Just got notification from my dealer today that Chrysler told them they can start ordering 1500 diesels. Its not in their ordering banks yet, but they thought it would be in a couple days.
Better let not be sacrificed riding the leading edge of the sword. Best to wait and let the initial months pass to let the inevitable problems get resolved.
The ordering system is opened nationwide at the same time. It is a country by country thing though so US may have the banks open prior to CA (or vice versa...).
I believe the next cycle is on the 10th but don't quote me on that. As a FYI diesel job 1 dates have not changed since I last got asked about them.
Edit: Next order date is the 11th. Not sure if diesel is in that.
The ordering system is opened nationwide at the same time. It is a country by country thing though so US may have the banks open prior to CA (or vice versa...).
I believe the next cycle is on the 10th but don't quote me on that. As a FYI diesel job 1 dates have not changed since I last got asked about them.
They will have them at the State Fair of Texas at the end of this month
they will be the Pre Production vehicles, not the production vehicles
i would almost bet they start taking orders during the Fair
Donlen finally updated, after over 2 weeks. They're showing the Dec 2 date now.
The Jeep forums are talking about how their diesel deliveries are getting pushed back for the fourth time. New dates are the end of this month.
There's a quote somewhere from a Chrysler rep saying that they're trying to build inventory for the initial release, but this doesn't add up for orders.
It just kinda makes you wonder.
There are several legitimate articles out there on the reason for the delay. It seems that when VM did the calibrations for the engine, they did not take into account the lower quality of diesel fuel in the USA which then caused emissions problems. By lower quality, the Cetane levels here vary greatly across the country unlike in Europe where it has to meet a tighter standard. The issue then caused the need to recalibrate to meet emission standards which put the assembly line on hold until a solution was approved by Chrysler. It has since restarted but the GC is first in line to receive the engines.
There are Jeep GC diesels built but none have shipped to dealers in the USA yet. The current status updates are showing some to arrive at the end of the month but that has been pushed back several times already.
The USA has higher diesel emission standards than in Europe but the fuel quality/consistancy/cetane level is much poorer.
There are several legitimate articles out there on the reason for the delay. It seems that when VM did the calibrations for the engine, they did not take into account the lower quality of diesel fuel in the USA which then caused emissions problems. By lower quality, the Cetane levels here vary greatly across the country unlike in Europe where it has to meet a tighter standard. The issue then caused the need to recalibrate to meet emission standards which put the assembly line on hold until a solution was approved by Chrysler. It has since restarted but the GC is first in line to receive the engines.
I'm sure there was some issue but not catching something so major and obvious as fuel differences seems unlikely. That's almost as big as 50/60hz between the US and well.... most everywhere else. At least I hope not, otherwise, I'm going to lose some serious faith in their engineering department(s). I'm thinking they've had a few glitches in the first pre-production batch that they ran back in September for QA purposes (the same ones making the car magazine circuit), and they're trying to make sure they've got these and any other as yet undiscovered glitches out of the system before they release them onto the general forum-happy public to avoid such popular title posts as "my-RAM-ED-is-DOA".
U.S. diesel is more "dirty" than the diesel in other countries, so VM Motori had to retune the electronic controls and update the engines they had already manufactured.
(they had a storage area full of engines waiting for the update)
- The new assembly line 4, that started production around july, have been stopped for some time waiting for assembly line approval by Chrysler (600 engines were already manufactured before stop of production)
Another article explains that it had to do with the Cetane levels in the USA not being consistant. Cummins and others work with our fuel so not sure why they had trouble other than their test labs are in Europe. They apparently found the problem during testing here countrywide.
Yeah, indeed it has, potentially they were getting a lot of interest from customers heading into dealership, and nothing to show for it, alas, they are going to get all unhappy customers
Good move to remove it, if the engine is months out
According to a post in another discussion, we will not be able to order the Ram diesel until January 1. Is that what other people are hearing from their dealers?
The DEF system issues have been resolved and the GC's are starting to ship as of yesterday, Oct 25th. So the Ram Diesel will be next to start moving along in the process.