Don't count on it.

MWM won't back away from SCR because Navistar won't let it. You see, Navistar figures to move to SCR for North America as soon as it can catch up to its competition in this advanced technology.

If you read the CARB letter closely it plainly says that this is a non-event. Navistar knows this too but they wanted to make this letter known just to try to add confusion and delay to the 2010 regulations. Navistar is aided by confusion and delay because they are dreadfully behind their competitors in the race to 2010 and need to pull out every trick in the book to have a shot at pulling off the biggest snow job in our industry's history.

Mark my words: Navistar will be using SCR as soon as possible but needs a lot more time than Volvo, Daimler, and Cummins. Navistar is searching its soul right now deciding if it should just own up to the enormous miscalculation it has made and get on with it, find someone else to file suit against, or use the refusal of the EPA to break the rules for Navistar to somehow "discover" that SCR isn't hazardous at all.

Which avenue Navistar chooses to "come clean" could be a good source for a poll or even an office pool.

You say that "MWM won't back away from SCR because Navistar won't let it."

There may be another reason MWM won't back away from SCR: MWM's SCR is legal in Brazil.

Also, a reason Navistar does not respond to O.Dixon: His obsessive attacks on Navistar make him more of a jihadist than a journalist.

On reading the message I sent, I realize that given the cotext of modern times, the "j" word I used could be easily misundertood. I meant to describe someone who is on a crusade against this, that or the other thing. It would have been more appropriate to use the world "crusader".

Your ecumenism is duly noted.

Ah, yes, the image of the noble Saladin, leading his Saracens against the Infidels.

He could probably spell better, though.

Some clarity is needed here - there is no confusion outside of Warrenville. Most everyone involved in the trade understands that the approach of minimizing particulate matter in-cylinder and removing NOx from the exhaust stream by means of a benign catalytic process is the best technical and economic approach to the challenges imposed by JPN09, EURO IV, V, and ultimately, VI, and for both EPA07 and EPA10. On the latter point, someone needs to calculate how much oil we've had to buy from the aforementioned Saracens that could have been left in the ground, had SCR been deployed in 2007 rather than delayed 3 years.

Journalists and analysts not only have the right, but also the obligation, to highlight inconsistencies and outright falsehoods in the positions of those they report on, be they political figures, celebrities, or enterprises.

The fact that this one company seems to have a lock on the market for such grist doesn't make a humble scribe a tormentor or persecuter, for merely doing his job.

Jihadist, Crusader and now Humble.

The jibes keep coming.

You say "Some clarity is needed here - there is no confusion outside of Warrenville. Most everyone involved in the trade understands that the approach of minimizing ..." ; in other words most everyone prefers SCR over EGR.

A few months ago, the SCR OEMs commissioned a poll which showed that 31% of respondents preferred EGR over SCR, up from 29% in a poll conducted last November. If 31% of buyers do in fact end up buying EGR, that means that Navistar will be No.1 in market share.

Navistar's own poll showed that 51% of those polled preferred EGR.

As to the "humble scribe", first he is not just a writer, he claims to be a "journalist", and journalists are required to REPORT the facts of a story in a balanced manner, especially identifying the pros and cons. A journalist who fails to meet such professional metric, whatever else he may be, it does not make him humble.

With all due respect, your thought that International is dreadfully behind its competitors doesn't hold water with me. Given International's partnership with MAN and the MaxxForce MAN engines (D20 and D26), International could have SCR tomorrow morning courtesy of MAN, as MAN has the same engines running today at Euro-6 which is only marginally apart from EPA2010.

Your friend in Australia wanted to know what was what with CAT trucks. Here's more (which you don't need to post, just FYUF):

http://www.ttnews.com/articles/basetemplate.aspx?storyid=22574

First of all, MAN doesn't have Euro 6 engines running anywhere close to a highway-ready application. Euro 6 is 3 or 4 years away...EPA10 is 8 or 10 months away (after epa07 engines are "exhausted".) Navistar hasn't delivered ONE 2010 compliant truck to a customer yet. NONE. And I'm only talking about a 0.5 g truck. If they can't get that right then I don't think they could get SCR right. Just my opinion, though.

Secondly, Navistar doesn't even have an engine capable of competing in the North American longhaul market...except an EPA2007 Cummins ISX. The mid-bore MaxxForce 12.4L (which is a bored & stroked 10.5L) is just not going to cut it. It's not even fuel efficient today when stacked up to the big bore offerings of Daimler(14.8L) and Cummins (14.9L). Adding more EGR to it just exacerbates the problem. The supposed MaxxForce 15 is a couple years away. Even when it comes out it will be a bit of a question mark. Built off the Cat Acert series is troubling if you ask me.

The reason I'm using the term "dreadfully behind" is that while their competitors are delivering 2010 test units to customers and truly improving their products, Navistar is playing a negative delay game by using the US court system to launch negative marketing shots at SCR. That is unseemly if you ask me. The pure drivel that comes out of the mouths of anyone associated with Navistar these days is quite telling that something is wrong with either their technology or their strategy...or both.

Can Navistar succeed ? Possibly. Can they do it by trashing SCR and hopefully winning some kind of delay or induction of confusion into the mix ? Probably not. Ultimately, Navistar will have to produce an engine lineup that allows it to compete against the global juggernauts Volvo, Daimler, and now Paccar. It seems to me that the surest path to do that would be to work WITH Cummins and not against it.

While Euro-6 is still ahead of us, I have no doubt that MAN can and has developed Euro-6 level engines for endurance testing. It's simply a rebalancing of two existing technologies, EGR and SCR, that MAN already has extensive experience with. MAN can provide this to partner Navistar at any time, for a price. I don't understand your thought process that MAN's 12.4L D26 "won't cut it". It's cutting it very well in Europe where the 44-ton max GVW is much higher than the US's 36-tons. For most operators, 11-13 liter engines offer the best balance of power, torque, weight, fuel economy and cost of purchase and maintainence over the life cycle. 15-16 liter engines are popular with owner operators, but hardly required to get the job accomplished (except in specialized heavy hauling and off-road applications) in the US market.

Commenting on how easy it is for MAN to provide it's technology to NAV is a gross over-simplification of the truth. A Euro truck/emissions engine compared to a US truck/emissions engine isn't an apples to apples comparison by any stretch.

From Euro-1 thru Euro-5, I'd be the first to agree with you. But that will not be true anymore with the arrival of Euro-6, as Euro-6 is almost identical to EPA2010 with only minor differences. In effect, any truckmaker that can engineer Euro-6 or EPA2010 can make the necessary adjustments to meet the other. So I say again, MAN knows how to balance its EGR and SCR technology to meet Euro-6 (its an easy jump unlike Euro-5 since we're simply combining two existing technologies), and could supply it to Navistar to meet EPA2010 if their American customers wanted it.

Read the next post about Euro6 on the blog's homepage. EPA10 and Euro6 are not the same emissions level. Close, but not close enough for the EPA to approve. Packaging differences from Europe to the US are very big issues. Of course it can be done- anything can be done. Providing it to Navistar 'at any time' is where you are wrong. Doing it correctly could easily take a year or more.

Almost forgot- Euro6 is years away meaning any manufacturer in Europe is probably in the very early stages of prototypes at this point. I'll be generous and only tack on another year to my previous estimation.

Euro-6 and EPA2010 are not quite the same, but for the first time when comparing Euro and EPA emissions requirements, they have become VERY close.

Euro-6 NOx requirement is 0.4, EPA2010 is 0.27

Euro-6 PM requirement is 0.01, EPA2010 is 0.013

This is why a say any truckmaker that has engineered Euro-6 or EPA2010 can bridge over and meet the other. MAN can certainly do it and thus could offer teh necessary technology to Navistar (for a price).

While I agree that 13L engines may have their place in North America eventually, mostly due to the shortening of average routes of linehaul applications, the 65+ mph run on the US interstate highway system favors bigger displacement on average.

taking a 10.5L engine that is bored and stroked to 12.4L...then adding excessively high amounts of EGR to that engine makes a risky situation even riskier.

The MBE4000 is a rebadged version of the uber-successful OM457 from Europe. The OM457 wins awards in Europe as a linehaul engine. In North America that engine had many shortcomings mostly due to the higher load factors here resulting from higher speeds of interstate travel. By the way, the MF13 block is from the same design as the MBE4000. The use of CGI helps some but doesn't cure the basic shortcomings.

Navistar threw out the MaxxForce 15 at least a couple of years before it will be ready just to signal to people it will develop its lineup in the future. In other words, they know they can't compete in N.A. for the long haul market with a 12.4L.

Navistar can't compete? That's not what the stats say.

A year or so ago, Navistar's market share for Class 8 was less than 20%. It is now around 30%:

http://messages.finance.yahoo.com/Stocks_%28A_to_Z%29/Stocks_N/threadview?m=tm&bn=12322&tid=44147&mid=44147&tof=2&rt=2&frt=2&off=1

Navistar is using someone else's engines to grow their share.Cummins. When they run that well dry they will be forced to go it alone with a maxxedout 10.5L engine competing against the big boys. Until their ACERT 2 engine comes out in 2012. Game. Set. Match., unless they repent and bring Cummins back into the fold with SCR.

Navistar's own new engines for HDs have been in use this year, as I understand it.