Fueling The Diesel Boom

Automotive Industries, Sept, 2001 by Alex James

Delphi entered the market through its acquisition last year of Lucas Diesel from TRW Inc. It plans to double production of its common-rail diesel injection systems by next year.

This year it will deliver one million systems to Renault and Ford from its two French facilities in La Rochelle and Blois. A second production line is being installed at Blois, which will take capacity to 1.5 million systems. The company is planning to add a third facility to meet the increased demand--this could be in the U.K., France or Poland.

It is supplying its system to Renault for the Clio, Ford on the Focus TDCi and Mondeo later this year. Delphi will also supply PSA and Hyundai-Kia, which is developing its own diesel engines. The first of these will be on the Matrix, a compact MPV, at the end of this year and the Accent next year.

Delphi is predicting that rotary-type injection pumps will disappear over the next three to four years, with common-rail systems use doubling to some six million engines a year. The unit injector system pioneered by Bosch with Volkswagen--the "pumpe duse" or PD engine--will also double to more than two million units.

Bosch's distributor pump, unit injector and common rail systems achieved sales of $4.5 billion in 2000, and sales will probably be $5.15 billion this year, said Wolfgang Chur, member of the Board of Management of Robert Bosch.