Why There and Not Here???
 

I have spent a fair amount of time in Germany and Poland over the years and I can say there are a ton of European cars which seem to have fantastic aerodynamics when compared to a relative few here in the States. I can't say which cars are best aero efficiency wise, but I did see a lot of hatch style cars which followed the ideal template well and all seem to be offered with miserly little diesel engines as an option.

So why the heck doesn't GM or Ford give us the diesels here in the states that they do in Europe? My hunch is they're saving them for when they need to meet US Fuel Efficiency fleet standards in the future, then they'll be available so they can increase their FE average. God forbid we get a 52mpg Diesel Cruze now.
New Chevy Cruze Wagon

I mean who in America would want piles of crap like these that get 52 MPG (dripping sarcasm)
http://i49.tinypic.com/28i9oub.jpg

Full Size Image of 2013 Cruze Line Up (Europe Only)

Hyundai..Gotta ask ya...you really think this Sonata Wagon would be a tough sell here in the States getting 54 MPG?????

http://i46.tinypic.com/15rmeyh.jpg

Hyundai Sonata Wagon Full Size Image

I'm not sure about the rest of you, but I wouldn't be caught dead driving this Hyundai Elantra Wagon getting 62 MPG with sports car handling, 58 CuFt of Cargo, (compared to 70 CuFt in a Subie Outback or Honda CRV) and decent acceleration with a 124 HP engine.

http://i47.tinypic.com/29ohli0.jpg

Hyundai Elantra Wagon Full Size Image

Why?

Other than what you mentioned (having an ace up their sleeve to use when the time comes), there are a few other reasons why the US won't see cars with that kind of FE any time soon. First, the problem with diesel - most Americans regard it as fuel for dirty busses and trucks, which have more smoke than acceleration. VW is slowly changing that opinion with its TDIs, but it'll take a generation or two to change the mentality.

Second, emissions. Europe's standards favored low-CO2, allowing high-PM and -NOx diesels to easily thrive, which the EPA's and CARB's standards made much harder. In the '90's only Mercedes had a diesel which was clean enough for all 50 states.

Third, the European fuel consumption test is much stricter than the EPA's, ie cars have better numbers, but it'll take more than +5psi in your tires to beat them. Take a 55mpg car from Europe, run it through EPA's test and it'll get only 40 (someone here had a formula that approximated the comparison), which will be that much harder to sell.

Fourth, fuel prices. The average price of a gallon of gas around here is $6.50. If Americans had to pay twice as much for their fuel, then they would quickly buy out all of the high-mpg cars on the continent. Well, except for the ones who prefer to pray (either for Godly, or military, intervention) for lower gas prices instead of changing their habits.

Fifth, market. Europeans are used to smaller, less powerful cars, they haven't been brainwashed with the bigger, better, faster, more propaganda as much as Americans have since the 1940's. Urban areas are more compact and closer together, so public transport is a viable option, while the car-centered US has a legend about cruising down the road in your monster-engined hot-rod. Yes, huge SUVs and other penile prostheses are present in Europe, but not to the point of "I can't have a smaller car because it is unsafe between SUVs" hysteria.

Don't forget the whole imperial gallon being 20% more volume than the US gallon, either.

At 20% more volume per gallon my Fiesta would be around 54 MPG right now. It also makes $6.50 per gallon gas more like $5.20 a gallon here in the US, even less with the greater energy density of diesel. US manufacturers as well as the Europeans are working very diligently to get high efficiency gas engines to replace the diesels with their particulate problems.

The greatest roadblock is the attitude of a significant majority of US drivers and apparently their continuing percieved affluence, combined with pure ignorance of the effects of shipping 300 billion dollars annually overseas. I don.t have much confidence that this attitude will change significantly, unless an alternative to the status quo becomes an additional option.

I believe I have found that alternative, but the task of educating the public, is greater than the task of developing the alternative.

regards
Mech

No, I accounted for the imperial gallon in my MPG figures. That i30 wagon gets 78 MPG in GB. Google has a handy MPG/MPG UK/l-100KM conversion tool that pops up if you put something like 25mpg alone in the search.

Piwoslaw is in Poland which has lower fuel prices than most elewhere in Europe they are at $6.50 US dollars for a US Gallon, Brits and Germans are paying $7.85/Gal Today.

EPA & CARB
Go to a VW TDI forum and look at what VW is adding to there TDI to make them pass EPA standards. Plus in the process lowering MPG

Diesel is not the solution.

It only brings more complexity, more problems, more pollution (beyond fairly harmless CO2), and more expenses (purchase & maintenance).

I'm not the only one suffering issues with a diesel car, that the dealerships simply can't cure.

Hägar will be my last diesel car.

It is treu a diesel polutes more then benzine. But from the 100% of the total polution from al over the world only 6% is from road traffic. So is we all would drive 60mpg in a benzine car we could maybe manage 1% reduction. So a couple of diesels wont do much, and if they do more then 60 mpg, its not getting worse. They have to find something different then fossils to do much good. So i don't see p roblems why the whole cant drive 60 70+ mpg diesels. It still beats 15 mpg benzine cars in polution

GM killed the diesel market here in the 1970s with poorly designed 5.7L and 4 cylinder diesels.
Then the EPA effectivly banned them from cars for years by requireing an insane amount of exhaust scrubbing to get the car to pass emmissions.
They ignored the lower CO2 advantage for many years because that just wasn't on the political radar at the time.

Possibly another reason there are so many more fuel efficient vehicles in Europe vs the US is because the government has a much heavier hand in encouraging conservation through the following:
1. higher taxes on income vs the US in general, leaving less disposable income for transportation
2. higher taxes on fuels and subsidies for the most efficient fuel, diesel (though I'd heard that may be getting phased out?)
3. higher taxes on vehicles with higher displacement engines
4. higher recurring fees for registration for vehicles with higher displacement engines

So if you have less disposable income and the cost of living, the cost of fuel, and the cost of purchasing and keeping large displacement engined vehicles are all higher, the natural purchasing choice is to buy a small displacement (generally equating to small physical size) vehicle which uses the cheapest, most efficient fuel available... if you need a vehicle at all! If you are rich enough to afford it, you are not prevented from buying an SUV or large sedan, but I don't believe that the % that can do that in Europe is nearly as high there as it is here in the US.

I'm pretty sure someone mentioned that the diesel subsidies are going away in Europe, so that will change the dynamics a little bit... but I'd guess only on the fuel type.

I suspect that if similar measures were taken here, we'd see similar results... but of course we all know that even suggesting measures like that would be political suicide for any politician that offers them, so it'll never happen.