Toys4RJill

I honestly doubt what you are saying. The LX 4.5 diesel is not worth the premium over a 5.7 LX. Diesels don't sell in the USA because they don't offer the higher performance factor.

Sulu

Diesel trucks and buses continue to sell, in Japan, and Canada and the USA, despite the strict emissions regulations, for the reasons already discussed above.

I never said that the Japanese automakers do not produce and sell diesels; they just do not sell as many and do not sell them with the technologically-advanced emissions controls that the Europeans produce. Japanese automakers sell all over the world, including quite a number of 3rd-world countries where diesels are popular and emissions standards are not as tight as in Japan or North America.

Sulu

I wonder whatever happened to the heavy-duty (truck) hybrid that Toyota announced in 2011 (with Ford) that they were working on. Ford pulled out of that collaboration a few years back and I have heard nothing about it since then.

Toyota's commercial truck division, Hino, produces a diesel-electric light-/medium-duty hybrid truck (sold as the Hino 195H in Canada and the USA), but I don't think that is the hybrid system that Toyota (and Ford) were working on. Toyota's truck hybrid system is likely aimed at pickup trucks.

ArmyofOne

Doubt it all you want, I know what I would buy and what I wouldn't. The only reason my truck is not a diesel is because they weren't offered in my area when I bought mine.

Here is a link with good reading.

http://www.dummies.com/home-garden/c...iesel-engines/

Do they cost more to make? yes. but its not tens of thousands of dollars. It MIGHT cost $1,000 more to make a diesel over gas engine of equivalent output...maybe.

Toys4RJill

\
Thanks. Nobody said that it was tens of thousands more to produce. I think it is reasonable to assume that as the size and performance of the diesel increases, we could then see some sort of increase in cost compared to a smaller size engine.

For what is worth. If you are ever in the Ontario, Canada area. You can find 15+ year old diesel Land Cruisers, Land Rover Defenders, Range Rovers etc. All imported and completely 100% exempt from Ontario Emissions testing depending where you are. If you go to the right car meet, you can find all sorts of these vehicles all together in great condition.

Toys4RJill

Toyota sells diesel models all over Europe. They use similar systems as the German makers in the European market complete with AdBlue etc etc. Toyota does make sophisticated diesels on par with the Germans. And they are sourced from Japan.

bitkahuna

iTrader: (20)

about commercial trucks... cng is happening more and more (i think more for short range deliveries though), and i think we WILL see electric tractor trailers soon because point to point travel is different than regular consumer use. if an electric truck can get say 300mi. it could work quite well for a large % of freight movement and with truckers sleeping overnight, a truck can recharge of course if needed, or a container could simply be moved to an already charged truck or the battery compartment swapped out. and if 300 mi. seems like a lot remember a tractor trailer has a LOT of room for batteries.

diesel's had its time... it will continue to be available and used for the next 20-30 years tapering off, then it's probably done.

mmarshall

Interesting. Roughly a century ago, that's what they said about the electric cars of the period (electric cars, back then, were actually more popular than gas, because they didn't involve the dangerous hand-crank starts and pesky hand-controls for spark-timing). Internal-combustion engines, in fact, especially after Cadillac's invention of the electric starter, DID take over for many decades...though, today, the industry seems slowly heading in the other direction again; back to electrification.

ArmyofOne

a truck with a range of 300mi wont work. Needs to be double that. Legally, a long hual driver can drive 11 hours and take 6 hours off, or drive 7 hrs and take 4 off. As long as they dont drive longer than 11 hours without at least a 6 hr break. So, a truck needs to be able to realistically drive for 12 hrs non stop.

thats not even accounting for driving teams. Team trucks literally never stop except for bathroom breaks, service, fuel, loading and unloading.

There are trucks on the road that cover 100,000 miles every 4 months. I know because I worked on them.

and no, most trucks dont have "alot of room for batteries" as they are now. But if you took out the diesel powertrain and put hub motors on each wheel in the rear, all the space the diesel powertrain was taking up could be used for batteries.
The problem then becomes the brakes. Big rigs use air brakes. But with no engine driving a compressor, you have no air.

And before someone says it, you can't use hydraulic brakes on big rigs. Too much heat and too much weight. You would boil the brake fluid in 3 stops.

mmarshall

....Even with Jake Brakes?

KahnBB6

iTrader: (5)

And yet if it isn't offered in North America you can't buy it even if you wanted to. Not for 25 years anyway (thanks to Mercedes-Benz circa 1986). It's a wonderful self-fulfilling prophecy. I would argue that not every application of a diesel in just any vehicle makes sense but some surely do.

The Land Cruiser 200 for instance is an $83K+ USD MSRP vehicle. Those are already a very niche SUVs that aren't marketed to your average buyer. It's already engineered for a 4.5L turbodiesel V8 which apparently makes sense to sell somewhere in the world. Not everyone shopping for an very overbuilt body on frame SUV is after 300+ horsepower. If that were the case then there would be zero market for the other usual suspect overbuilt body-on-frame SUVs with diesel engine options that are sold outside of North America. I could understand if the diesel engine was offered at launch and quickly phased out in a couple of model years due to abysmal sales but I can't recall the last time when a Toyota SUV of any kind was offered with a diesel in the USA even when at least one such engine option had been designed for it.

It was a bit of the same head scratching when the FJ Cruiser was released with the sole engine being the 4.0L V6 whether you optioned 2WD, 4WD, an automatic or a 6-speed manual transmission. It helps that Toyota never designed a diesel for it in any global market but at the time it was released I found it odd that such an enthusiast oriented solid-axle off road vehicle was gas only with predictably bad fuel economy compared to any global competitor it might have that is equipped with a turbodiesel engine (but of course you can't buy those diesel powered direct competitors in NA brand new or with less than 25 years on them <USA; 15 for Canada> so it makes a sensible question of why something very obvious isn't offered on the option list all the more moot for the buyers).

In the same vein, being such niche and in one case extravagantly expensive off-road vehicles I've been perplexed that the Wrangler took this long to get a diesel option in the U.S. and I'm still perplexed that even well heeled enthusiasts asking Mercedes-Benz to sell one of their diesel G-Wagens here officially get nowhere (and that apparently Mercedes themselves wanted to sell a diesel G in the U.S. but their various U.S. dealership franchises flatly said no to such a possible product for North America).

Marketing a diesel engine in any Lexus SUV let alone one of their sedans doesn't fit with the image the brand has cultivated for themselves. Then again, early on Lexus NA also felt that a pair of high performance gasoline inline-six twin turbo engines explicitly designed for two popular vehicles in their 1990's lineup (the SC and GS) would also go against what they felt they saw their brand image to be... the irony being that since the early 2000's those very models have been picked up used to convert to the very turbocharged engines Lexus didn't want to offer in the first place.

As such, Lexus also not ever considering diesel engines for even their largest SUVs doesn't surprise me. From the beginning the brand has had a history of snubbing the very idea of using some of their best and most unique powertrains even when 90% of the R&D for incorporating them into Lexus models had already been done prior to the launch of a model or its mid-cycle revision. Only in the last couple of years has this trend begun to change at Lexus.

With the exception of the Lexus LX, diesel powertrains are not part of what Lexus sees as reflective of their image, though at this point in time it would be too little too late anyway with regulation and scrutiny of emissions making the certification and business case for any brand's niche diesel vehicle even harder to justify for the North American markets than would have otherwise been possible in the last 30 years prior.

Mr Bond

Toyota has a deal with BMW when it comes to diesels on the European market, so basically all EU Toyotas has a BMW engine. But as we all know Toyota tends to be very conservative when it comes to how they tune the engines, so the power is like 40-60hp down compared to the typical 2.0 liter BMW diesel depending on model range. The only exception i know is the Land Cruiser Prado with its 2.8-3.0 liter 4 cyl Toyota developed diesels.

Big Andy

Actually. BMW supplies Toyota Europe with the 1.6 and 2.0 litre diesels (albeit not the very latest BMW technology) under a partnership agreement they have. Before that the Toyota diesels were a bit of a disaster. When the 2nd generation Lexus IS came out they offered a 2.2 litre diesel engine and it was terrible and plagued by reliability issues. I was given one as a loaner once when mine was in for a service and it was simply outclassed by the offerings by the Germans, I hated it. Lexus Europe now no longer offer any diesel engines and are solely petrol or petrol-hybrid.

http://blog.toyota.co.uk/toyota-and-...er-better-cars

http://www.bmwblog.com/2015/05/15/to...s-bmw-diesels/

https://www.ft.com/content/99c4b74e-...abdc0?mhq5j=e6

webra

Lexus used to have an answer to the diesels in the form of hybrids. But without developing the Prius Technology further and they are now very far behind.

geko29

Please explain how an exhaust brake functions in a vehicle with no engine.

Even ignoring that major barrier, yes. Jake brakes are great for controlling speed when going down hills or for slowing gradually. They are not effective at stopping or slowing quickly, and their use is outlawed in many urbanized areas due to the noise factor.

But in fairness to Josh's point, electric compressors are very efficient, so there's no need to give up the air brakes. In an electric truck they can be supplemented with regenerative braking, for a lower overall inertial load on the service brakes and increased range.