Like most businesses, success in the auto industry often is about staying one step ahead of the competition—or about not falling too far behind. That's why Volkswagen has begun pushingcompressed-natural-gas vehicles in Europe. And why BMW finally is putting its marketing musclebehind its clean-diesel vehicles in the United States.
Both companies are diesel leaders in Europe, where diesel-powered vehicles account for about half of all sales. But in the US, diesel still accounts for only about 3 percent of the market. And most of that is scored by Volkswagen and Audi brands, though BMW also has some diesel offerings.
Volkswagen now is hoping to take advantage of the changing political and supply climate for natural gas by repeating its success with clean-diesel engines, known as TDI for "Turbo Direct Injection," with a natural-gas powertrain whose acronym in German is TGI. A variant of the Volkswagen Golf is the first model to bear a TGI BlueMotion logo in Europe, and it will be followed by a station wagon.
Vehicles using compressed natural gas, or CNG, have only a minuscule share of the European market and, likewise, in the US, mostly in fleets. But many nations now are recognizing that they are essentially awash in natural gas, and political support also is building for a transition to the fuel. It helps that natural gas offers the opportunity to emit 25 percent less CO2 than conventional gas- or diesel-powered cars and that they're much less expensive to develop than electric vehicles in order to provide the same environmental impact, as Automotive News Europe noted.
But while Volkswagen tries to repeat its trailblazing success of TDI with TGI, BMW is attempting to catch up in the US market to Audi. The Volkswagen-owned brand makes the vast majority of clean-diesel sales to American premium buyers and has been expanding its TDI lineup this year, with available 3-Series and 5-Series diesel vehicles—both of which ring in at lower prices than the brand's ActiveHybrid range—but is only now hedging a major marketing effort behind the offerings.
"We have authenticity and credibility when it comes to diesel," Dan Creed, CMO of BMW of North America, told the New York Times. "You go to Europe, we have markets where 80 percent of what we sell has diesel engines."
To do so, BMW has launched a humorous advertising campaign under the tag line, "It's time to come clean," using double entendre. For instance, in one spot, for the BMW 5 Series diesel, a wife corrals her husband and says, "We need to talk." She says: "I don't know how to tell you this. I've been bored lately. I just needed more excitement ... It's just ... Well, I've switched to diesel." Then the ad shifts to them riding together in the 5 Series, and after he revs the engine and demonstrates the performance chops of diesel, she says, "Do that again."
BMW plans to run such ads in a major fall campaign during NFL football and the network premieres of prime-time TV series, yet the campaign will lag behind the major advertising effortsthat Volkswagen Group has executed in the US behind clean diesel for Audi and VW brands.
Or, as BMW development chief Herbert Diess told Automotive News Europe in a discussion about CNG vehicles, "As a small manufacturer, we don't have the opportunity to change customer behavior." Volkswagen should lead the way in CNG deployment, he said. "Then we would follow—if it works."
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