Mazda 6 diesel. Sign me up.

Looks like they made the age old mistake of assuming UK mpg's are the same as US. You'd also be lucky to get anywhere near 57 mpg UK in one as the European fuel economy tests are not worth the paper they're printed on. Start stop technology, 0-60 times measured in minutes, grills taped over, engines running on non available thinner oil, all to get better stats.

BBC News - 'Carmakers manipulate emissions tests'

 

We're moving away from a diesel. After years of paying higher than premium fuel prices for diesel fuel and so-so mileage, there are better alternatives. Say, a high fuel mileage vehicle that uses regular gas...

 

Now they smog our diesels and you have to use UL Sulfur. Industry still runs on diesel, but someone higher up doesn't want it in US cars. From what I understand, even the "real" mpg diesel options in Europe far surpass most of the US gas MPG options. But what do I know, and it doesn't matter because we can't have them anyway.

 

The above number is from NEDC test cycle and it has nothing to do with EPA number.
It's basicly the same Skyactiv engine as it's used in Mazda CX-5, it has some brake regen improvements (i-eloop with capacitors), you can expect around 40-50 MPG in real world, it's good but still lacking >10% behind Prius considering fuel energy content and CO2. It's priced a little higher than Prius, but you get more (room, power) for the money.

 

Does current diesels still start well in Canadian winters? My experience with diesel has been limited, but when I do see them, it ain't pleasant. Noisy, hard to start.

 

Winter blend diesel is important, where I live it's rated for -20° C (-4 ° F), in northern countries I think its rated even lover. Fuel filter can be problematic, so it's suggested you change it regularly. When cold the engine may sound more like an older diesel, but it runs. I'm talking in general, not for the Mazda.

 

I remember an old American car a friend once had. It was a 6 litre engine that got 12 mpg and only had 120 bhp, had a mechanical points ignition system, you had to manually grease the nipples on suspension parts. Does that mean all American cars are crap? Nope. Times have changed since 1978.

 

I don't know how cold it is to start, but the skyactiv is not like the old diesels. It has some high precision high pressure direct injection that helps atomize the fuel firing as many as 9 times per cycle, as well as variable lift on the valves, allowing it to suck the warmer exhaust back into the cylinder for cold starts. glow plugs should do the rest. Unlike many of the modern european diesels the low compression allows it to have lower NOx emissions eliminating the need to have a urea tank for scr. NVH should be higher with a diesel than a gas engine, but it should not be as rough as the old diesels at all.

The big question is how it will do on epa tests, and we need to wait for that. My guess is it will be a little better than the vw tdi engines are because of electrical storage into the supercap, but we won't know for sure until later.

 

This UK website says 108 gC02/km combined. For comparison, Prius is 89 gC02. This suggests that normalized fuel cost will match a 41 mpg petrol engine in the US. Definite improvement over Vdub, but barely into Prius fuel economy territory.

Kudos to Mazda for hitting Euro2015 without SCR.

This car is about as good as it gets diesel tech wise in Europe for a car of similar specs. Since it is coming to the US, all the people who have been crying that the US market has been ignored by the diesel crowd will get to put their money where there mouth is. I'm guessing most will crawl back in their holes, thinking that once again a sub-par diesel has come here, never realizing why the Euro numbers look so much better.

Sounds like a competitive car for people with old-style preferences of looks, who are somewhat hard of hearing.

 

The only drawback I can think of is how expensive diesel is to maintain and repair.

 

For comparison the gen2 Prius got 104g/km. The newest Honda Insight gets 96/105g/km and the Prius Plus (Euro version of the Prius V) gets 96/101g/km. The Euro versions of the latest VW Golf (not GTI) get between 99/123g/km.

So 108g/km aint bad for a diesel car considering its size. OK, it's a manual, but some people might not mind that if all they do is highway driving.

 

It's a Mazda diesel, not a VW!

 

While the current T3 Prius is 89 gC02/km. Odd, since the EPA only improved ~8.7% between generations.

 

Didn't see anything on Mazda's USA website about any diesels yet.

 

Pretty sure it's just Europe...like most cool small diesels.