It's cost mixed with North American diesel take rates. The costs of adapting an engine to meet emissions standards here is very high, and the projected volumes are usually pretty low. Doesn't make a great business case, unfortunately.
Gonna dispute your hypothsis there, Force - or at least part of it. North American diesel take rates are indeed low - but not when you consider the limited availability of diesels!
A better metric would be % of diesel sales for models in which a diesel is available. If only 2% of models sold in NA are offered with a diesel, how can you be surprised if the diesel take rate is only 1% of all NA vehicles?
And since VW is currently the only mainstream MNFR to offer a diesel, what % of Jetta, Golf, and Passat sales are diesels? I'd wager close to half (though I don't know if VW would give you a breakdown on that stat). But the VW diesel take rate is pretty damn good - particularly in Canada, where our diesel taxes aren't punitive like in the US.
Now there may be some bias to this argument because if you really want a (cheaper) diesel, you are forced to buy a VW - thus inflating the VW diesel take rate. And if they had a more competitive base engine (than the 2.slow or 2.5L) perhaps less VW customers would choose the diesel (IMO their diesel really is vastly superior to those two engines - not so much to the 2.0T...)
You could make another, very valid, argument that the engine R&D resources at your company are better spent focused on developing a few core engines, and that by introducing diesel engines it would ciphen development from other (more broadly applicable) R&D. But to say that "Hyundai doesn't offer diesels because North Americans don't buy them" is somewhat disingenious - how many can they actually buy when only one company sells a reasonably priced diesel vehicle?
I guess we'll see how Mazda does with their diesel 6, and potentially Chevy with the Cruze.
