Diesel – to become as exclusive as the jeans?

Pretty much whenever I look at the news at the moment I end up feeling either a) shocked b) worried or c) incredulous. Often all of those emotions at once.

But here’s a headline that shows that the world hasn’t gone mad, and that really, we’d like to keep it quite nice - ‘Motorists shun diesel cars while eco-friendly sales rise’. Brilliant!

The overview is that there has been a 4.3% drop on diesel cars alongside a 19.9% increase in electric and other alternatively fuelled cars.

And it’s been a pretty swift change. Back in 2015, sales of petrol and diesel were on a par; the downward trend for diesel properly started in 2016 and now sales of the cars have fallen in seven of the last eight months.

I’m all behind this. Filling the air with smoky pollution doesn’t help lift one’s mood and there’s the health risks too - nitrogen dioxide can cause or make worse any number of things including asthma, as well as increase the risk of heart attacks.

But if I can let you in on a secret, perhaps one of the reasons I’m most genuinely excited by this shift is because it might lead to the removal of diesel at petrol pumps. No I’m not the only one to make that mistake. Talk about a kerfuffle. I had to keep my identity as a blogger on the automobile industry pretty quiet when the AA came to my rescue on that one.

The removal of diesel pumps is probably quite a while off though. In the meantime, it looks like more inconveniences for the diesel fuelled amongst us will come from increased costs - the government wants five major cities: Birmingham, Leeds, Southampton, Derby and Nottingham, to create clean zones where the most polluting vehicles would be charged. Looks like our diesel heads in Port Talbot will be ok for a while then.