OT- Why do Mercedes diesel based vans like Sprinter get such good mileage?

So I have a 2003 Sprinter van that uses a inline 5 cylinder and is High Roof with a ton of space.

Why aren't there any other diesel engines (or are there?) that power other vans the same size that are close to the same mileage?

Are Mercedes diesel cars also a step above other diesel cars in fuel consumption? I've never owner a Mercedes car.

The only other van I've owned that had decent consumption was back about 17-18 years ago when I had an Isuzu box van, and it didn't have anywhere near the acceleration and was a lot noisier.

I'm shopping for a motorhome and I only want to consider a Mercedes based engine on it based on this but wondered why I'm not seeing other diesel engines with at least close performance and consumption? You would think the auto and truck industry would be competitive enough to have several contenders in every category. What am I missing?

The USA has different diesel emission standards than the rest of the world.
So already developed diesel engines are not legal here.
Each manufacturer must homogulate an engine specifically for the US market.
Depending on the engine, this can easily cost a few hundred million dollars.

most global automakers are reluctant to do this, given the historic sales of smaller diesels in the USA- which have consistently been lousy.

Big V8 and V10 diesels like the cummins have sold in pickups here, well enough to make it worth the automakers while.

But most smaller car engines have been pretty poor sellers.

Only the biggest auto companies have spent the time and money to homogulate diesels for the US markets, and usually only for very high profit cars- Mercedes and BMW have both done it, big Audis, and then, VW, and we all know how that worked out. The Mercedes diesels of today are engineered for high horsepower and acceleration, not high mileage.
30 years ago, Mercedes sold less thirsty diesels here, but not now.
Plus, pretty much the only way passenger car diesels are passing US specs is with Urea injection, which is expensive, fussy, and needs regular maintenance.

I have driven a sprinter a fair amount- and its a great engine- the 5 cylinder- but I wouldnt say it gets great mileage- not compared to the diesels they put in that same van in europe.
In america, we want big, we want powerful.

They sell vans in Europe with a whole range of diesels starting at 1liter, and the sprinter can be had with a 2 liter 88hp diesel. It gets much better mileage. But its slow.

Not aware of any V-8 or V-10 Cummins Engines in pickups.. Mine is just a little straight 6...

In short it is a smaller displacement engine. Being a turbo/diesel it has the power to pull like a bigger engine yet use fuel sparingly when running at cruising speed.

Davis In SC said:

Not aware of any V-8 or V-10 Cummins Engines in pickups.. Mine is just a little straight 6...

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small v8 is available in nissan now

What does it get for fuel economy? I've heard the Sprinters are decent, but never heard anyone rave about them before.

The Mercedes car engines held onto indirect injection forever. IDI diesels have different characteristics from the diesels most Americans are used to. IDI engines have higher powerbands and make less torque. They are quieter and they are less fuel efficient overall. Light loads, like a car on the freeway they are good, but the heavier the load, the fuel consumption increases dramatically.

My vote for the most fuel efficient light truck engine in history goes to the 89-93 5.9 Cummins. Pound for pound of work nothing Mercedes has ever made comes close to the VE Pump Cummins efficiency. If you put a 5.9 Cummins in a 4500 lb car or 1/2 ton truck it will get 25++ MPG and be a fucking rocket. A 5.9 Cummins also has like 1/3 LESS parts than a Mercedes or Isuzu engine.

Ries,
you had me looking up a word I had never come across before whether spelled correctly or as you spelled it. Now I wonder if I will ever remember it so I can try to impress my friends.

I am sure you meant to write: Homologate | Definition of Homologate by Merriam-Webster

www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/homologate
Merriam‑Webster
transitive verb. : sanction, allow; especially : to approve or confirm officially.

Normally I would not comment on a casual misspelling of a common word, but this 25-center seemed to deserve the attention.

Denis

My 2006 sprinter gets 23mpg around town and as much as 26mpg freeway, which is really quite good for such a large vehicle (I can stand up in it.) On the other hand, it's slow. So slow that when something goes a little bit haywire in the engine it can be kind of hard to tell.... Until it's so slow it's dangerous. Cannot tow anything very large. They are however very popular with certain users, and you see simlar configurations (not necessarily engines) from Ford, Dodge (a non sprinter), I think Nissan, at least one other. I very much like mine.

But Ries is correct - by american standards it's a truly feeble engine. So yes, it will get 26mpg on the freeway at 65mph. But it won't go 85mph up even an interstate hill.

By comparison my 2008 F250 can physically tow more than it's own weight, push through pretty steep snow, and so forth. It gets very poor fuel mileage and I only drive it when I particularly need some function it offers (seating for 5 or 6, outside compartment for gas bottles, 4x4 in snow, tow heavy trailer, etc.) It's very useful, but a very different profile.

But to OP's apparent deeper question - the American market mostly wants more accleration/top speed/performance (and believe me a sprinter can drive you nuts sometimes) and for a given level of engine development those things imply less mileage.

Also, there's a mindset that "diesel is best for trucks" and I'm sure for particular levels of engine development and vehicle applications, that is true. It's also true that the mindset is so strong that sometimes you should buy the diesel because it's clear that's the "standard thing to do" and will make it easier to sell, etc. later. Sometimes (including 2006 era sprinters) the diesel version is much more efficient and long lived - it wouldn't have to be that way, that's just the engine choices at hand at the time. BUT - all of that aside, there's no law-of-physics reason that a properly developed gasoline engine in say a Ford Transit couldn't be every bit as cost efficient, etc.

Garwood said:

If you put a 5.9 Cummins in a 4500 lb car or 1/2 ton truck it will get 25++ MPG and be a fucking rocket. A 5.9 Cummins also has like 1/3 LESS parts than a Mercedes or Isuzu engine.

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Lat year I drove to the East coast and back (just over 2000 miles) in a 2015 Ram 2500HD crewcab short-box 4x4 with the 6.7L Cummins ; it got 24-25mpg on the freeway (per the onboard computer but tallied with the fuel I put in) loaded with about 2000+ lbs of equipment in the bed.

The weight is nothing for that truck but the equipment was ungainly enough to hurt the coefficient of drag. Also this truck is jacked-up straight from the factory. Our fully grown Labrador retriever can go under the truck without hunching. I was doing about 65-70mph, mostly 70mph.

I'm wrapping up 2 week's vacation in Bavaria. 95%-ish of all vehicles here are diesel. They are very concerned about emissions and fuel cost, so I think they wouldn't go so heavily to diesel if it wasn't economic and clean (relatively). I'm renting a VW Tiguan with a 2L TDI. It's a nice driver, tons of low-end torque, quite comfortable to take me down the autobahn at 160-180KPH (when my wife lets me ).

I'd be content to own such a vehicle in the US, except that diesel costs more than gasoline in the US (unlike here, where diesel is 15% lower than gasoline), and diesel version costs significantly more than gasoline version.

I see almost 0 hybrids here. A few Tesla though.

Regards.

Mike

To answer in short diesels awesome.

I regularly get 47-51mpg in my VW TDI. It's got over 410k Mike's on the clock and it runs like a clock.

You can take a full size pickup with a cummins 5.9 or older power stroke and literally tow another equivalent full size pickupb that is a gas burner and get better fuel milage and about the same acceleration than if you were driving the gas burner.

IMHO Ries nailed it, there are VW versions of the sprinter available with VW engines and some of the smaller vans with VW, fiat, PSA or Mercedes engines. Sorry, not sold in your part of the world.
Fwiw, the 2.7 Mercedes diesel was also used in Grand Cherokees and it's a good thing-but no Cummins. Very refined and a very well matched transmission.

Worth adding over here there common, MPG's in the 30-40 range is common, but we do have a bit bigger gallon than you guys.

There not really designed to tow, its pretty rare to see one towing over here, due to current licensing laws too few under 35's have licenses that let them tow with over a 3.5 ton van - trailer combo! Over here there a typical trade persons or delivery van. Worth adding here in the uk a typical vans speed limit is 10 miles a hour less than a cars on faster roads! This is enforced hard so gets expensive quick if your not careful hence going at high speeds not such a issue. Most though spend there time start stopping in around town delivery roles.

The wife has a 70 mile commute every work day.
Got her a Chevy Diesel Cruze. Great!
Has lots of low-end torque for merge acceleration. Gets 40 mpg most of the time.
On one road trip, cruise control for a long time @ 80 mph, the computer said it achieved 57 MPG.
The only bad thing is that there are no dealer service departments here that are staffed by sentient mammals.
Have damaged an otherwise good car in many ways.
Never take it to the Chevy service department any more, unless extreme duress.

I'm coming at this from the other direction. 2006 Mercedes E320 CDI. basically the same motor (OM648, inline turbo 6) from that generation sprinter, stuffed in the mid size (for MB) sedan. 4 speed transmission, enuf torque that I rarely give it full throttle unless I'm really in a hurry and certain it's pointed the right direction. 30 mpg around town, 40+ (I've seen 50 on occasion) when it's on the highway.
I put a lot of research into this before buying this particular car, and couldn't be happier with it.

Garwood said:

My vote for the most fuel efficient light truck engine in history goes to the 89-93 5.9 Cummins. Pound for pound of work nothing Mercedes has ever made comes close to the VE Pump Cummins efficiency. If you put a 5.9 Cummins in a 4500 lb car or 1/2 ton truck it will get 25++ MPG and be a fucking rocket. A 5.9 Cummins also has like 1/3 LESS parts than a Mercedes or Isuzu engine.

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Guessing you aren't real familiar with the Mercedes diesels then, and I think you're overestimating the 0-60 time of the first gen Cummins trucks.

Long before Dodge started stuffing Cummins under the hoods of their pickups MB had some pretty bulletproof diesels in their passenger cars, like the OM617. Like the Cummins, also used a Bosch mechanical pump (M or MW series). Like the Cummins, lasts for goddamn ever. Most consumers won't be familiar but the bigger trucks like the Unimog also got some big, powerful, reliable I6 diesels like the OM352.

As with most manufacturers, what the rest of the world gets for light, efficient diesels blows us out of the water. Just because its not on the streets here doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Toyota, Nissan, BMW, VW all have diesel trucks & SUV's that are light and efficient just not sold here. Fucking shitheads at the EPA are who you can blame.

The only reason people *think* the first gen cummins trucks are fast is because its so easy to add HP with simple mods to the fuel system. But those trucks were SLOW off the showroom floor, fortunately not much difference in acceleration between unloaded and pulling a 14k trailer.

Sprinter aerodynamics help, too. Especially in comparison to your average tilt-cab box truck. As you're shopping, be sure to observe 6-8 year-old Sprinters with respect to rust. In the salt-happy midwest, they don't last long. Not a good thing for a motorhome, (if you're after a Sprinter-chassis offering) but that's tempered a little by the fact you probably won't be camping a lot in the winter.

Chip

Hmmmm

People in europe think diesels are clean, but here, if I am behind a diesel, I can generally smell it, even recent auto diesels. But it is rare to smell anything behind a gas auto, When I do smell anything behind a gasser, I generally look around and can find an older carburetor vehicle ahead of me. The smell vanishes when they turn off.

OK, smelly exhaust isn't necessarily pollution, I suppose....although it would surprise me if it were not. But diesels also produce very fine carbon particles, even clean diesels, and the particles are apparently quite carcinogenic.

So why are diesels considered so clean in europe?

It depends what you mean by clean and no-polluting, and the definitions tend to shift over time. At the moment USA is rather different to the rest of the world in their definitions and perceptions of problems. In Europe, US standards of fuel economy and CO2 production would be completely unacceptable, both market wise and for taxation. That is why we have lots of very efficient smaller diesel engines. The problem is that it is difficult to make very high performance diesels that meet tight NOx requirements and particulate level consciousness is rapidly increasing. Ideally we would like small high performance diesels that emit extremely low CO2, low NOx and minimal particulates, but that is difficult to do. There is a perception that even if such engines were made by Mercedes or VW/Audi (they are nearly there now), there would be legislation to prevent their sale in USA.

Just to illustrate the differences - I have an Audi A8 (diesel of course). A very nice luxury car which returns about 40mpg without me being particularly economy conscious. Small diesel cars are getting around 83 mpg on a combined cycle. Those economy/CO2 results are really important in Europe.

There was, initially, far more concern over CO2 than over NOx in Europe. In the US, all fuel types have the same NOX limits for cars, but CO2 wasn't controlled for specific models. Nowadays, the Euro 6 emmisions standards are very similar to the US limits for NOx with Diesels and particulate emissions are much more tightly restricted. Urea injection is becoming far more common, but some engines still pass the current NOx limits with EGR and control of injection timing.

Did 200 miles in my Dacia compact car last week and averaged 80.3 mpg (== 67 US mpg). Wasn't going very fast though, 50-70 all of the way.