Are you worried about the future of diesel cars?

iaind

iaind

iaind

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Hey Guys

Just wanted to see where peoples heads were with diesel cars at the moment. There's a snowballing amount of doom and gloom in the news, about values of diesel cars plummeting. I've heard several people talking about how they're going to be taxed off the road at the pump. A lot of it sounds like hyperbole or conjecture so just wondering whether anyone here was worried about it at all?

I currently have a Mazda3 2.2D 185bhp which has been excellent and does everything I need. It's fast enough to feel capable without getting into "hot" territory, but it does 50mpg on average. I'll likely replace it next year, just to get something a bit more modern and newer (ploughing all my money into getting my PPL at the moment). If I tell myself that diesel is a bad option then it seems nearly impossible to find something in the midsize hatchback market that has moderate performance and decent spec. I'd be looking for something the same size as the Mazda, but the story seems to be even worse the higher up the size chain you go - the petrol options are rare, slow or thirsty (or all of the above).

So how worried are you, fellow derv drivers? I'd quite happily buy a year old Mazda3 2.2d but I wouldn't want to spend 15k on something to find fuel is bumped up by 20p a litre over petrol and it's worth 6k a year later!
 
My 320D GT is Euro6, but I do worry that with all the doom mongering (although this is fairly justified in most cases) that diesel cars will become undesirable and difficult to move on, a complete flip from the past few years where everyone bought them for the MPGz. I think the way around it will be just to keep the car forever then I won't have to worry about resale! Hopefully they won't mess with fuel prices, as that unfairly penalises 'clean' diesels, the correct way around it would be an redesign of VED.
 
The only place where diesels are taking a hit is the market where they should never have been bought in the first place. I'm talking the supermini area and the "used for taking the kids to school" market. These markets should have been buying small petrols and the current backlash against diesel is a correction IMO.
The area where diesels used to make sense (big annual mileage), diesels still make sense. This isn't going to change any time soon due to our policy of punitive fuel taxation.

I think we will see a devaluation of older, pre Euro 6 diesels as cities bring in clean-air policies that restrict older cars but this is likely to be self sorted by the market as a whole.
 
It's annoying how things are rapidly changing - I'm currently driving a BMW F11 3.0 diesel lump with Euro V.

We'll all be pushed towards electric cars and then they'll realise millions of batterys needing recycling/disposal will cause other types of pollution issues.
 
VincentHanna said:
It's annoying how things are rapidly changing - I'm currently driving a BMW F11 3.0 diesel lump with Euro V.

We'll all be pushed towards electric cars and then they'll realise millions of batterys needing recycling/disposal will cause other types of pollution issues.
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Yep, which we currently don't have the facilities to deal with. They never think far enough ahead.

Luckily I never liked diesels and didn't listen to the government. So I'm not stuck with a car which may bomb in value or be hard to sell on. The whole thing looks like a state run scam on behalf of the car industry :P
 
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I'm a bit worried from the perspective of taking advantage of cheap petrol cars that are becoming increasingly in demand but obviously of limited supply in the used market.
 
Rilot said:
The only place where diesels are taking a hit is the market where they should never have been bought in the first place. I'm talking the supermini area and the "used for taking the kids to school" market. These markets should have been buying small petrols and the current backlash against diesel is a correction IMO.
The area where diesels used to make sense (big annual mileage), diesels still make sense. This isn't going to change any time soon due to our policy of punitive fuel taxation.

I think we will see a devaluation of older, pre Euro 6 diesels as cities bring in clean-air policies that restrict older cars but this is likely to be self sorted by the market as a whole.
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Dunno about that. The value of my 6 series has dropped a fair bit in the last year.
 
[TW]Fox said:
Because it's a 6 series. The value of a 640i has too!

Yours is Euro IV too actually isn't it?
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V I believe. Assembly date was Sep or oct 2012 I think.

I was comparing the drops in 40ds to 40is and the d looked to have taken more of a hit.
 
I'm not worried about the value of my current car, its probably worth 4k tops anyway.. I'd just not want to get into something in a year or so and have its value plummet

My problem is I'm in the middle ground of where diesel makes sense - 12-14k miles a year, all dual carriageway, at the moment. I'd be quite happy with a petrol in the high 30s/low 40s mpg but the options are really limiting

A3/Octavia/Leon/Golf 1.4 - Probbably the best balance of economy and performance, but ones with the kit I want are rare or non existent
Focus Ecoboost - the 1.0 is going to be way too slow, the 1.5 is rare and seems to be automatic mainly
Astra 1.4T - Fuel economy seems to be poor
Mazda3 2.0 - Economy is probably OK but it's annoyingly slow
Volvo V40 - T3 might be OK but not sure what they're like in the real world
BMW 1 series - I dont even know what engines they have, I know the seats in the 1/3 absolutely ruin my back for some reason though
A Class - almost no petrol engines?

There's a few other things like the Mini Cooper - but the choices seem really poor. If I wanted something that does everything my Mazda does, just newer - I don't think I can find it without staying at the black pump.
 
In response to the OP, im not worried at all hopefully they will all be banned :D. I'm fed up of being behind a diesel in traffic and breathing in all their fumes and they're being a black cloud everytime they accelerate (i know euro 6 are much cleaner but they take time to filter through). To the poster above, have you considered a smaller car?
 
iaind said:
I'm not worried about the value of my current car, its probably worth 4k tops anyway.. I'd just not want to get into something in a year or so and have its value plummet

My problem is I'm in the middle ground of where diesel makes sense - 12-14k miles a year, all dual carriageway, at the moment. I'd be quite happy with a petrol in the high 30s/low 40s mpg but the options are really limiting

A3/Octavia/Leon/Golf 1.4 - Probbably the best balance of economy and performance, but ones with the kit I want are rare or non existent
Focus Ecoboost - the 1.0 is going to be way too slow, the 1.5 is rare and seems to be automatic mainly
Astra 1.4T - Fuel economy seems to be poor
Mazda3 2.0 - Economy is probably OK but it's annoyingly slow
Volvo V40 - T3 might be OK but not sure what they're like in the real world
BMW 1 series - I dont even know what engines they have, I know the seats in the 1/3 absolutely ruin my back for some reason though
A Class - almost no petrol engines?

There's a few other things like the Mini Cooper - but the choices seem really poor. If I wanted something that does everything my Mazda does, just newer - I don't think I can find it without staying at the black pump.
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Would you consider going smaller? So the likes of the Fiesta, Polo, Ibiza, Fabia etc?
 
Maybe. I'm not really looking at deciding or a "spec me" right now, it was just an observation about the lack of good options on the market for what I thought would be a not uncommon set of requirements.

I dont want anything massive, the Mazda is the ideal size for me - as I need it to be comfortable enough for the mileage I'm doing and have space for 2 large suitcases in the boot. I want high spec and there's some things I dont want to live without (heated seats, I'm looking at you VAG group cars). The Fiesta Titanium X ticks most of the boxes but as impressive as the little 1.0 Ecoboost is, it's not exactly energetic
 
The difficulty now is in the used market. Try and buy a petrol 5-series, 7-series, E-Class, A6, Passat, A8, etc.
 
If they raised the price of Derv that much what do you think the response from the Trucking Industry would be ?

Think how many wagons a Supermarket chain runs eg: Morrisons. Just a 1p per Litre rise adds £ MILLIONS across the fleet.

Fear ye not. If they somehow managed to separate private motorists from hauliers you'd just use the truck pump !
 
Rilot said:
The difficulty now is in the used market. Try and buy a petrol 5-series, 7-series, E-Class, A6, Passat, A8, etc.
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Yeah thats what I mean - its worse the higher up the market you go but still is hard in the basic mid size hatch. If you just want something for getting around, dont want it to be slow, but dont want a performance variant... its impossible to find.
 
Most European cars are going to be diesel by now, since they have been pushed in to it for the past decade. You'd need to look at Japanese cars for more choice of petrol on the used market since they never got on-board with diesel.

Suddenly cars which almost no one ordered new are in high demand on the used market. Especially around the London area :p
 
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It’s all abit of a mess at the moment. You probably have dealerships with tons of diesels sat there waiting to be sold that not many people want anymore “think there’s been a 22% drop in diesel sales over the last year”.
I’ve heard of some dealerships offering naff all to people trying to trade the same diesel cars back to them them that they were happy to sell them 2-3 years ago and someone i work with has just got 8k off a pre registered new diesel Audi TT :eek:
Some used petrol cars have actually increased in price over the last 6 months aswell with the used car market just being full of diesels especially in the Audi, Mercedes. BMW market.
And think of how many people probably got the dpf removed back when that was popular aren’t they changing that from a visual inspection soon? So some used car buyers will have to deal with that expense now aswell
 
Rilot said:
The difficulty now is in the used market. Try and buy a petrol 5-series, 7-series, E-Class, A6, Passat, A8, etc.
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Exactly, the 530i is incredibly rare, there was close to zero demand in the UK. I can't see there being any significant impact on residuals of exec sized cars unless the buyer decides to downsize their expectation if they want a petrol.
 
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