Diesel Engines: Power for Trucks

Diesel engines mainly power trucks, and buses, and the construction equipment in the United States, and they have long been looked on by the environmentalists concerned about air pollution. This dirty image is changing; only, it could spark a renewed interest in diesel powered passenger vehicles. The Auto industry is already transitioning to move of an advanced engine systems as new rules went into effect, and recently that require fuel makers to produce a very much cleaner diesel fuel that is largely sulfur free.

When at first, these so called ultra low sulfur diesel regulations will mostly affect users of heavy duty engines that are the workhorses of the United States industry. But the automotive executives say it may not be long before soccer moms across America are driving with diesel. It is a proven technology where production of the heavy duty diesel engines has more than just doubled to 300 a day in the past two years. Next, the automakers will roll out engine systems equipment with exhaust scrubbing technologies that work in with the cleaner fuel to reduce soot and the smog forming nitrogen oxide emissions.

The diesel engines are popular world wide in commercial vehicles and among heavy duty pickup drivers because of their power and fuel economy, they are typically a 20 to around 30 percent more efficient than the conventional gasoline ones. With the greater efficiency also makes diesel quite attractive to the ordinary drivers in Europe, where the fuel taxes are much higher than in the United States and the diesel powered care make up half of the passenger vehicle market. But the image problem was very hard to shake in the United States, where the drivers have the memories of smelly and very noisy and smoky diesels from the 1980's, when their reliability and the environmental attributes were then questioned.