Busworld 2025, Brussels. Cummins rolls in like it’s 1999, peddling “innovation” that still runs on diesel. The new 10-litre coach-optimised X10 Euro VI engine – a lump of iron disguised as progress – was unveiled with the usual smirk about “cleaner internal-combustion technology.”
Translation: the same poison, slightly diluted.
The Engine That Time Forgot
A “clean-sheet design,” they say. More like a new napkin to wipe the same old spill. Ten litres of diesel in 2025 isn’t forward thinking; it’s necromancy. They call it lighter, quieter, sociable. Because nothing says sociable like a 454-horsepower bus coughing up nitrogen oxide on the ring road.
Fuel economy up six to eight per cent. Great. So instead of drowning the planet, we’re only waterboarding it. Efficiency theatre. Nothing changes except the press release.
The HELM™ Shell Game
Cummins’ new HELM™ platform – supposedly modular and “future-ready” – is just a global cloning machine for fossil tech. One platform, a thousand excuses. Every region gets its own version of “transition.” When Felipe Rocha, their European GM, calls it “a straightforward step toward Euro 7,” what he means is we’re locking diesel in for yet another decade – at least.
Euro VII: The Next Excuse
Euro VI today, Euro VII tomorrow, and in every cycle the same promise: just one more upgrade, then we’ll go green. Cummins loves a deadline it can dodge. After years of emissions probes and “defeat-device” whispers, simplicity suddenly matters: “no EGR, simpler architecture.” Less plumbing, fewer leaks, fewer trails for investigators.
Green Gala, Black Smoke
The PR sheet reads like a sustainability bingo card: clean, efficient, low-noise, modular. They keep using that word clean – it doesn’t mean what they think it means. Europe’s moving on with electric fleets and hydrogen retrofits, and Cummins is still polishing pistons. Busworld calls it “the future of clean transport.” No, it’s the past in drag.
Meanwhile at Accelera
Their “zero-emissions” arm, Accelera, keeps bleeding cash while the diesel division throws parties. It’s the split personality of the century: one hand preaching salvation, the other gripping a fuel nozzle. The X10 isn’t innovation; it’s denial on display.
Bottom Line
Cummins didn’t broaden its Euro VI range – it narrowed its conscience. The X10 is another love letter to diesel wrapped in recycled paper. Progress, they say.
More like relapse.
Lee Thompson – Founder, The Cummins Accountability Project