I have little firsthand experience with motorcycles or diesel vehicles but I was reading the other day about the newish motorcycle being issued to the Marines. It's a Kawasaki KLR650 converted by a company to run on diesel to meet NATO's requirements for all vehicles/equipment to run on diesel or aviation fuel.

This diesel version gets almost 100 miles to the gallon at 55mph. That's a lot of traveling for a gallon of fuel and would seem to be a good way to stretch limited fuel supplies during some emergency while still being able to get around off-road or on otherwise impassable streets. However, I notice that there really aren't any production diesel motorcycles on the market in the US. I was wondering what are the drawbacks or technical difficulties in making a diesel motorcycle which make them commercially unpopular?

I would imagine that one drawback for consumers would be acceleration, based on riding in non-turbocharged diesel cars. Sort of like gunning the throttle on a small boat--you have to wait for the boat to start moving and picking up speed. That's an annoyance in normal traffic, but much less so under emergency conditions. Are there other problems that keep them off the market?