Despite the Government’s relentless efforts to dissuade people from driving diesel cars, new statistics from the Department for Transport have shown that their attempts have failed miserably as there are now more diesel cars on the road than ever before.
The data shows that a record number of diesel cars were registered at the end of 2017 with a total of 12.4 million of them being driven on UK roads, which is 308,000 more than in 2016. This suggests that people are not scared by the forthcoming vehicle excise and MOT changes, the toxicity charges in London and are just not ready to give their diesel cars up because the benefits of keeping one outweighs the incentives to switch to lower emitting petrol, hybrid or electric cars.
A record number of diesel cars
The statistics show that 2 out of every 5 of the 31.2 million cars that are on the UK’s roads are diesel cars, which is up 0.5% on the previous year despite there being a 16% drop in new registrations.
This is certainly not a stat that the Government were hoping for as they have been desperately trying to reduce the number of diesel vehicles on the roads over the last 12 months by encouraging people to opt for hybrid or electric models instead.
However, just 45,400 new electric cars were on the road in the last quarter of 2017 which means that the UK roads are home to 272 diesels for every one electric vehicle, which is barely an increase on the number recorded the previous year.
Petrol ownership has also been decreasing, with numbers falling since 2004. The end of 2017 saw 0.3% less petrol cars on the roads than there were at the end of 2016, with 59% of the total number of cars being driven running on petrol.
Why the Government’s plan backfired
For months the Government have been implementing plans to encourage people to buy cleaner cars, such as the new Vehicle Excise Duty making low carbon dioxide producing vehicles more expensive to tax, and surcharges being introduced for driving and parking high polluting cars in Central London.
With so much effort being put into eliminating diesel cars by the Government it may be surprising that there are actually more diesels on the roads now than ever before, but there a number of potential reasons for why this has happened.
Jack Cousens, Head of Roads Policy for the AA, stated that changes made to Vehicle Excise Duty by the Government were counter-intuitive as they have just ended up forcing higher tax bills onto those who would have preferred to buy a cleaner car. Instead, people are keeping hold of their older, more polluting cars which is the complete opposite of what the Government was aiming for.
Another possible deterrent for motorists is that they want to avoid the surcharges that they would face if they bought a new model, so they would prefer to stick with the vehicle that they currently drive.
Steve Gooding, director of the RAC Foundation, summed the situation up well by saying that the Government cannot eliminate diesel cars as quickly as they wanted to due to the fact that they are entrenched in our society, and that it will take years to significantly decrease the number of diesel vehicles on the UK’s roads.
What happens next?
It is argued by some motoring experts that the slump in new diesel car buying is only the beginning of the downward trend in diesel car use and that a small increase in diesel car use before the decline is logical, given the fact that more drivers are keeping hold of existing cars rather than trading up to a new one.
The Government are expected to launch a raft of new measures soon with their national Cleaner Air Initiative, which is likely to contain more limits and taxes on the use of older, high polluting vehicles to get them out of major cities. The measures implemented will start to have an effect and it will fall in 2018. Evidence of this is Jaguar Land Rover’s recent decision to lay off 1,000 staff, which they say is because of the fall in demand for new diesel cars.
Do you currently own a diesel car that you are keen to keep hold of and if so why are keeping it? Are you considering trading in your diesel car for a hybrid or electric alternative? Let us know in the comments below.
This is a heavily biased article as the government has taken a fairly balanced approach to diesel cars. They chose not to increase fuel duty and have simply rowed back on some of the unfair incentives given to diesels under the previous VED system. New, clean diesels that meet new emissions testing, will still be a good option. The adverse publicity has been driven by the media rather than government and also the actions of the German government in banning diesels in cities.
We bought a diesel car 12 years ago because we were led to believe it was the cleaner, more efficient option. Unfortunately, we’re not in a financial position to trade it in and buy a new car, so will have to keep it until it’s no longer roadworthy. Hopefully by that time, our circumstances will have changed and we will manage with one car and won’t need to replace it.
I want to keep my diesel car because it is the most efficient vehicle for towing when I am bargaining.
I just recently bought a new to me diesel car ie it wasn’t brand new, the reason being I got one that was registered before the tax laws changed thereby getting the cheap road tax. My wife did the same thing also all be it hers was brand new but registered before the cut off date of March 2017 and this I feel is another reason why new diesel cars have slumped in sales because anybody with a slightly older diesel that wants a newer one isn’t going brand new so as to take advantage of the loophole in the law so to speak. I won’t go back to petrol unless I have to as I would be using a lot more of it given the travelling I do both from a work, commuting and social point of view plus an electric car is far too expensive, takes too long to charge and they still don’t have the range yet. As for hybrid well they can say what they like about “diesel like” economy but the fact is neither they nor the more modern petrol cars will ever be as efficient as a diesel as it’s down to the fact that the diesel engine is much more efficient. The laws regarding the charges for entering London with a diesel won’t affect me either as I drive a euro 6 diesel as was the case with my previous car and I live in Northern Ireland so at present we have no such restrictions tho I could see it coming to Belfast as I believe it’s as bad as London for pollution but as we presently have no local government I can’t see it happening in the foreseeable future.
That’s just it. So many people seem to be responding as if the new rules are being imposed on all existing diesels retrospectively and their finances will be hit overnight. If you are keeping your existing vehicle for however many years then not much is changing.
I drive diesel cars for many years. The one I currently owe I had it for the past 8 years. No reason to buy a new car. Electrics are not worth. Too expensive to buy. No places to charge. No range. My diesel can do 6-700 miles on a tank of 70 litres.
Had diesel for the last 15 years, always bought second hand, would never be able to afford a new new car.just what is this government thinking about penalizing the working man again
You forget it was the Labour government who encouraged us to go diesel as they had lower CO2 out put .
How do I bulk out a simple headline into a full length article?
I know, why don’t I repeat the same point 15 times, each slightly reworded?
C’mon PetrolPrices, hire some journalists or you’ll lose your readers!
I have a 220 Mercedes estate cdi . The m o t has been carried out at two independent test centres . First one, emissions too low to obtain a reading , second , a franchised main dealer , zero emissions, no reading . So , what’s the problem with diesel cars when facts like this are in black and white .
The MOT doesn’t test emissions at high speed, which is when most of the NOx is produced.
It isn’t speed that matters it’s revs. You obviously haven’t watched or listened to them carrying out the emissions test on your car – the needle is in the red red zone.
Actually, the same test carried out by a team on TV recently stated the opposite, reving the engine was not sufficient and a rolling road HAD to be used to put the lorry through a proper test with the engine under a working load and not just reving in neutral.
he hasn’t got a lorry he’s got a mercedes estate you muppet
Well shows what you know, most Mercedes, Audi, BMW will not allow you to rev beyond 2000 rpm in neutral.
But NOx is supposed to be worst in cities, where high speeds are not possible, so on that basis, the whole thing is a scam.
The mot doesn’t even test for no2 it is a pathetic excuse for a test, I am an mot tester.
I have a Kia Soul diesel that passed the resent MOT with zero emissions yet like Laz’s Mercedes.
All cars have emissions. Of course they do, where do you think the burnt carbon goes to? Diesal cars have 10x the NO 2 emissions of petrol.
Tests on Mercedes 220 are the same as other diesels, they have high NO2.
If you tests show zero, they are having you on.
I recently changed my diesel for another diesel. I do 700 miles or thereabout to a tankful. Will petrol do that and heaven forbid electric?
Electric is about 2p to the mile. Vastly cheaper than diesel
Aye, but can you get 700 miles from a charge or will you have to park up somewhere for a couple of hours to recharge every 200 miles or so…thats if you can find a charging point?
Quire right Dan… and if you factor in your usual hourly rate into all the waiting around for the electric joke car to change the costs increase massively. I cant work if Im 50 miles away from the job waiting for my battery to cooperate!!!
But you are not pollution free as the power station producing the electricity is doing your polluting for you. And if you think wind turbines are pollution free think of the CO2 expended making the materials, building the turbines, shipping them, installing them and maintaining them in far flung places ruining the countryside.
And the materials used to keep making the batteries to hold the charge in the electric cars and then to try to recycle them , I expect in years to come so much demand for electricity we will all be paying more for it, and not for just cars to run your household electrical items too, supply and demand = high price’s, we will all be paying weather you drive or not!
and the massive subsidies paid to the landowners to site the bloody things…
at the moment, if we all went electric as they want ,the queen will still want her revenue from car tax and fuel so electric prices will rise beyond the price of both diesel and petrol
The queen pays less into the exchequer than the civil list?
It depends on how you run the figures. If you take just the cost of plugging in, then that is correct. If you take the cost of production and disposal of highly polluting heavy metals and the cost of producing and transporting electricity (along with it’s severe transmission losses), then electricity does not look so good. Atomic piles anybody?
But after 25 miles it’s back to public transport or shanks’ pony. Not much good for anyone!
It may be but I’m a taxi driver and couldn’t do a full shift on a single charge
That is today but just wait until most cars on the roads are electric then see how much the greedy companies & the government charge in tax & per unit of electric.
That if of course you can afford to buy such a car. The only one that can go above 100 mile range is a Tesla. That’s 50k ish up. False economy if you can’t afford the car in the first place.
At the moment! BUT once the government has managed to tax petrol/diesel vehicles off the road and is missing out on all that lovely road fuel duty (70%?) Watch them find a way (roadpricing?) to recover that, even if you can charge from your solar panels.
I would love an electric car but am under no illusion that the finacial incentive will be allowed to continue!
Hybrid might!
As I said before – hybrids are great if you pootle about and I think they are much better than electric for many people – but not everyone! You have to think about how and why people use their vehicles and encourage them to get the most appropriate for their usage although that can change too. Its like when they decided to have free car tax for those with smaller engines and so all you saw was small cars, polluting more than larger cars, batting up and down the motorway.
The trade in offers are very poor.
It’s the trucks and buses that kick out the pollutants so it’s them that need to go first.
My car does not belch smoke or smell.
Better? 45 people on a bus would be a miracle, most of the buses I see in Leicester are almost empty
Is that because of the high fares? If you own a car, the cost per mile excluding depreciation and maintenance (which not many take into account except the motoring organisations) is cheaper. A car is also more reliable than many buses which very often do not run to the published timetables.
The buses here start running after the school runs and not at all in the afternoons apart from one at 6.30pm. Go to work on a bus? Not a hope.
I went to look for the bus timetable in my local library… found in the section marked “Fiction”.
Same here in Manchester… How about politicians giving us a lead (Electric pun!) They drop all their large luxury cars and go sit in in a whining ashtray, sorry electric car. The local councils can throw away all their diesel vehicles and replace them with electric. The police can give up chasing crims in BMW’s and hope their Nissan Leaf manages not to run out of power before the crims are out of sight.
I could continue….
Most trucks and buses use AddBlue which helps to eliminate polution.
Many truck companies cheat by frigging their ECU’s so they don’t need AddBlue.
Neither does my (diesel) car, strangely enough though, my partners (petrol) does .
Then they should concentrate more on Trucks becoming electric or Hybrid
A euro 6 lorry throws out cleaner air than it sucks in
Your car does not need to smell or belch out smoke to pollute the air only a machine can determine that
Well debz just to let you know. Trucks and buses have been under stricter controls than cars have for years. We were euro 6 in 2010. plus our emissions are controlled by the wagon or bus it’s self. The vehicle grasses on you if you drive without adblue an you can be fined 300 quid on the spot.
I own a Euro 6 compliant diesel which I bought on a three year PCP. The government encouraged us to buy diesel and I did. Just because they subsequently did a complete u turn doesn’t mean that I along with millions of other people have the financial means to switch vehicles mid stream. I have driven diesel cars for years and find them better to drive and more economical (at least when diesel fuel was reasonably priced).
On test modern diesels do not pollute any more than petrol vehicles and hybrids. I recall a test between a new bmw diesel and a VW petrol hybrid and on almost all emissions, especially CO2 the bmw was much cleaner…enough said.
There was another one between a BMW 520D and a Toyota Prius to see which one could make it from London to Vienna on one tank of fuel. The BMW went all the way with the aircon on all the time, and averaged well over 50 mpg. The Prius ran out of fuel despite the driver not running the aircon OR even having the radio on! And when it did run out, it only went another 2 miles on its batteries before dying!
Nuff Said!
Strangely enough, an airbus A320 can also travel from London to Vienna with aircon on on one tank of fuel.
A320 total fuel capacity 23,859 Litres
BMW 520d total capacity 70 Litres
Prius capacity 45Litres
Hardly a side by side comparison
Higher taxes. Higher costs to run cars.less money to spend on new cars.
I own a Euro 6 compliant diesel which I bought on a three year PCP. The government encouraged us to buy diesel and I did. Just because they subsequently did a complete u turn doesn’t mean that I along with millions of other people have the financial means to switch vehicles mid stream.
I have driven diesel cars for years and find them better to drive and more economical (at least when diesel fuel was reasonably priced).
On test modern diesels do not pollute any more than petrol vehicles and hybrids. I recall a test between a new bmw diesel and a VW petrol hybrid and on almost all emissions, especially CO2 the bmw was much cleaner…enough said.
Cheaper to keep and maintain my current Range Tiver than replace it
Also provision for electric charging well underestimated
I have a 15 year old Volvo which is regularly serviced, and which delivers 50% more m.p.g. than my previous Volvo V70 2.5T, so I use less fuel, and in my view is therefore less polluting than a petrol engined vehicle. The cost of purchasing a new car is out of the question as i have no plans to replace my trusty steed for another 5 years ( I don’t regard my car as a fashion item )
A 15 year old diesel would be euro 3 standard, so is a heavy polluter when compared to modern euro 6 diesels.
You are absolutely correct regarding the low pollution levels of a Euro 6 engine (cleaner than most petrol engines). Unfortunately, the half-wits that govern us have demonized all diesel engines so have made my wonderful low pollution car, unsellable. It’s still a fantastic car so I will keep it for 15 years now.
Meanwhile, VW has paid billions in compensation to USA car owners yet we get nothing but excuses. Could that be because Germany runs Europe and VW are German, surely not!!
Or not.
https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/diesel-cars-ban-cleanest-emissions-legal-limits-air-pollution-regulations-uk-germany-a8235076.html
What a load of c**p
Looked into replacing my Euro6 BMW diesel with the same model but PHEV version. Apart from being more expensive the downsides are considerable. Need to install home charger, range fully electric only about 25 miles, need to plug in every day, for any long jouneys would run on petrol, lack of charging points in places you visit, how to handle 2nd car as well if that electric,. Overall the situation does not stack up as being viable.
Have you considered a Tesla?
We did….can’t afford it. We also considered Nissan leaf but need minimum 100 mile range per charge and they weren’t confident it would. Plus even Nissan leaf was more expensive or on a par with our new BMW 1 diesel car. No brainer.
Its all down to cost.
And how far can you get on one of those (which are not great) before needing to re-charge and how long does the re-charge take? Not practical for many!
I cant get a second mortgage to pay for a Tesla…
Tesla, have you read the charging times for basic home charging
I would also like to know how they intend to provide the additional electric that people would need! I have a diesel and aside from about 2k miles a year locally, it is used to travel to France and back. That is certainly not feasible on an electric vehicle and even on hybrid we calculated a max of 50 miles would be travelled on electric. We did have a petrol but were filling up more frequently on the journey because of its poorer mpg. I can’t see an alternative and there is a big part of me which doesn’t see why I should need to – just because some jumped up doctors and politicians have now ‘decided’ that diesel pollutes more than petrol. What about the pollution from the additional electricity stations? We don’t have the land mass for turbines or the weather for solar to be appropriate! Am sure they will decide that something else is causing climate change next year, not forgetting of course that there is no evidence of climate change – what is land used to be under water and vice versa and the earth has had periods of extreme cold (ice ages) and extreme heat previously. It has also been noted that the terminology has changed as their ‘tax incentivised beliefs’ have had to be adjusted from global warming to climate change
I drive a diesel car, very happy with it, it’s economical, comfortable and performs well.
I can’t afford to upgrade at the moment
I have a diesel car and wanted to trade it in for a Hybrid car but the incentives are not good enough to make it affordable for me to swap. Also, the hybrids are costing much more than similar diesel.
I have a diesel hybrid car. Much better combination than petrol hybrid.
@Ukflyer how do DPFs work in diesel hybrid? In a normal diesel, the engine needs to get up to temperature every 300 miles or so to clean out the DPF. But if you use the hybrid battery, the engine will go cold again and not be able to clean out the DPF? Unless you end up having to do “maintenance runs” to clean out the DPF, which kind of ruins the environmental benefit.
Excellent point. Ironic if it starts doing a regen in a city centre like London where you probably won’t have had to pay the congestion charge.
It won’t do a regen in a city. DPF’s are a bit of ‘smoke & mirrors’. The vehicle needs to be operating at higher speeds for about 10 mins for a regen to work. This means Open roads (out in the country in other words). So they trap soot in the city & burn it off in the countryside
hi ross,you might find a switch on the dash that says regenerate (as in trucks) that can be pressed to put a heater thru the dpf to regerate the same as a pre heater on diesels,because as we all know we cant go fast to burn it off.
There’s the problem I avoided by buying a petrol hybrid – the particulate filter.
If you don’t do regular longish journeys diesel is not for you.
I have a diesel car and wanted to trade it in for a Hybrid car but the incentives are not good enough to make it affordable for me to swap. Also, the hybrids are costing much more than similar diesel.
The problem for me is that I am disabled and need a large vehicle to carry both my small pedestrian scooter and my two grandchildren. Now I can find the large automatic vehicles but they are diesel or if they are petrol they are to expensive for me to even think about changing too. I would love to change to a electric or even a hybrid but you try finding one it’s very difficult. They are now doing some vans yes but large family size vehicles don’t really exist. My partner likes to drive something that actually looks nice and not a square van with a window cut in the side and a bench put in the back to sit on. How about making large family size electric or hybrids that large family’s or family’s with older children would be seen driving and not hiding because dad thought he would help the environment and buy the most hideous thing on the road.
Hi
I have a three year old Dacia Duster diesel which has not done 1500 miles as yet,and I have no intention of tradining it in as the p/x of £6000 lest than I paid for the car is uneceptable
I have owned a diesel 1998 motor caravan from new, diesel normally aspirate. I live just inside the Greater London are, Boris forced me to upgrade to Euro 3 cost £1300 with a filter retro fitted. Now under threat again, i fear it may be scrapped. I do 2000 miles a year about 50 miles in the LEZ. Doesn’t seem right
No plans to change from diesil. I use it for long journeys to Spain twice a year and it’s superb as a reliable workhorse car. I’ll probably drive it into the ground over the next few years, but at least it will serve me well. The cost of electric or hybrid cars will have to come down dramatically for me to change, along with a quantum leap in battery efficiency. And another thing: what about CO2 level increases due to people changing to petrol cars? Has that been thought of by our Tory incompetents?
In the press recently they have already increased for the first time in some years,10years I think but not sure.
hi, the tory’s dont know about the CO2 because they haven’t a brain cell between them that is the reason why we are in this position THEY THINK THEY KNOW ABOUT EVERYTHING,they don’t.
True It is all about what the goverment want not us
It will take time to get these dangerous diesels off the road, the new MOT next month will be the start of a long process. The high pollution zones coming in next year will make it expensive to use these killer cars. Regardless of what people think the real NOX from these dirty diesels is killing and disabling people now. It would be unfair to just force these cars off the road as a large amount of the population can ill afford to replace them, so it has to be a natural process of declining sales, and poor residual values to rid us of these killers.
Maserati are introducing new diesel powered vehicles, as are many high-end producers. Do they know something?
I prefer diesel for towing, yet to be convinced and electric car will tow my caravan as far as I want to go without charging. Don’t want to sit for hours in a service station waiting when I could be on site relaxing. Just had our first MOT and emission sheet said 0. We use Vpower which is supposed to be cleaner and keep car cleaner, had no problems with car so all good.
You can’t tow any decent weight with electric or hybrid. No torque alike petrol
Electric has more torque than most diesel and it delivers all the torque all the time unlike conventional combustion engines
I prefer diesel but I do belive in facts
Maserati, along with many other “high-end” manufacturers, are introducing new diesel powered vehicles. Do they know something we don’t?
Need engine powerfully enough to toe a caravan or a motor home apart from America there are very few big petrol engines and imports tariff s are high so I have to buy diesel engines car/ motor home any ideas
RJ
If my 1.8d BMW X1 is chargeable at a fixed of only £30 RFD pa, how can it be a polluting vehicle?
Most cars on the road are not new, and most of us are buying used vehicles. When I’m changing my car, I’m completely unaffected by so called “incentives”. I suspect this holds true for most drivers.
I have a 2013 Citroen DS5h, a diesel/electric hybrid which is economical for a car with 200 BHP, road tax is £0.
My long term plan is to go fully electric when electric cars are more affordable.
I switched to diesel 2 years ago. I regularly get 55 – 60 mpg. My friend bought a petrol hybrid (no charging required). He gets “up to” 60 mpg. It is true that the battery makes driving at low speed in towns very clean, sooner or later the petrol engine needs to recharge the battery.
I own a 59 reg Ford Focus hatch diesel. It averages 55 mpg (yes I’m sad enough to keep details). I have it serviced at the appropriate intervals, apart from natural wear and tear replacements it has never let me down and the road tax is only £30 per year. It has done 103,000miles, I expect to get more years of service. Still get my golf kit in it. Great car. I see no reason to replace it. I would only get another car if it becomes too expensive to repair.
Yet again, government measures to shape the car market to whatever is this week’s new thinking is ill-informed, poorly implemented, counter-productive and unfair.
….just like every other attempt to shape the car market.
My father recently traded a 61 plate Seat Leon 1.6 diesel. 55 mpg and zero VED. He now has a 1.2 TCE Renault Captur, 37mpg and £180 VED. You wouldn’t need to be Carol Vorderman to work out which is cheaper to run.
I own a modern diesel car, which has a range of 750 miles on a full tank. Electric cars are only suited to short journeys and cost more to buy.
Unlike Teresa May I do not have a free, tax free company car I pay for my own.
All this rubbish regarding diesel vehicles being more polluting than other forms of engine ,I shall keep my diesel car because it is a Mercedes with a euro 6 engine which is less polluting than even the most modern petrol engine .All this because some no nothing person has blamed the diesel for all the pollution
I’ve just swapped my so called “economical” little 1.2 petrol ford fiesta which had 121gsm (emissions) for a lovely almost new vauxhall astra estate, more fuel economy and lower emissions at 99gsm’s. What a joke the governments plan is to ban so called unfriendly diesel cars – get a grip will you
At the moment im keeping my 3 year old golf 1.6 tdi the exchange price for a new one is so low on my car that im holding out to see if electric and hybrid come down in price.
I tow a large 2 tonne caravan and need a vehicle capable of safely towing it. I have a 2012 VW touareg 3lt diesel. Others than large Diesel cars there are no alternatives. I am retired on a limited income and do not have finances to purchase a replacement vehicle.
The one thing that nobody has mentioned is the fact that running diesel remains far more economical per mile than petrol. If the cost of unleaded were to drop to under £1 a litre and if the price of diesel were to increase over £1.40 a litre, then I MIGHT consider trading my diesel in for a petrol car. Until then, when I trade in at the end of the year for a new car, it will be another diesel.. and thereafter until the government offer a realistic and financial saving incentive for us to change.
Maybe you could consider a petrol hybrid instead?
The technology has come along by leaps and bounds since the first Prius.
Hybrids are a fraud. The amount of upfront pollution caused by the mining of the rare earth metal ores (there is a town in China where most of these ores are extracted and it suffers terrible pollution), the refining of those ores and the globetrotting transportation of the materials in various states (eg Toyota Prius hybrid battery materials travel 40000 miles before they even get into a car) is enough to create quite a black mark against the technology. You need to obtain an awful lot of pollution-free motoring to offset that upfront pollution, yet to my understanding a typical hybrid battery (not a PHEV, which depends upon fossil-fuel-generated mains electricity to deliver ‘pollution-free’ mileage) can only provide around one mile of pure electric motoring (and at very low speed only) before the petrol engine has to kick in. Additionally, if you are cruising in a hybrid, you are of course obtaining virtually zero regenerative braking to recharge the battery for ‘free’, leaving the petrol engine to deliver below-par petrol-fuelled motoring performance/economy for the vast proportion of your journey. All that is still ignoring the fact that the hybrid batteries deteriorate over time – losing their ability to retain charge – and will likely need hyper-expensive (and hyper-polluting) replacement well before the rest of the car has served a decent lifespan. That alone makes a second-hand hybrid car an extremely poor choice, so resale values should be very poor for anybody considering to buy one brand new and then trade it in later. It makes absolutely zero sense to advocate for hybrids (and pure electric vehicles, which suffer the additional problem of limited range and poor access to recharging points) on the grounds of reducing pollution. This is purely show-off vanity technology for deluded people who like to pretend that they are being environmentally-friendly. It is fraud.
Only if you pootle about at less than 30mph otherwise you are burning fuel. They haven’t come along THAT far!
SSH! Don’t give them ideas, diesel is expensive enough.
For heavens sake don’t give the misgovernment more ideas!
I don’t intend to give my diesel up they say they cause more pollution but they don’t say how much pollution it takes to produce electricity
Just look at the statistics and see what co2 emissions are on petrol cars to new diesel cars and the mpg no wonder people prefer diesel to petrol . Als I don’t know but is the prime ministers car diesel ?
My 16-year-old diesel VW Golf estate now does a very low mileage but must minimally polluting as I get <65 mpg on longish journeys. It serves my purposese well &is reliable. Why would I wanto spend another £20,000?
(Incidentally "Government is singular nown!)
Do you mean “noun”?
“Petrol ownership has also been decreasing”
… as well as what? The argument in the article is flawed
I would like to add that the price of Diesel generally in the other countries of Europe is far cheaper than Petrol, so maybe the rest of Europe look at this totally different to the UK.
You state that the Government is increasing RFL to discourage people from buying low emission co2. Surely, you mean the opposite.
I have a 2014 VW passat estate (diesel) which has undergone the recall modification .
After all the pushing by government to buy diesel, if they really want me to go green etc., then they will have to ensure that I don’t lose money !
That is not happening ! At the moment unless there is a substantial change in policy, when I change I may well stay with diesel, hopefully a green one !
Totally agree our Audi A2 1.4 TDI…2001..Does avg 55mpg..Tax £30 yearly..one previous owner now at 102000mls…Passes it’s Mot with No Advisories or fails ..So why should we change our car..Although I have been looking at the Nissan Note 1.5 DCI..£20 Tax and 60 plus Mpg…We are happy as things are at the moment ..(
..But this week I noticed in front of us there as been a couple of vehicles a car and a van beltching out smoke on the road they should be Stopped and Fined on the Spot for not maintaining their vehicles properly..
Those that have old cars probably can’t afford a newish one yet as they don’t work, wages too low and as their parents are still alive and don’t have their estate yet
Cheerful aren’t you 🙂