Commercial vehicle diesel engine specialist Cummins has signed a partnership with a major car maker to produce light-duty diesel engines for pickup trucks and sport utility vehicles but is not naming its new customer.
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The Columbus, Indiana-based company, which already supplies diesels for some of DaimlerChrysler’s Dodge Ram pickups, said that for “competitive reasons” the company wanted its name to remain “confidential” and would only describe it as “a major automotive manufacturer serving the North American market”, Reuters reported.
Cummins has existing relationships with a number of companies that fit that description, though none of them, except Chrysler, are to supply engines for passenger vehicles, though it supplies medium- and heavy-duty truck engines to Ford, Volvo and Volkswagen, the report added.
So far it has no similar partnerships with any Asian automaker but Bear Stearns analysts Peter Nesvold reportedly speculated the unnamed partner might be Nissan Motor. Nesvold said that he has heard “on multiple occasions” that Nissan wants to introduce a diesel version of its US-built Titan pickup for model year 2009.
So far Nissan has offered the Titan – a ‘full-size’ Tennessee-built competitor for the likes of Ford’s F-series pickup truck, GM’s Chevrolet Silverado and the Ram – with a petrol-powered V8.
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By GlobalData“Nissan … concluded that it needed a diesel to more fully take on the F-series, Silverado, and Dodge Ram, but that it lacked technical capabilities to handle the US emissions regulations,” Nesvold wrote in the note, according to Reuters.
Nesvold reportedly said that Warrenville, Illinois-based truck and engine-maker Navistar International had also been bidding on the Nissan project.
Cummins spokesman Mark Land declined to comment to Reuters on any speculation regarding the partner. He said that the engine was still in the prototype stage and that site selection for the plant that will make it had only been narrowed down to “a handful of states.” The first vehicles with the engine are expected to hit the market by the end of the decade.
