The Diesel SUV - Pushing Back Emission Frontiers 2007-26-010

The current figure of Diesel market share in Europe of about 50% indicates a high market penetration of the HSDI Diesel engine. Due to increasing fuel prices and limited crude oil resources the worldwide demand for Diesel engines for the passenger car sector is increasing - even in typical gasoline markets like the united States. The key factors for the further success of the HSDI Diesel engine are the fulfillment of future worldwide emission legislation and that the production costs of the technologies necessary to do so, do not make it uncompetitive in comparison to the various gasoline engine concepts. Heavy SUVs with relatively small engines will therefore have to face the biggest challenge. For the EU5 proposal currently under discussion, such vehicles will have to be certified as passenger cars (vehicle category M) and are no longer allowed to use the LCV standards (Light Commercial Vehicles, vehicle category N1 - Class III), which means a NOx reduction of 50% in the European Driving Cycle (EDC) will be necessary. In the USA, the FTP75 driving cycle and the highly loaded US06 cycle are the challenges which have to be met. In this paper a system approach to cope with future emission legislation is discussed, based on multicylinder engine results with different technology packages applied. Following technology assessment, the individual potential of each package to achieve legislative targets in US and EU is deduced in addition, development scenarios for the US and EU are discussed and the possibility of commonising technologies in the two markets evaluated. This is carried out with the intention of identifying base technologies which can be applied world-wide, thus reducing development costs and achieving low unit costs through high production economies of-scale.