More Clarity Needed Regarding Diesel Emissions
Thursday, 1. March 2018
It was disappointing to see overall new car sales dropping to 2.54 million registrations, a drop of 5.7%, in 2017. Some put the drop down to confusion over the true benefits of PCP finance, real or perceived, and the way that PCP’s have been sold – accounting for around a million new car registrations in 2016 but dropping monthly.
My view is that there are concerns amongst buyers over the way that PCP’s are being ‘pushed’ onto customers with suggestions of miss-selling and profiteering from unnecessary add-on products, resulting in buyers holding back for fear of walking into a showroom and being scammed.
Predictions, publicised in 2017, regarding the vulnerability of the lenders to drops in used car values that could lead to a collapse were unfounded, to the point of being ridiculous. If greater care had been taken over identifying how the product works, the true exposure of the lenders and careful scrutiny of the accounts of the major players they may not have come to the conclusions they did and spread even more fear amongst consumers.
More worrying for environmentalists, including me, is the swing to petrol from diesel. A bandwagon has started and is gaining momentum with the Government and local authorities jumping on and demonising diesel car drivers then using this unfounded critical view to unfairly ‘tax’ diesel drivers with congestion/environmental/parking charges.
There is very little to choose between the emissions of new diesel and petrol cars but we need more Government led clarity as to the true environmental damage caused by each engine for consumers to make properly evaluated decisions. This investigation is urgent as we have already seen an increase in CO2 emissions of new cars registered in 2017 from 120.1 g/km in 2016 to 121 g/km assumed to be the fault of petrol engines, this being the first increase in CO2 emissions since recording began 20 years ago.
How long will it be before we see headlines predicting doom and gloom as a result of holes re-appearing in the ozone layer thanks to petrol cars? Finally, if we see a continued move to petrol we will use up more oil as fuel consumption is greater in a petrol car than a diesel equivalent, anything from 20% to 50% fewer miles per gallon out of the petrol engine.
We will also see a drop in diesel cost at the pumps as diesel is a by-product of petrol production. For information, a barrel of crude oil (42 gallons) produces 19-20 gallons of petrol and 12 gallons of distillate fuel, most of which is used as diesel fuel. It can be seen that if demand increases for petrol, firstly as a result of people switching over to petrol cars and secondly because more fuel is consumed per mile travelled, we will see more petrol being produced which could drop the price of diesel at the pumps to less than petrol.
As a result, more people on lower incomes would be encouraged to buy older, cost-saving, diesel cars – the very cars that the Government should be encouraging off the roads because they are environmentally unfriendly.
We need greater clarity Mrs May, Transport Secretary Chris Grayling and Environmental Secretary Michael Gove. By Graham Hill
