Oct

Subaru aims for diesel cars by end of 2007

Posted by admin Published in Diesel, Hybrids, Subaru

Up until now Subaru has never produced a diesel engine, and didn’t have the resources to develop both diesel and hybrid drive-trains. that all changed a year ago when General Motors sold the Subaru stake they bought in 1999 to Toyota. General Motors was having financial problems and needed to offload most of their abroad affiliates that weren’t contributing to the bottom line. that proved to be a boon to Subaru as they suddenly had access to Toyota’s industry main Hybrid Synergy drive technology. As a outcome they could focus their resources on developing a diesel engine in the familiar boxer layout.

Subaru expects to have their

first diesel engine on the market in Europe by the end of 2007 and they anticipate half of their projected 100,000 European sales to be diesels by the 2010 model year. Chief Executive Kyoji Takenaka projected that diesels would eventually be 10-20 percent of sales in the US and Japanese markets as well. At some point after the diesels are introduced, Subaru additionally expects to introduce a hybrid power-train based on Toyota technology although nothing is confirmed right now.

[Source: MSNBC]

Original post by Sam Abuelsamid