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The head of Honda says that the Japanese car-maker's yet-to-be released clean diesel cars will be profitable immediately, unlike expensive petrol-electric hybrid cars that still yield little or no profit after a decade on the market.
"Our diesel cars are going to have an appropriate level of profit from the start," Takeo Fukui said at the Detroit motor show.
He said Honda's clean diesel cars, to be launched in the United States next year, will not require a urea tank as most European systems do.
Aluminium instead of steel in the cylinder block meant Honda could make the engines using its existing engine facilities, keeping initial investments down.
Honda's new diesel drivetrain generates and stores ammonia within a two-layer catalytic converter to turn nitrogen oxide into harmless nitrogen.
Fukui said the new system would clear the same emissions regulations as petrol in the US.
Japan's second-biggest carmaker announced the launch of its first ultraclean diesel car in the US in 2009, as planned.
Honda's premium Acura brand will be the first to get the four-cylinder diesel engine.
Models fuelled by V6 diesel engines will follow after 2010.
Diesel cars now make up more than half of Europe's new cars but have a poor image among consumers in the US and Japan as being loud and dirty.
But Fukui said he expected Honda's sale of four-cylinder diesel cars to reach about 150,000 vehicles globally by around 2010 with the planned introduction in the US and Japan.
The car-maker now sells more than 100,000 diesel cars a year, all in Europe.
Honda also is due to begin selling low-cost hybrid cars in 2009.
Half of the planned 200,000 units of the hybrid-only family car are bound for North America.
A new hybrid sports car is set to follow, while the mass-volume Civic series also will get the cheap and improved hybrid system with the next remodelling.
Fukui said he expected the new hybrid system would be as profitable as conventional petrol cars, depending on the cars' selling price.
He has indicated that he wants to limit the price premium for consumers buying hybrid cars to around 200,000 yen ($2400) to achieve the company's target of powering 10 per cent of its global vehicle sales with hybrid cars by around 2010.
Honda produces its hybrid cars in Japan. While Fukui said he wanted to build at least 80 per cent of its cars sold in the US in North America, he was not now thinking of local production of hybrids in the region.
"We may be thinking about local production [in North America] around 2011 or 2012 when our global hybrid sales reach 400,000 to 500,000 cars a year, but we don't think it's all that important," he said.
* ULTRACLEAN D
* Aluminium will be used in the cylinder block instead of steel, keeping costs down.
* The new diesel drivetrain generates and stores ammonia within a two-layer catalytic converter to turn nitrogen oxide into harmless nitrogen.
* The new system will clear the same emissions regulations as petrol in the US.
* The first ultraclean diesel car will be launched in the US next year.
