Honda Motor wants to persuade Americans to trade in their gasoline-fueled cars for diesel.
Over the weekend, Honda unveiled a new diesel engine that it says burns as cleanly as a gasoline one, and with about 25 percent higher mileage. The company said it hoped to start selling cars in the United States with the new engines as early as 2009.
While Europeans have embraced diesel-powered passenger cars, Americans and consumers in many other countries, like Japan, so far have not.
Diesel burns less fuel than gasoline but emits more pollutants, leading many consumers to associate it negatively with exhaust-belching trucks.
But as oil prices soar, many automakers have been giving diesel a second look as a more efficient alternative to gasoline. The trick has been finding a cheap way to reduce emissions of soot and nitrogen oxide, a greenhouse gas.
Honda's solution relies on a pair of new filters in the engine, which it says capture enough pollutants to meet California's emission regulations, widely considered the toughest in the world.
Honda's chief executive, Takeo Fukui, said in an interview that it had taken more than three years to develop the engine. But he said an even bigger challenge might be persuading American consumers to embrace it.
"We have to convince Americans to change their view of diesel technology," he said at Honda's test track in Utsunomiya, an hour and a half north of Tokyo. "Diesel isn't just for trucks anymore."
He was speaking at a press event at which Honda introduced an Accord powered by its new diesel engine, which had the acceleration of a gasoline car but was noisier. Honda engineers said they would reduce the noise down before putting the engine on the market.
At the track, Honda also unveiled a prototype of a new fuel cell vehicle that the company also hopes to put on the market in limited numbers by 2008. Fuel cells are a more futuristic technology that uses hydrogen to produce electricity to power the car. The engines emit no pollutants, only heat and water.
Honda says it has developed a more compact and powerful fuel cell, the power plant that generates electricity. Honda says its new fuel cell sits vertically and is small enough to fit under the floor between the driver's and front passenger's seats. Previous fuel cells lay flat under both seats, making the cars taller.
Fukui said fuel cells were still years away from replacing gasoline, because the cost of technology takes time to shrink.
Gasoline stations must also eventually be converted to pump hydrogen. In the meantime, Fukui said, diesel could provide a simpler and cheaper alternative to other more complex fuel-saving technologies now reaching the market, like hybrids.
Honda engineers at the event said a major advance in their new engine lay in the catalytic converter, a type of filtering device that scrubs engine exhaust. Honda's new engine uses a two- step system to change nitrogen oxide into harmless nitrogen.
DaimlerChrysler has also said it hopes to have a clean-burning diesel engine on sale in the United States in two years. It has developed new diesel engines using a different technology that turns nitrogen oxide into ammonia
Read Article