Diesel’s days are numbered... hello electric!
TAXI drivers everywhere must have spent the week watching tears dropping into their coffee cups. Toyota’s announcement on Monday at the Geneva Motor Show that it will cease production of all diesel passenger cars this year came out of the blue, but it makes a lot of sense given that petrol/electric hybrids account for the majority of sales (roughly half of all Toyota sales in Ireland).
Sister brand Lexus already has a full hybrid line-up, and some Toyotas also have plug-in options as well as charging on the go. Volvo already has said all its cars either will be fully electric or hybrid by next year (though it will sell diesel/electric hybrids, so it hasn’t fully abandoned diesel yet), and other carmakers, notably Renault and its sister company Nissan, have increased their fully electric offerings.
Indeed, every major carmaker now has at least a hybrid, if not a fully electric, offering.
We already were turning our backs on diesel, with the share of January sales down by 17% on the same month last year. As I have written here before, what once was hailed as the clean fuel of the future created more problems than it solved, with nitrogen oxide emissions seen as more harmful to human health than carbon dioxide, even though the latter poses a greater longterm challenge because it contributes to climate change.
One way or the other, the clock is ticking. The Government already has plans to ban sales of all traditional combustion engines in 2030, with the final NCT certs for such cars issued in 2045. The odds on my seeing that day are long at best – I would be 82 – but it has to come.
It won’t be as traumatic as you might think. The sheer beauty of electric acceleration is thrilling, and new and better batteries mean that range is being extended all the time. The challenge for government now is to ensure the electricity needed to charge all these new cars comes solely from renewable energy sources. There seems little point in banning diesel and petrol if we’re still generating electricity with coal.