BlueTec

New diesels will get better mileage and have cleaner emissions than your average car. Pictured: 2009 Jetta SportWagen 2L TDI Clean Diesel.Later this year (see the timeline below), we will finally begin to see an influx of new model diesels in the United States. While diesels make up 50% of the market share of vehicles in Europe, they’re still trying to shrug off the stigma of being dirty, noisy beasts here in the US. So what changed?

Mercedes plans to release a diesel-hybrid SUV capable of 40 miles per gallon, with cleaner emissions than your standard car. Demo’d at the 2008 Geneva Auto show, the SUV is built on Mercedes’ relatively new BlueTec emissions control technology—a combination of catalytic converters and advanced chemical processing that scrubs out the worst pollutants produced by the diesel engine.