BMW Sounds Taps for Doktor Diesel in the US
BMW is giving up on diesel-engine cars and SUVs in the United States. Instead, it will concentrate on plug-in hybrids for drivers interested in efficient and dynamic transportation. Among automakers headquartered outside the US, BMW and Land Rover were the leading providers of diesel vehicles, each with 5,000 to 6,000 sold last year. Diesel sales are slipping, down to half of 1 percent of vehicles sold, less than 100,000 out of 17.1 million sedans, SUVs and pickup trucks sold in 2017. BMW won’t sell diesel cars here after the 2018 model year.
BMW left the door slightly ajar. At its introduction for the 2019 X5 this past week, BMW said it would not sell a diesel version when it comes to market shortly, but it would not rule out a diesel later in the X5 lifecycle.
BMW’s history with diesels in the US dates to the mid-1980s and the 524td sedan with leisurely acceleration — the term is being used loosely and politely by a writer who once autocrossed a 524td and did not finish well. BMW also sold the engine to Ford, which put it on some less-than-hot-rod Lincolns. Fast-forward to this century and BMW got it very right, first with a 3.0-liter inline-six in the 335d sedan and X5 SUV, and then with a turbo-four diesel for the 3 Series sedan and wagon, and the X3 compact crossover.
BMW could not overcome the bad odor hanging over all diesel vehicles in the wake of the VW diesel emissions cheating scandal.
US Diesel Sales Fell 20 Percent Last Year
According to data compiled by our colleagues at HybridCars.com and Baum & Associates, a Michigan market research group, diesels, plug-in hybrids, and battery electric vehicles (BEVs) each had roughly 100,000 sales, although EVs and PHEVs were up about 25 percent each while diesel sales tanked by almost 20 percent. Hybrids were almost four times as big as each of the the other alt-fuels markets, 364,000 sales, up 5 percent.
Calendar 2017 Diesel SalesFord, 44,576Volkswagen, 10,930Chevrolet, 10,463Ram, 7,839Land Rover, 5,707BMW, 5,211Jaguar, 4,565GMC, 4,134Jeep, 725Audi, 415Porsche, 139Mercedes, 106Total, 94,810(Source: HybridCars.com / Baum & Associates)
BMW: Diesels Not Dead (Only Sleeping)
BMW announced, in answer to questions at the X5 intro, that there would be no diesel X5s imported to the US when the fifth generation ships shortly. (Actually, they’re not imported. They’re built in South Carolina, where BMW builds virtually all its SUVs, has its biggest production facility in the world, and is America’s largest exporter of cars. In case there’s confusion about why South Carolina’s manufacturing economy is the envy of the other 49 states. Volvo is building cars in South Carolina and Boeing is building planes. Maybe not so many this week with Hurricane Florence rolling through the Carolinas.)
At the press preview, BMW spokesman Alex Schmuck told The Car Connection, “We’re putting all our eggs in the PHEV basket.” That caused a stir, and BMW issued a clarification:
The final decision as to whether or not the BMW X5 diesel variant will come to the U.S. market has not been made. BMW of North America continues to monitor customer preferences and is prepared to adjust the product portfolio accordingly.”
Since the X5 diesel is being built in the US for all the continents, BMW technically means “whether or not the BMW X5 diesel variant built in the US will be allowed to remain in the US market.”
Last year, BMW sold 3,473 X5 diesels in the US or 7 percent of the 50,815 sold — the X5’s second-best year ever here. The 3 Series had 1,669 diesels sold to customers, and the 5 Series and X3 had a handful each, mostly leftovers from the previous year.
Diesel fans love the compression-ignition technology because the engines last forever (albeit as much as $6,000 more for pickup truck diesels), get great gas mileage on the highway, and often get 600-700 miles per tank. In our test drive of the 3 Series diesel, it got about 50 mpg, and did it in greater comfort than a Prius would afford.
On the flip side, gasoline engines are so well built today that lots of them are good for 200,000 miles, negating diesel’s longevity advantage. Sure, a diesel could go 400,000 miles but most vehicles only last a decade (the average scrappage age is 11 years), so the ideal is for the engine to wear about just as the rest of the car does.