The just-launched Mini Cooper Countryman can get 63 MPGs highway
— just not on our highways.
Like so many other diesel-powered vehicles, it’s not
available in the United States. Instead we get gas-electric hybrids
like the Toyota Prius — which maxes out at 48 MPGs on the
highway.
It’s very strange.
Our government (well, maybe calling it “our” government is
a stretch) has been browbeating the car industry to produce more
“fuel efficient” cars for decades, yet at the same time, for
decades, made it very hard to sell high-efficiency diesel-powered
passenger cars. VW, Mercedes, BMW, Audi, Land Rover and other
European brands have been selling their cars here for a long time
— just not their diesel-powered cars. In Europe, diesel cars
constitute about half the new cars sold; over here, less than 5
percent — chiefly because only a handful of diesel-powered
passenger cars are even available.
For two reasons, mainly.
First, for years, we had not-so-great (for emissions
reasons) diesel fuel that was fine for big rigs (which until
recently could pollute to their hearts’ content, legally) but
wreaked havoc with the finely tuned pollution control equipment
fitted to modern passenger car diesel engines.
This, in turn, set up the potential not just for lots of
warranty-related expenses and hassles for potential diesel-car
buyers but also for even greater hassles and expenses for the car
companies that sold them, when the government went after them for
selling “dirty” diesels.
So we don’t get diesels like the Mini Countryman
D.
No 63 MPGs, either.
Even though our diesel is now “clean” diesel — and the
warranty/pollution control issues have been dealt with.
The European car companies are still super leery of
bringing to market vehicles that could lead to problems for them
with the EPA politburo. Their diesel-powered cars may be “cleaner”
(in terms of tailpipe emissions) than a nun’s conscience but
there’s still the endless pedantry of slightly different American
vs. European regulatory codes. And not just federal codes, but also
the different state codes, notably “California” codes that are both
different and stricter than “49 state” codes. Some Northeastern
states have also adopted “California” codes — which makes
achieving compliance with all the varying codes — essential to
being able to profitably sell a given car, nationwide — very
difficult and very expensive.
Rather than spend beaucoups bucks on lawyers and
other forms of paper-pushing to make the EPA happy, the European
car companies cut their losses and (mostly) keep their diesels to
themselves, selling a few token models here.
You’d think the government (federal and state) would make
it a priority to ease the regulatory chokehold a little, to get
these high-mileage diesels into mass circulation. Think what a
difference a 10-15 MPG average uptick in the fuel economy of the
typical passenger car would mean — not just in terms of reducing
the aggregate fuel consumption of the nation but also in terms of
placating the great god of global warming. Less fuel burned means
fewer greenhouse gasses emitted — and a 10-15 MPG uptick in fuel
efficiency spread out across, say, 20-30 percent of the passenger
car fleet would mean a huge reduction in “greenhouse gasses.” And
it could be done without elaborate technology (hybrids) or another
round of government edicts (CAFE) that just make new cars more and
more expensive to achieve minimal, incremental upticks in their
average “fleet” economy numbers.
Diesels deliver. They make sense. They work. People would
love ‘em if only they had a chance to drive ‘em.
But they don’t — because they do (make sense).
Maybe things will change. I don’t expect them
to.
Our government is run by lawyers, not engineers. Talkers,
not doers. I doubt one out of 100 of them even knows how a diesel
engine differs from a gasoline engine (other than the fuel it
uses). So I’m not surprised by the government’s inability to see
how much it would help — everything from “the environment” to the
economy — by knocking down the stupid regulatory roadblocks that
are keeping diesel cars on the other side of the pond.
