Many equate China with smoke and soot belching cars. In reality, China’s emission and fuel consumption standards now generally follow the European roadmap. Implementation of standards trails the European role model by only a few years. Ironically, it is a European brand that just ran afoul of this misperception – if Chinese media is correctly informed.

Changan-PSA, the not yet producing joint venture between China’s Changan and France’s PSA group may have to ditch its planned Citroën DS product for a completely new car. “The change is to better meet China’s upcoming new emission standards and fuel consumption standards. The originally planned Citroën DS series may not satisfy the requirement from those new regulations,”” a Changan-PSA executive told China Automotive Review on background.

For better compliance with the upcoming standards, future Changan-PSA engines “are expected to all feature turbocharged and SDI technologies,” the informant told China Automotive Review. That would be surprising, because SDI doesn’t primarily stand for “Suction Direct Injection,”  but for “Suction Diesel Injection.”

The technology was developed by Volkswagen in the last millennium, where it originally was called “Saugdiesel Direkteinspritzung.” Internally, the nickname for the engine was “Sauger” or “sucker”. It sucked fuel and air, contrary to the later introduced unit injector (“Pumpe-Düse”) and Turbocharged Direct Injection (TDI) diesel engines. If the originally planned engine predated this ancient technology, no surprise that it had to be updated.

If I’d be Changan-PSA, I’d ditch that sucker also. Let’s hope the informant confused it with PSA’s HDi engines.

We’ll know more next week in Shanghai. The Independent says that PSA “iwill launch the Chinese model of the 508, a competitor to the popular Ford Mondeo, at the Auto Shanghai show” and that Peugeot “expects that one in every three 508 vehicles globally will be manufactured and sold in China.” It has an e-HDi engine …