Diesel can now claim to be a green fuel. But it has a serious image problem in Japan.
Japanese car makers are at the head of the race to develop eco-friendly energy technology; from hybrid and fuel-cell vehicles, to plug-in electric autos, and hydrogen as a fuel. But an out-of-date prejudice remains against a familiar fuel that can also be gentle on the planet.
Recent advances mean diesel can now be considered a “green fuel.” And while that fact is widely accepted in Europe, Japanese consumers still have a mental block to overcome.
“Diesel has this historic image that is not good; that it is dirty and pollutes, that diesel engines are noisy,” says Gerry Dorizas, president and CEO of Volkswagen Group Japan, “and that is no longer the case.”
This entrenched attitude plus extremely strict rules on emissions mean the market for diesel cars is “almost non-existent,” says Dorizas, who is also vice-chairman of the Japan Automobile Importers Association.
The Japanese government’s latest emissions rules went into effect in October 2009. According to Tappei Tsutsumi of the Climate Change Policy Division, Ministry of the Environment, the new regulations require emissions of nitrogen oxide to be reduced by 47% from 2005 regulations to 0.08g/km. Particulate matter must be cut 64% to 0.005g/km.
The first car to meet the requirements, tougher at present than in both the United States and Europe, was Nissan’s X-Trail 20GT.
On the other hand, Honda has announced that its plans to release low-emission diesel vehicles in the United States and Japan in 2009 are on hold and has switched its focus to hybrid technology. The company has cited the cost of developing systems to make sure emissions are within required limits.
Other requirements – such as proving that copper in the filter does not violate other emissions standards – have acted as impediments to Volkswagen. But Dorizas believes there is a place here for his company’s BlueMotion technology, which has already been applied to its vehicles in Europe and reduced emissions of nitrogen oxide by as much as 90%.
“It is not only the fuel that has changed, but also the engines that are making the emissions cleaner,” he points out. “They are fitted with particulate filters, and the nitrogen oxide is treated with injections of urea to break it down into harmless nitrogen and water.”
And with Europe updating its own emissions regulations, further efforts are being made before the 2014 deadline for the Euro 6 standards.
“We need our latest technology to comply with the regulations in both Europe and Japan, and we are in the process of introducing it across the entire range into the Japanese market,” says Hans Tempel, president and CEO of Mercedes-Benz.
Mercedes has made strenuous efforts to establish green diesel in the Japanese market, Tempel points out, being the first foreign carmaker to meet the strict emissions rules in place in 2006 when it introduced the E320 CDI. In the spring of 2010, that model is being replaced with the E350 BlueTEC, in both sedan and station-wagon versions, to meet the even tighter petroleum storage tank (PST) long-term emissions regulations.
And he believes that Japanese car manufacturers’ rush to embrace hybrid fuel vehicles at the expense of improving their diesel engines is a mistake. Those companies will still need to comply with tightened emissions regulations in Europe after 2014 and there will not be an overnight change in a market where, in some places, diesel accounts for 80% of the fuel used in vehicles.
One size will simply not fit all, says Tempel, who is also chairman of the EBC’s Automobile Committee and a member of the board of the German Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Japan.
“We are working towards zero emissions, and we started from conventional gasoline and diesel engines,” he said. “The advantage of a diesel vehicle is that it uses less fuel than a gasoline engine and we have now developed technology to deal with the remaining environmental issues.
“This means that diesel is available, it has proven merits, it is reliable, there is a cost advantage component, and it is now clean.”
Nevertheless, Mercedes-Benz is still looking to improve the potential of all its engines, including hybrids, because certain systems are more suited to different driving situations, he says. An electric car with a range of around 100km is efficient in an urban environment where it can be recharged during the night, for example. It will be far more difficult to replace the combustion engine entirely for longer journeys, although that engine could increasingly be supplemented by hybrid diesel engines.
“This is why we need this range of different technologies,” Tempel emphasises.
The Mercedes-Benz solution to stiffer emissions regulations is its BlueTEC technology, a range of coordinated measures that include a Selective Catalytic Reduction (SCR) converter, combined with AdBlue injection that reduces nitrogen oxide, and a particulate filter that has reduced emissions to a virtually undetectable level today.
But while the technological side of the equation may have been largely solved, problems of perception remain, he agrees.
“The negative image of diesel engines are old-fashioned and unfounded,” Tempel says. “There are other countries where diesel is more popular than any other fuel and there is no reason why it should not be more widely used here. It is something that we have to keep working on.”