Brits fed up with diesel cars

© VolkswagenVolkswagen's diesel emissions cheating scandal is one of the reasons motorists are less keen to buy oil burners. But not the only one

While car sales grow in the UK, interest in diesels seems to be waning. While Britons bought 174564 new vehicles in January 2017 (which is the highest figure for that month since 2005), only 78778 of them were oil burners. That's down by 4,3% from January 2016, when 82314 cars featuring Diesel engines were sold. Also note that not only were nominally more such vehicles purchased the previous year, but they also constituted a bigger percentage of overall sales, since in general fewer new cars entered the market. As far as petrol counterparts are considered, their popularity spiked by 8,9% between January 2016 and January 2017.

What fuels this trend? For one, buyers are disenchanted with diesels after the Volkswagen scandal. Another reason is that cities across Europe (including Paris, Madrid, Birmingham and others) are banning such cars from their streets, with London possibly being the next one. All this creates great potential for the autogas sector, which should promote LPG as a readily available alternative fuel more actively than before. Meanwhile, motorists opt for EVs, hybrids and hydrogen cars, which are up by 19,9% – from 6072 in January 2016 to 7279 a year later.

While the relative growth figure for "green" vehicles seems impressive at first, the actual number is less so, with as few as 1200 more cars sold. We believe sales of LPG-converted petrol cars could grow at a much faster pace, since they are based on proven technology and can already be refueled at 1400 stations across the UK, while hydrogen stations or public EV chargers remain few and far between. Let's hope that if we know this today, the British LPG sector has known it since the day before yesterday and they're getting ready to act. We'll keep you informed.