It Had A Good Run, But It's Usefulness Has Passed

Insight: Is it time to give up on the diesel engine?

Once we were all encouraged to buy diesel-engined cars, but now they are being ostracised because of health concerns. So, should we desert diesel? 


Finding the correct answers to these burning questions seems to be clouding more and more car purchase decisions. There are supporters for each of the above courses of action – but the arguments for banning diesels are becoming ever more shrill, led notably by Sunday newspapers quoting doctors’ organisations and academic sources in support of their case, and diesel sales are falling as a result.

The industry’s view is multi-faceted and complex. First, while carefully admitting ‘more can always be done’, its experts believe that when current, tough Euro 6 (EU6) emissions standards are combined with much more realistic and impartial test regimes that arrive this September (called WLTP or Worldwide harmonised Light vehicles Test Procedure), a modern car’s output of NOx will have been cut to tiny proportions. Diesels should be free to get right on with their job of contributing to lower CO2.

Second, the automotive industry is understandably reluctant to criticise the cars it has already put on the road, on the grounds that they complied with the legislation of the time. UK car users have bought roughly a million diesels per year and there are an estimated 12m diesel cars and vans already on our roads. Penalising them would create havoc. Completely changing the car parc, if you started now, could take 20 years.

Third, Europe’s motor industry needs to preserve its markets, viability and infrastructure to fund new, electrified cars planned along its ‘glidepath’ towards the 95g/km manufacturer fleet average that's required by 2020 – and onward towards a hoped-for zero-emissions future in 2050. (In the UK, Jaguar Land Rover has just opened a new diesel plant in Wolverhampton and Ford builds most of its world requirement for diesels in Dunton).

Fourth, its bosses are extremely reluctant to wade into a complex, illogical debate that has conflated Volkswagen’s highly publicised diesel emissions scandal in the US with a 15-year-old progression of EU emissions standards – currently at EU6 – whose fuel consumption results bear so little resemblance to owners’ experience that they are presumed to be dishonest. ‘They’re all at it’ is the common accusation.

The most urgent problem, identified by London mayor Khan, appears to be the profusion of old-school diesels – notably, well-worn and decades-old taxis, trucks and delivery vans as well as passenger cars – on our roads. The mayor has already hit the headlines, and been rebuffed by the government, for proposing a £500m scrappage scheme that would pay diesel owners up to £3500 for ditching old diesel cars.

(AutoCar.co.uk)