Why won’t we embrace diesel cars the way Europeans do?

When you think of diesel-fueled vehicles, you probably only think of 18-wheelers and construction equipment. Or maybe you just think of the fact that as you’re paying more than $4 a gallon for gasoline, the prices for diesel fuel are even higher these days.

“In the U.S. last year, diesel cars made up about 3 percent of all new vehicle sales, which is really a drop in the bucketand most of that was the diesel engine options in some of the beefier pickup trucks,” said Allen Schaeffer, executive director of the Diesel Technology Forum, the nation’s leading advocate for diesel technology. “Just to contrast, last year in the European Union, diesel made up 53 percent of all new vehicle sales.”

Are the Europeans onto something that we’re missing? Perhaps.

“During the last 10 years, Europeans had a more favorable tax policy toward diesel fuel than gasoline,” Schaeffer said. “Diesel was taxed at a rate about one U.S. dollar less a gallon than gasoline.”

Eventually, Schaeffer said, Europeans began to prefer the performance of diesel vehicles as well. And now as America struggles to reduce its need for oil, diesel fuel is finally getting a second look here.

Diesel fuel produces about 12 percent more energy — measured in BTUs — than a comparable gallon of gasoline, and a diesel engine burns the fuel more efficiently, Schaeffer said. Those two factors help make a diesel vehicle about 20 to 40 percent more energy efficient than a comparable gasoline vehicle, which he believes will help Americans get over the higher cost of diesel fuel.

“Diesel cars in the U.S. are poised to grow from 3 percent to as much as 15 percent of the market share by 2020,” Schaeffer said. “This year at the Detroit Auto Show there were 13 new choices for consumers that will be coming out in the next 18 months. One will be the Volkswagen Jetta TDi. That’s a car that’s going to get 44 miles per gallon on the highway.”

Still, diesel engine cars have a bad reputation to overcome, said Bobby Likis, CEO of the media company Car Clinic Productions.

“In the mid-70s, we had a similar oil crisis as we do today, but the (diesel) cars that were engineered then were smelly, they had low power, they had mechanical problems, they were noisy,” Likis said. “Our parents have shared those stories, saying ‘Well, I’ll tell you, I’ll never buy another diesel car.’.”“We just haven’t gotten over that.”

But Likis said it’s time we let go of the past. “That was 30 years ago,” he said.

Today, innovations like Mercedes-Benz’s BlueTec emissions-reduction system are making diesel vehicles much more attractive.

Schaeffer is also hopeful that these new developments, along with new and powerful diesel vehicle options, will help change diesel’s image.

“They’ve really cleaned up their act,” he said.

“A lot of people have gravitated toward the (Toyota) Prius and other hybrids because they want to make a statement about doing better about the environment,” Schaeffer said. “Diesel is an alternative fuel to gasoline. It is helping people make that statement and I think it’s going to get a lot more consideration than it ever has before.”