General Motors' Best Selling SUV Is Going Diesel, Yes, In America

[cuts_off_prius]

VW, move your cheating *** over. GM will now carry the torch for diesels in the USA and Canada (hopefully, until more competition arrives). Looks like the Cruze diesel will finally have some company within the own brand.

For you guys across the pond, we don't really have any more affordable diesels on sale over here now that VW discontinued diesels or put them on hold, besides the Cruze. All other diesels are usually found in trucks or premium brands, but even then they are somewhat rare.

General Motors' Best Selling SUV Is Going Diesel, Yes, In America

General Motors' Best Selling SUV Is Going Diesel, Yes, In America

Andrew P Collins



The Chevy Equinox—wait, keep reading! It happens to be the second-best selling General Motors product so far this year, right behind the unstoppable Silverado. And if it really can hit GM’s claim of 40 MPG now with your family and all the **** they need to carry, it suddenly seems a lot more interesting.

Diesel has been the obvious choice for people trying to get as many miles-per-gallon as possible. But not in the U.S. Here it’s sort of a novelty, and Volkswagen’s billion-dollar emissions debacle didn’t really help the fuel’s image here. We’ve even speculated that diesel is probably dead in America eventually and we aren’t alone there.

But! A high-volume mainstream market SUV like the Chevy Equinox offering a diesel option would seem to bode well for this fuel’s future.



And make no mistake, the Equinox matters.

As of August, the Equinox is eking out second place on GM’s 2016 sales scoreboard at 158,475 units shipped according to the company. That’s a very distant second to Silverado which stands at 380,176 but more than Suburban and Tahoe combined.



GM’s bullet points on the 2018 SUV’s highlights are a 400 pound weight reduction off the current body, a new AWD system that drops the rear axle connection to save a little fuel, and a “kneeling rear seat that enables a flat rear load floor and up to 63.5 cubic feet of maximum cargo space.”

The new Equinox can hold 29.9 cubic feet of junk with the seat still in place, a little shy of its rival the Ford Escape which claims 34 cubic feet in case you were curious.



Upper trims will get the better driver-assistance options you’re probably familiar with by now like a 360 degree camera option, blind spot alerts, and automatic braking at low speed.

The Equinox will ship in front-wheel drive and all-wheel drive, which you don’t need but I know so many will order, and three engine choices. There’s the base 1.5 liter turbo, the upper-spec 2.0 turbo, and the efficiency-oriented 1.6 turbo diesel.



GM’s “estimated” specs on those engines:

136 horsepower, 236 lb-ft of torque and 40 MPG highway with a 6T45 six-speed automatic for the diesel
170 horsepower, 203 lb-ft of torque and 31 MPG highway with a 6T40 six-speed auto for the 1.5 gas
252 horsepower, 260 lb-ft of torque, 28 MPG on the highway and a 9T50 nine-speed for the top of the range 2.0 liter
The big-engined Equinox also gets a 3,500 pound tow rating, same as the Escape.

Edit:

Compare that with the current 2017 powertrain choices for the Equinox:

2.4l I-4 gasoline direct injection w/ 6-speed automatic - 21/31 MPG city & highway

3.6l V6 gasoline direct injection w/ 6-speed automatic - 20/28 MPG city & highway

GM must have estimated mileage very conservatively then for their upcoming powertrains.

[cuts_off_prius]

Just noticed this aero piece that was most likely put there to reduce drag at highway speeds. Neat.

[Draigflag]

Good to know more Euro derived diesels are hitting the US, there's a reason they are so popular here, it's time you embraced the potential! Trying to work out where those engines came from, maybe the 1.6 diesel is Fiat, although they are part of Chrysler not GM. Some people are reporting almost 60 UK MPG in the smaller sized SUV diesels here.

You'll notice a lot of cars now have the little wing usually just below the spoiler, it helps round the rear of the car off and also helps stop debris build up keeping the rear of the car cleaner for longer.

[luv2spd]

It's nice to see Chevy is still making diesel cars and trucks. I read somewhere that Volkswagen asked for another year to sort out the fixing of their cars that don't meet the regulations.

On another note, VW built a V-8 supercharged plus twin turbo charged Bentley Bentayga diesel, I would never buy such a car but I think the technology is very cool. I see a lot of VW Touareg V-10 TDIs where I live, I think they are very cool too.

[Draigflag]

So are VW not going to be selling diesels anymore? It would be a huge missed opportunity, and a great shame as they build some of the best diesel units on the market, and despite the cheat software, they turned out to have the cleanest diesel engines as regards to emissions on the real world V's everyone else's.

[SteveMak]

Originally Posted by Draigflag

So are VW not going to be selling diesels anymore? It would be a huge missed opportunity, and a great shame as they build some of the best diesel units on the market, and despite the cheat software, they turned out to have the cleanest diesel engines as regards to emissions on the real world V's everyone else's.

My understanding is as follows:

• VAG (Volkswagen Audi Group, which includes Porsche) put a Stop Sales order on all diesels in North America in September 2015, as part of Dieselgate
• North American VAG dealers don't know when that Stop Sales order will be lifted
• News reports allege that VW doesn't know when or if it will resume selling diesels in North America
• VAG never suspended diesel sales in Europe, in spite of Dieselgate
• VAG's European diesel sales are down a bit in Europe (single digit percent decline), but they have not crashed.

As a new owner of a 2015 Audi Q5 3.0 diesel with ~21,000 miles on the clock, I have to say:

• I love this well-designed engine! It gets respectable fuel economy when driven gently, and does 0-60 mph in about 6.4 sec. That's muscle-car turf. With 428-ft-lbs of torque, the engine pulls like mad, almost from idle.
• I've tracked fuel economy and fuel prices since day 1, and I calculate I've saved about 1/3 fuel cost per mile as a combination of better fuel economy and cheaper fuel prices than gasoline.
• Where I live, diesel fuel prices have been lower than regular unleaded ever since I got my car.
• Audi's full-time AWD (Quattro) is outstanding, especially in deep snow. I don't know if it's "the best", but I love it! Love this car.

I agree with Draigflag, it would be a shame if VAG never sold diesels in North America again. I never want to go back to a gasoline (petrol) engine again. I also saw a recent chart that showed real-world emissions of various diesel vehicles, and it alleges that VAG was amongst the cleanest of the lot. The in-lab cheating scandal was VW's undoing, as opposed to real-world emissions :-(

[LDB]

I almost bought a VW TDI about a month before they were all pulled. If they had a solar roof option I imagine I would have. I'm glad there are more diesel options coming available. They are good engines and there's no reason to avoid or dislike them. If the "cheating" factor were removed from the analysis there's probably no reason to not be selling VW TDI exactly as they were before being pulled.

[trollbait]

Opel makes GM's car diesels. This 1.6L was intended for the North American market from the beginning, so it had American engineers involved in its development.

GM Eyed U.S. From Inception of ‘Whisper Diesel’ | Technology content from WardsAuto

Originally Posted by Draigflag

So are VW not going to be selling diesels anymore? It would be a huge missed opportunity, and a great shame as they build some of the best diesel units on the market, and despite the cheat software, they turned out to have the cleanest diesel engines as regards to emissions on the real world V's everyone else's.

That may be true in Europe, but the little North American study that caught VW also included a BMW diesel. That BMW only had note worthy increase of NOx on one of three test routes, and then it was around a magnitude less than what the VWs put out.

Originally Posted by LDB

I almost bought a VW TDI about a month before they were all pulled. If they had a solar roof option I imagine I would have. I'm glad there are more diesel options coming available. They are good engines and there's no reason to avoid or dislike them. If the "cheating" factor were removed from the analysis there's probably no reason to not be selling VW TDI exactly as they were before being pulled.

The cheating means more than emitting more. It defrauded customers, some of whom bought the car with the belief it was as clean as a gasoline model.

It also gave VW an unfair advantage over their competitors. Honda and Mazda abandoned their plans of introducing a non-SCR diesel because they couldn't figure how to get it past emissions while maintaining performance and fuel economy like VW supposedly did. In regards to SCR diesels, VW was able to tout lower operation costs in using less DEF.

[Draigflag]

Ah I forgot about the 1.6, it's available in some of the Vauxhall/Opel models here, with some tweaking for economy called ECOFLEX, some Car reviewers managed 63.5 MPG in the family sedan "Insignia" model, and an impressive 82 MPG when hypermiling, so I can imagine 40 US MPG being very achievable in an SUV.

[tommypress]

Originally Posted by cuts_off_prius

VW, move your cheating *** over. GM will now carry the torch for diesels in the USA and Canada (hopefully, until more competition arrives). Looks like the Cruze diesel will finally have some company within the own brand.

For you guys across the pond, we don't really have any more affordable diesels on sale over here now that VW discontinued diesels or put them on hold, besides the Cruze. All other diesels are usually found in trucks or premium brands, but even then they are somewhat rare.

General Motors' Best Selling SUV Is Going Diesel, Yes, In America



Edit:

Compare that with the current 2017 powertrain choices for the Equinox:

2.4l I-4 gasoline direct injection w/ 6-speed automatic - 21/31 MPG city & highway

3.6l V6 gasoline direct injection w/ 6-speed automatic - 20/28 MPG city & highway

GM must have estimated mileage very conservatively then for their upcoming powertrains.

Lol. Your first sentence! Looks like the scars of Volkswagen scandal aka Dieselgate still remain.