Low sulfur diesel is the main thing that took so long. They have to meet a certain cleanliness standard to bring them out, and the high sulfur diesel in the US was bad for the methods for cleaning the emissions. Not an issue on heavier, exempt vehicles. I'm really looking forward to this, going to be grabbing one from salvage just as soon as some joker rolls his truck over. With any luck, should be able to get 45-50MPG out of my little truck with a modern diesel, and still be able to give sports cars a run for their money.
Incidentally, the full size Chevy trucks are already getting 25MPG already with a little tweaking, and the full size SUVs are rated over 20MPG. I'm betting that these new diesels will be able to get somewhere around 35MPG or better in a full size halfton truck. And, smaller car diesels won't be far behind. The domestics make most of their cash off trucks and SUVs so that will be the first target for them, smaller diesels for the cars won't be far behind. Dodge tends to be the worst of the domestic trucks, with Ford in the middle.
The imports are also looking good. I read an article in one of the magazines about the 2009 Toyota Camry diesel, in testing at Nuremberg they were able to go 150MPH average on the 24hr endurance testing, and the same car pulled down 75MPG on the drive to the track. Sorry, I don't remember the name of the mag or how long ago I read it. If Toyota builds it, Nissan, Honda and Subaru won't be far behind.
I think we are on the verge of a new golden era for the automobile, where mileage doubles or triples over a short time, emissions drop drastically and power is the same or better. Course, I'm also a bit of an optimist
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