Bud and Monty, as others said, this applies only to those engines required by law to meet the new emissions standards. That includes the new F350 you'll buy as well as those mentioned above.
I cannot feel any degradation in power in my Dodge when it is regenerating, whether towing or solo, uphill or down. The only way I can tell is I see the mpg dropping slowly when there is no other reason for it to do so. I can tell regen is done when it starts back up. It doesn't seem to affect overall mpg by much. Maybe 1/10 mpg over a few hundred miles. I do not yet have a pyro (egt gauge) or I'd probably see the temp increase there.
The new trucks all have a diesel particulate filter (DPF) that "scrubs" the exhaust, much like a catalytic converter. Because of that, here's what my Dodge diesel tailpipe looks like at about 25,000 miles...
No more sooty tailpipes or black smoke from the diesel!
When the sensor tells the computer the DPF is getting full, it dumps some raw fuel into the exhaust to burn and increase the temperature of the exhaust. That is enough to burn out the residue in the DPF, thus cleaning it out for further use. My understanding is this DPF will need to be replaced every 125,000 to 150,000 miles. The DPF and this cleaning process has been used in Europe for a number of years so I assume they have enough experience to know that replacement timing is reasonable. And, thus this process is not exactly new technology. It's just new to this country.
We have 29,000 on this Dodge and I still cannot tell a regen is going on except when I notice the mpg dropping slightly. I hope this helps explain to you what this is all about. So far I'm finding it not at all a concern. I'm very happy with highway solo mileage of 18 to 22 (19 to a bit over 20 being most common), city mileage solo of 16 to 17. Towing mileage is a bit less than I expected, though. Towing 14,620 lbs (weight **does** make a difference) at 64 mph we get anywhere from 10 to 11.6, depending on wind and terrain. Once and only once we got 13.3. That's the only time above 12. I thought we'd do a bit better when towing.