Ultra-Clean Diesel Cars Slated for U.S.

Via Reuters.com -

DETROIT, Jan 13 (Reuters) - The head of Honda Motor Co said on Sunday that the Japanese automaker's yet-to-be released clean diesel cars will be profitable immediately, unlike expensive gasoline-electric hybrid cars that still yield little or no profit after a decade on the market. "Our diesel cars are going to have an appropriate level of profit from the start," Chief Executive Takeo Fukui told a small group of reporters in an interview at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit.

He said Honda's clean diesel cars, to be launched in the United States next year, will not require a urea tank as most European systems do. The use of aluminum in the cylinder block instead of steel would also allow it to manufacture the engines using its existing gasoline engine facilities, keeping initial investments down, Fukui added.

Honda's new diesel drive train generates and stores ammonia within a two-layer catalytic converter to turn nitrogen oxide into harmless nitrogen.

The new system will clear the same emissions regulations as gasoline in the United States, Fukui said. Japan's second-biggest automaker is set to announce later this afternoon the launch of its first ultra-clean diesel car in the United States in 2009, as planned.

Honda's premium Acura brand will be the first to get the four-cylinder diesel engine, Fukui said. Models fueled by V6 diesel engines will follow after 2010, he added.

Diesel cars now make up more than half of Europe's new cars but have a poor image among consumers in the United States, as well as Japan, as being both loud and dirty.

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Clean diesel technology has come a very long way in the past decade and hopefully the American public will start to see that this is something we should embrace while we continue to research even cleaner fuel alternatives.

Right now, diesel technology is being refined in the sports world. In just a matter of years, the lessons learned from the motorsport world, will translate to diesel cars on the streets that are cleaner, more powerful, and more fuel efficient - all at the same time.