Thursday, March 5, 2009

Diesels We Can't Buy in North America

North America has been, let's face it, utterly slow in accepting diesel as an alternate fuel for passenger cars. To the average North American driver a diesel is what powers dumptrucks, farm tractors, and 18-wheeled rigs.

On the other side of the Atlantic where they average automobile driving consumer is somewhat more enlightened, diesels account for about half the passenger cars on the road.

Autobloggreen.com put together a gallery of 10 diesels available in Europe that are not sold here in North America.

Check out some of these numbers:

10) Chrysler Grand Voyager CRD - 9.4L/100km (25 mpg US)
9) Porsche Cayenne Diesel - 9.4L/100km (25 mpg US)
8) Volvo XC60 - 7.6L/100km (31 mpg US)
7) Jaguar XF S Diesel - 6.7L/100km (35 mpg US)
6) Honda Accord Tourer Type-S - 5.9L/100km (40 mpg US)
5) VW CC Blue TDi - 5.6L/100km (42 mpg US)
4) BMW 116d - 4.4L/100km (53 mpg US)
3) MINI Cooper D - 3.9L/100km (60 mpg US)
2) Ford Fiesta ecoNetic - 3.7L/100km (64 mpg US)
1) smart ForTwo CDI - 3.3L/100km (72 mpg US)

From minivans, to SUVs, to luxury sedans, to wagons, to compacts and subcompacts... each of these vehicles is sold in North America (not always the same name, but the same vehicle nonetheless) with a gasoline burning engine that doesn't even come close to the fuel economy of their diesel burning counterparts, and in some cases doesn't even match the performance numbers either.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Are the fuel consumption figures EU based figures? If yes, MPG for those cars will be lower in the US.

The 3rd Gen Prius does 3.9L/100km in the UK (Almost 60MPG) while it does about 50MPG in the US.