In a couple of hours, someone from Cummins - and we assume that it will be the affable Jim Kelly - will stand up before the press and announce that North America's last remaining independent HD engine manufacturer is to perform a U Turn, and will use SCR rather than EGR as its route to compliance for EPA 10.
Trebles all round at Daimler, Volvo and Paccar, and cue a distinct air of nervousness at Navistar. We'll have more to say about this when we've listened to what CMI has to say, but the smart money is on a combination of rising diesel prices and inferior fuel economy with EGR.
What does this say about Navistar's claims for Maxxforce? If MAN - Maxxforce's designer - says that it can't reach Euro VI without a significant penalty, then the assumption has to be that the same engine will suffer the same penalty at EPA 10. As such, we have to assume that a similar announcement will emerge from Warrenville at some point in the future; good PR management would suggest sometime late on the 4th November.
This is excellent news for the SCR 3. Not least does it allow them - all Cummins users - to go up against the external engine choice on the basis of non-differentiated technology, but it also simplifies, and may yet prove to encourage the roll-out of a DEF (AdBlue) infrastructure in the US, something that we were beginning to assume that all three would end up paying for.