Germany falls out of love with Diesel

Diesel sales down in Europe -- and no more so than in their former heartland, Germany.

The country’s car-makers build and sell more diesels than any other, but the German industry body Kraftfahrt Bundesamt (KBA) declared a 19.3-per cent fall in sales of diesel-powered cars in April.

The entire German car market fell eight per cent in April, with the collapse of diesel sales pulling it down along with three business days lost to the Easter holiday period.

It’s perhaps no coincidence that Germany has finally implemented a subsidy scheme for electrified passenger cars, but the take-up rate is nowhere near enough to offset the fall in diesel sales, which might lead to cleaner local air quality but a rise in CO2 emissions.

Oddly, the sales of diesel-powered passenger cars didn’t falter in the immediate wake of Volkswagen’s Dieselgate emissions-cheating scandal -- rising to almost 50 per cent of all German sales in November 2015 -- but the fuel’s share has been sliding ever since.

Now just 18 months later, diesel’s share of the German car market is down to 41.3 per cent as consumer consciousness, a series of smog alerts in German cities like Stuttgart and serious court challenges that seek to ban its use in urban areas.

Several German cities are pushing to have older diesel cars banned, while Germany’s DUH environmental group has successfully litigated to force cities to comply with existing pollution legislation.

While cleaner urban air is the goal of the DUH, the German Association of Automotive Industry has defended diesel as a necessary evil.

“We will need the Euro 6 diesel for a long time to reach the European climate goals,” the association’s President, Matthias Wissmann, insisted.

The fuel is facing hurdles all over Europe, with London’s Lord Mayor, Sadiq Khan, insisting that the British Government’s proposed diesel-emissions laws won’t go far enough, leaving the country with “illegally polluted and unsafe air for at least another decade.”

Writing in an open letter to British newspapers after the Government rejected an air-quality commission’s diesel-tax recommendations, Khan insisted the city’s toxic air represented nothing short of a public-health emergency.

“It’s no exaggeration to say it’s a matter of life and death, with more than 40,000 people dying early every year across the country as a result.

“Despite this, the government is simply unwilling to take the bold action required to fix it. City Hall analysis shows that the proposals still mean air quality will be at illegal levels until at least 2026.

“We need changes to vehicle excise duty to encourage people to buy the greenest cars.”

It’s not just passenger cars that are under the microscope, but also the diesel commercial vehicles that have filled city shops for decades.

Renault and Nissan meantime are reveling in growing sales of their zero-emission Kangoo ZE and e-NV200 vans, having delivered more than 50,000 battery-electric commercial vehicles already, mostly in Europe.