folks :)


I said when Clarkson drove the turbo diesel Jag to Blackpool I would buy one, but they are not available here.
 
I'd buy a Jag that ran on Diesel in a heart beat. It just happens to also need to run regular gas, kerosene, vodka, and martinis:

v2010_10_08_jaguar-cx75.jpg
 
Yeah, if only it were available at a price I could afford.
 
The demand thing is fairly simple. Barely anyone runs their car until it's on fumes, people tend to fill up long before that. Buy a diesel, when you want to fill up you still have a handful of petrol diesel stations to drive past until you run out, one of them is bound to offer your juice.

You as a consumer have the choice. Pumps will follow.

Well, that's the whole problem. Let me cite a practical example. I live about an hour and a half outside of Chicago. The station where I gas up recently remodeled. Each of their twelve rows of pumps now have two petrol, one diesel, and one E85 pump. This is to be expected. They happen to be a truck stop off an interstate in a semi-rural area. I would thus have no problem with my normal petrol-powered car that I have now, or a diesel or flex-fuel replacement.

My mother lives in the city of Chicago. The vast majority of her driving is conducted ten or less miles from home. I think I know of one gas station within that driving range (just off an interstate, and in an area that's heavily industrial and therefore with lots of truck traffic) that offers diesel. Here in the States, certain areas lack the infrastructure to supply large quantities of customers with diesel. Thus the Catch-22 I mentioned earlier.

Diesel cars will have to be sold, advertising-wise, here in the States as an alternative fuel, offering mileage savings (very important, since diesel where I am is more than 10% higher per gallon than petrol). I want it to work. I want diesel cars to be more popular. I'm just not very optimistic that it will. I've seen it screwed up before.
 
Odd, Diesel is offered at pretty much every gas station I've been to here in WA.
 
That's kind of the point I was making to Narf. In the States, distribution of diesel is more inconsistent than it is in Europe, mostly due to lack of diesel cars. When I lived in Saint Joseph, Missouri last year, I didn't know any station around me that sold diesel. The one nearest to my apartment, in fact, only sold undiluted 89 octane and E10 91 octane, no premium or diesel. Putting in new underground tanks for diesel if stations don't already have them is a losing proposition in a lot of places, especially in the middle of cities where you're cramped for space. If availability was more consistent, then diesel would be a surer bet.

If Chevy goes with the Cruze diesel, I bet that sales will correlate directly with availability. No one wants to have to go out of their way to tank up. The Cruze alone won't provide the critical mass necessary to make availability truly omnipresent. It's the same Catch-22 that's facing BEVs and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, except that it's less of a problem due to the fact that the infrastructure is well on its way.

Just out of curiosity, how's the availability of E85 in the Pacific Northwest, and how many flex-fuel vehicles are there floating around? The tax breaks that come with E85 out here in Corn Country have really helped availability and sales.
 
That's kind of the point I was making to Narf. In the States, distribution of diesel is more inconsistent than it is in Europe, mostly due to lack of diesel cars. When I lived in Saint Joseph, Missouri last year, I didn't know any station around me that sold diesel. The one nearest to my apartment, in fact, only sold undiluted 89 octane and E10 91 octane, no premium or diesel. Putting in new underground tanks for diesel if stations don't already have them is a losing proposition in a lot of places, especially in the middle of cities where you're cramped for space. If availability was more consistent, then diesel would be a surer bet.

If Chevy goes with the Cruze diesel, I bet that sales will correlate directly with availability. No one wants to have to go out of their way to tank up. The Cruze alone won't provide the critical mass necessary to make availability truly omnipresent. It's the same Catch-22 that's facing BEVs and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, except that it's less of a problem due to the fact that the infrastructure is well on its way.

Just out of curiosity, how's the availability of E85 in the Pacific Northwest, and how many flex-fuel vehicles are there floating around? The tax breaks that come with E85 out here in Corn Country have really helped availability and sales.
 
Diesel is awesome, glad they are trying to get it more widespread over there. I have always had petrol cars until i got my Mondeo TDCi recently and i will probably only buy diesel cars from now on. There is just something so satisfying pulling up hills and feel the the wave of torque on the motorway and know you didn't just burn up a 1/4 of a tank.
 
petrol is awesome, glad they are neutralising diesel tax benefit around here. I have always had diesel cars and will probably only buy petrol cars from now. there is just simething so satisfaying in the eagerness, willingness of petrol engines to get going and feeling the revs on the motorway, knowing you didn't just bark out clouds of black smoke...
 
Revs is just another word for excessive noise levels.

There are no clouds of black smoke coming out of modern diesel, even at full throttle. If it does, you have an engine problem. Or your modern car is eastern european poverty spec*, without filters. That said, americans should drive petrol cars. Yes. Because diesel smells funny. And I rather I use it without americans fueling demand and increasing the costs.

So shoo. Get away from my diesel. Go run something else. E85 preferably, because nobody wants that. ;)
 
Last edited:
sure, they masked away the black clouds, but diesel still pump out vast amounts of fine dust, which is a lot more harmful (to me) than a bit of CO...
 
My mother lives in the city of Chicago. The vast majority of her driving is conducted ten or less miles from home. I think I know of one gas station within that driving range (just off an interstate, and in an area that's heavily industrial and therefore with lots of truck traffic) that offers diesel. Here in the States, certain areas lack the infrastructure to supply large quantities of customers with diesel. Thus the Catch-22 I mentioned earlier.

If all she does is short inner-city trips then she is better off with a small TSI such as the 1.2 you can get in the Fabia, Polo, Ibiza, A1, Octavia, Golf, Leon, Jetta, A3, or with the 0.8 TwinAir in the 500.
Getting a diesel for that seems wrong to me, irregardless of fuel station offerings. For instance, she probably would run into trouble with the DPF.


Diesel is awesome, glad they are trying to get it more widespread over there. I have always had petrol cars until i got my Mondeo TDCi recently and i will probably only buy diesel cars from now on. There is just something so satisfying pulling up hills and feel the the wave of torque on the motorway and know you didn't just burn up a 1/4 of a tank.

petrol is awesome, glad they are neutralising diesel tax benefit around here. I have always had diesel cars and will probably only buy petrol cars from now. there is just simething so satisfaying in the eagerness, willingness of petrol engines to get going and feeling the revs on the motorway, knowing you didn't just bark out clouds of black smoke...

You two should just get a TSI and be done with it, best of both worlds.


sure, they masked away the black clouds, but diesel still pump out vast amounts of fine dust, which is a lot more harmful (to me) than a bit of CO...

DPF?
 
Last edited:
There are no clouds of black smoke coming out of modern diesel, even at full throttle.
Re: HatePersonified: Modern diesels equipped with DPF (and SCR/Urea-injection and what not) do not produce clouds of black smoke. In fact a car with a fully functional filter produce no visible smoke at all. Yes, you can buy such machines even in America. No, "dragsters" do not count as modern diesels. Nor do dragsters drive on public roads. Yes, they spew out clouds of smoke. Because they are dragsters. They're also irrelevant to this conversation.

sure, they masked away the black clouds, but diesel still pump out vast amounts of fine dust, which is a lot more harmful (to me) than a bit of CO...
Not with filters they don't. Unfiltered petrols pump out more, and those amounts are so miniscule no studies have shown them to be dangerous. Only studies that show diesel particulates harmful effects are done on old unfiltered diesel engines. Hence the filters. Also carbon monoxide is highly toxic to humans. Diesels produce so little that it's practically impossible to kill yourself with it, unlike a petrol powered car. :tease:
 
Last edited:
So shoo. Get away from my diesel. Go run something else. E85 preferably, because nobody wants that. ;)

I'd love to have E85 or E100 at every station. I only have about 4 within 5 miles from me. Poor man's race fuel FTW. Now I just need to build a car to take advantage of the extra octane and cool benefits.
 
Never noticed any smell with any of my cars, they all have particulate filters and if driven like most Americans do, smoothly, they will see quite a substantial MPG gain. If you get in one you will love the torque which is so unexpected when you are used to petrol cars. Having said that, I would not buy a diesel under 2.0 ltrs so only in family transport because the premium cost of the car (for the diesel engine) is difficult to regain in the life time of the car, unless you do lots of miles, in small engines.
 
Never noticed any smell with any of my cars, they all have particulate filters and if driven like most Americans do, smoothly, they will see quite a substantial MPG gain. If you get in one you will love the torque which is so unexpected when you are used to petrol cars. Having said that, I would not buy a diesel under 2.0 ltrs so only in family transport because the premium cost of the car (for the diesel engine) is difficult to regain in the life time of the car, unless you do lots of miles, in small engines.

I think many drivers here love low end torque, as that "seat of the pants" feeling one has when they first pull out of the lot onto a busy street on a test drive can make a big difference to whether a car "feels" powerful enough.
 
I'd love to have E85 or E100 at every station. I only have about 4 within 5 miles from me. Poor man's race fuel FTW. Now I just need to build a car to take advantage of the extra octane and cool benefits.
Nah you don't (if we're being serious for a moment). Our politicians made it law that all petrol stations that sold more than X liters of fuel (which meant all of them in principle) had to sell E85 as well. When the law came into force in 2006 we had between 3700 and 4000 petrol stations. Now in 2011 it's 2900. Nearly all of the closed stations lie in rural areas where the stations could not afford new pumps, so people have to drive further to fill up. Good thinking from our politicians there.

By now sales of new E85 cars have basically stopped alltogether (<5% of all sold cars so far this year), because it's rubbish. Enviromental concerns aside, it eats engines. People who had them as company cars and did alot of km's had to service them sometimes four times a year, or more.
 
Last edited:
Top