General Motors Believes Diesel Lovers Haven't Stopped Loving Diesels

Timothy Cain
by Timothy Cain

General Motors’ diesel-powered midsize pickup trucks are the only midsize pickup trucks available in America with diesel engines. GM’s Chevrolet Cruze is the only compact car on sale in America with a diesel engine. Although the Mazda CX-5 is scheduled to arrive later this year, diesel-powered editions of the Chevrolet Equinox and GMC Terrain will be the first small utility vehicles with diesel options.

With all the negative diesel press earned largely by the eruption of Volkswagen’s emissions scandal in September 2015, is GM’s investment in America’s diesel market a complete and utter waste?

GM obviously thinks not. “I don’t think diesel customers forgot why they liked driving diesels in the last two years,” GM’s vice president for global propulsion systems, Dan Nicholson, tells Automobile. “They didn’t forget about the driving character or the fuel economy.”

Moreover, Nicholson says of the tens of thousands of former Volkswagen TDI owners, “We don’t think those customers went away.”

It could be easily argued that GM is providing U.S. customers with a better diesel product than Volkswagen. The 1.6-liter turbocharged diesel in the Cruze produces 137 horsepower and 240 lb-ft of torque — roughly on par with the 150 horsepower; 236 lb-ft 2.0-liter diesel from the last Jetta TDI — but is rated as high as 30 mpg city; 52 mpg highway. The last Jetta TDI available in America offered similar city mileage but didn’t climb higher than 44 mpg on the highway.

Besides, Volkswagen’s diesel was cheating its way around emissions standards. GM’s Nicholson says, “We’re committed to compliance of the standards,” claiming hand-in-hand cooperation with the EPA “throughout the whole process to be very transparent with what technologies that we have and how the vehicles perform on the required tests so that it’s really understood.”

GM’s hopes for consumer faith rest not on GM — known to weasel its way around standards in the past — but on the actual diesel format. “The technology itself was not the problem,” Nicholson says. Cheating was the problem.

Nicholson says the broader diesel array GM is now supplying in the U.S. is simply a decision to enhance choice. “If you’re driving a lot of miles per year, it’s mostly highway, you want to go on extended trips, and you live in say an area like Wyoming,” Nicholson explains, “then you might not be a Bolt customer.”

According to HybridCars.com, fewer than 500 copies of the Chevrolet Cruze Diesel were sold in the first seven months of 2017, just 0.4 percent of the Cruze’s overall total. GM expects more diesel buyers to appear when the engine is offered in the hatchback.

Meanwhile, 7,192 Colorado and Canyon buyers have opted for the 2.8-liter diesel, or 9 percent of the trucks’ total. Chevrolet expects the Equinox’s diesel engine to be selected 5 percent of the time for roughly 1,100-1,200 monthly sales.

[Images: General Motors]

Timothy Cain is a contributing analyst at The Truth About Cars and Autofocus.ca and the founder and former editor of GoodCarBadCar.net. Follow on Twitter @timcaincars.

Timothy Cain
Timothy Cain

More by Timothy Cain

Comments
Join the conversation
2 of 23 comments
  • SCE to AUX SCE to AUX on Aug 16, 2017

    "Although the (diesel) Mazda CX-5 is scheduled to arrive later this year..." I'll believe that when I see it. Small diesels are like Mazdas: Rave reviews, few takers.

  • Backtees Backtees on Aug 16, 2017

    Anytime diesel and GM appear in same sentence it takes a LOT of work to forget the 80's attempt by GM. Future QOTD.....try and name a bigger engine product failure than that episode.

  • CanadaCraig You can just imagine how quickly the tires are going to wear out on a 5,800 lbs AWD 2024 Dodge Charger.
  • Luke42 I tried FSD for a month in December 2022 on my Model Y and wasn’t impressed.The building-blocks were amazing but sum of the all of those amazing parts was about as useful as Honda Sensing in terms of reducing the driver’s workload.I have a list of fixes I need to see in Autopilot before I blow another $200 renting FSD. But I will try it for free for a month.I would love it if FSD v12 lived up to the hype and my mind were changed. But I have no reason to believe I might be wrong at this point, based on the reviews I’ve read so far. [shrug]. I’m sure I’ll have more to say about it once I get to test it.
  • FormerFF We bought three new and one used car last year, so we won't be visiting any showrooms this year unless a meteor hits one of them. Sorry to hear that Mini has terminated the manual transmission, a Mini could be a fun car to drive with a stick.It appears that 2025 is going to see a significant decrease in the number of models that can be had with a stick. The used car we bought is a Mk 7 GTI with a six speed manual, and my younger daughter and I are enjoying it quite a lot. We'll be hanging on to it for many years.
  • Oberkanone Where is the value here? Magna is assembling the vehicles. The IP is not novel. Just buy the IP at bankruptcy stage for next to nothing.
  • Jalop1991 what, no Turbo trim?
Next