I think it's as others have said, that there is a perception by most American consumers that diesels are dirty and noisy.
Japan and the US are identical in this perception!
I was in Japan in December and January just prior to the CX-5 launch. I was considering visiting Mazda in Hiroshima to get up to date information, or go to the Fukuoka Car Show to see it in the flesh, but instead decided to go skiing in Nagano and get married.
But I did get a bombardment of CX-5 information on Japanese TV and media regarding the product (thankfully my wife translates the difficult stuff for me).
Two important points were made in Japanese media reports:
* Japan diesel usage is 1%, with most diesels being commercial
* Japanese perceive diesel to be noisy and dirty
The story is identical to the US....
BUT... Mazda Japan changed their tactic to deal with perception.
They said clearly:
* We know potential of the CX-5 Diesel
* We will provide to the public their perception is wrong
To cater these points, all the major TV stations ran specials where famous TV reporters were all driven around Hiroshima in both petrol and diesel models, and various demonstrations with white towels over the exhaust were done to show there was no carbon soot.
It worked....
They estimated the take up of diesels to be 10% of all domestic sales in Japan, or a total of 1000 units - or 100 Diesels.
Instead, in the first month they sold:
* 5840 Diesels (A massive 58 times the amount expected)
* 2160 Petrols (A conservative 2 times the amount expected)
Nevertheless, sales records were broken and possibly Japan had to steal from supplies that would have otherwise gone elsewhere (easy when you're in control of all production and exports).
All Mazda's worldwide (including North America) were given access to test petrol and diesel models well before decisions regarding units were discussed.
After this, all markets (except North America) have made a decision to sell the diesel.
It's fairly easy for the US to prepare their customers with media announcements in a similar way to the media releases I watched that must have gone someway to breaking the Japanese perception and creating the whopping 58 times record sales in Japan domestically.
