The last few years have not been kind to diesel engines. Once lauded and incentivised as a way to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and thereby slow the rate of climate change, they are now motor non grata because of the other harmful pollutants they can pump out of the exhaust, namely nitrogen oxides and particulate matter, which are proven to be damaging to our lungs and other organs.
Their pariah status really began in 2015, when it became clear that some car manufacturers were using cheat devices to subvert emissions tests — a scandal known as Dieselgate, in which the Volkswagen Group was the most notable culprit. What it meant was that diesel vehicles weren’t as clean in the real world as consumers and governments had been led to believe, and so a political clampdown on the fuel became turbocharged.
In 2012, diesel cars outsold petrol but in 2021, just 135,773 diesels were registered, compared with 762,103 fuelled by petrol. Sales of diesel plummeted 48.1% last year alone.
Diesel car sales are now eclipsed by those of hybrid and pure-electric vehicles, even.
Should I sell my diesel car asap?
Although it remains to be seen what will happen the closer we get to 2030, thus far the value of used diesel cars hasn’t fallen off a cliff in the way that some predicted it would. That may in part be to do with throttled supply of new cars, due to factory closures from Covid-19, shortages of semi-conductor chips and the war in Ukraine (a number of car maker factories are based in the region), but the signs are that there’s no need to panic about diesel car values.
According to figures released by valuations experts Cap HPI, based on a three-year-old car with 60,000 miles on the clock, the difference in depreciation levels between petrol and diesel models is marginal. An average petrol SUV will have depreciated in value from new by 56%, for example, with the equivalent diesel showing depreciation of 58%.
Similar figures can be seen across a range of segments with diesel city cars depreciating by 69% versus 65% for petrol models and just a percentage point in the difference between petrol and diesel cars in the executive class at 61% and 62%, respectively.
There’s no indication that diesels will become more difficult to run or own in the coming years, and nor is there any proposal for an outright ban apart from the 2030 one on new petrol and diesel car sales. You will still be able to sell your diesel car, and indeed buy and run another used diesel, beyond 2030.
Given the fact that as yet there’s no real alternative to diesel as a powerplant for bigger, heavier vehicles such as those used for towing, values for these are likely to remain high.
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