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Report Dieselis not dead Ignore the headlines, as our


Editor, Shane O’ Donoghue is confident that there’s plenty of life left yet in diesel power


Not the end of the road: modern diesel engines still make most sense for longer commutes in Ireland


I


f you’ve been paying even the slightest bit of attention to the news over the past year or so, you could be forgiven for thinking that


diesel power will be extinct in the next year or fi ve and that we’ll all be driving electric cars instead. The mainstream media has a habit of going for sensational headlines that stick in the memory, even if the detail within the articles is more realistic. Let me reassure you by saying that we are a very long way away from the demise of diesel power and streets fi lled with electric cars. Let’s take a step back a moment, to


2008, when the Irish government introduced new motor taxation legislation based on the emissions of carbon dioxide. This is a greenhouse gas rather than a local pollutant and it’s directly linked to fuel consumption, so


the move was deemed to be environmentally sound – and many European countries did the same thing. Irish car buyers fl ocked to diesel power overnight to avail of their low emissions ratings and the market has been dominated by diesel ever since. However, the Volkswagen emissions


scandal of 2015-2016 shone a spotlight on diesel power and the dangerous pollutants it can emit if not properly controlled. Now it is understood just how bad for our health older diesel engine exhaust fumes are, which is why the world is clamouring to ban it from our cities and the car makers are forging ahead with electrifi cation. But there’s an important aspect to all this that seems to be ignored in all the hyperbole: the latest diesel engines are exceptionally clean and don’t have the same problems.


Environmental issues are very much to the fore when engine types are considered


Nonetheless, the damage has clearly been


done, in terms of public perception of diesel power, and some car makers are predicting that, even in Ireland, where there has been no change to the motor taxation legislation, we will see a dramatic swing back towards petrol power in new car sales. I believe that some brands may experience such a thing (Toyota’s line-up, for example, is heavily biased toward petrol and petrol-electric hybrid power), but for anyone that drives predominantly on the motorway or regularly covers long distances, there really is still no substitute for the economy a diesel engine can return. Whether they can retain their previously strong residual values is, admittedly, a worry for the industry. What of hybrid and electric cars? There’s


no doubt they’re going to become a larger part of the picture in time, but most hybrids are still quite expensive and any electric cars you might call aff ordable are not suitable for regular long journeys. It must be said, though, that several car makers expect the range between charges of electric cars to dramatically increase in the next decade, so it’ll be a diff erent story, potentially, when that happens. Until then, our advice to car buyers is relatively unchanged. If you live in or near a town or city and you rarely take on longer journeys, then diesel is not for you. But there are vast swathes of the country in which diesel power makes a lot of sense and will do so for a long time to come. AI


10 Auto Ireland 2018


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