Some rather troubling news for those OEMs looking to foist SCR onto the US market at 2010 can be found in the UBS 13^th Quarterly Truck Survey.

From an admittedly rather small sample - 103 trucking companies - 81 per cent expressed an opinion suggesting that they would not consider buying a SCR engine that required periodic refilling of the AdBlue / DEF tank. Given that all of the engine suppliers - excepting Cummins and International - on the basis that the MaxxForce engine does actually get to EPA 10 - are going to offer SCR as the route to EPA 10 compliance, this is a problem. Can the system be configured to ensure that SCR refilling becomes a service item? We shall see, but the news certainly puts more pressure on the SCR-based OEMs. We're pretty confident that the only way SCR will develop a sufficiently large footprint within North America is through some deep discounting on the part of the interested parties.

We've noted in the past that PACCAR has two problems here; a new technology and a new brand. Interestingly, of the 103 respondents, only 41 per cent said that they would consider buying either a PACCAR branded engine. 59 per cent are not interested.  

So it looks like most of the OEMs are going to have a fight on their hands, and PACCAR is faced with a horribly difficult challenge. As for Cummins - strong brand, existing technology - seems like a very good mixture.