Detroit Is Embracing Diesel Engines As Fast As Possible In The Real World Of Economics, Technology Development, and Manufacturing Engineering.

Implications: How are the Detroit Three reacting to the multiplicity of power train types among which they must choose in order to satisfy political expediency? They must choose among the many chocies and the choices are dictated by economics more than they are by politics.

Analysis: The Detroit Three, GM, Ford, and Chrysler have decided that dependence on foreign oil will trump reduction of greenhouse gas emissions in the long term, and they have now made some future power train choices accordingly.

GM is saying to anyone who cares to listen that it will produce 40% of its 2014 products with diesel or turbodiesel power trains; the remaining 60% of its vehicles will be gasoline powered, or gasoline, or diesel hybrids. There will also be in the 2014 product mix a percentage of probably mostly small battery powered vehicles along with some premium high performance battery powered vehicles, if, and only if, there is by that time a cost effective, safe, reliable, long lived lithium battery system available. Otherwise the battery powered and hybrid vehicles will all be smaller so as to maximize the effectiveness of safe, reliable, long lived nickel metal hydride battery systems.

VW already sells a small diesel car in Europe that has less emissions than a Toyota Prius hybrid.

Fuel cells are out of the picture entirely, because of the already occurring dramatic rise in the price of platinum, which is essential for any current fuel cell technology.

Hydrogen is also out of the picture, because the construction of a hydrogen production and distribution system is simply beyond the economic capability of any industry, automotive, fuel, or utility, and no national government has yet made the creation of even a national hydrogen economy in just one nation a political objective.

Converting food grains to ethanol is economically nonsense, and the coming recession will expose the US and European obsession with subsidies to farmers as the political mistake it is.

The dieselization of America has begun, and I won't be surprised if a new group of permits to build refineries doesn't lean heavily towards diesel fuel production.