UK new car sales

[Jocko]

The news is full of the announcement that new car sales have fallen, for the first time in 6 years. What stands out is that sales of new diesels have dropped by almost a fifth. Is this the beginning of the end of diesel cars (diesel commercial vehicles will go on for ever)? What effect this has on secondhand diesel car prices is anyone's guess. Will prices drop in the secondhand market, or will the reduction in numbers of newer vehicles coming on the market keep secondhand prices buoyant? Only time will tell.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-42571828

[richardfrost]

There was a number of reasons why I got rid of my diesel HRV, but the potential for the resale value of diesels going over a cliff was one of them.

As for the drop off in sales, right now I think it is very difficult for motorists to know which way to go, regarding engine types. We all know EVs are coming, and we all know right now they aren't that practical. We now all know that Diesels are the Devil's work. So if you are unsure, you will mostly likely wait until a clearer path emerges.

I plumped for a hybrid as my car (still have my 2005 Jazz on the drive too), and it is a brilliant car, but it is not as efficient as a diesel.

[Jocko]

I have never owned a diesel. I have driven quite a few and loved the driving experience. When I worked for Arnold Clark one of our small FIAT vans was a turbo diesel, and it was a sweet drive.
My brother has a 2014 BMW 320 X-Drive Estate. It is an automatic, and BMW state 57.6 - 62.8 mpg from it. He regularly sees 70 mpg on a long run, and that is without using Economy mode.
Will I ever buy a diesel? Don't think so, but I have bought a couple of my brother's cast offs, so you never know. I would certainly consider his Beemer if the price is right.

[peteo48]

There was a number of reasons why I got rid of my diesel HRV, but the potential for the resale value of diesels going over a cliff was one of them.

As for the drop off in sales, right now I think it is very difficult for motorists to know which way to go, regarding engine types. We all know EVs are coming, and we all know right now they aren't that practical. We now all know that Diesels are the Devil's work. So if you are unsure, you will mostly likely wait until a clearer path emerges.

I plumped for a hybrid as my car (still have my 2005 Jazz on the drive too), and it is a brilliant car, but it is not as efficient as a diesel.

Good post. There's a lot of uncertainty about and this encourages people to stick rather than twist. Wages are also lagging behind inflation. One minor point (or maybe it's not minor!) is road tax and the changes that came in in April last year. A friend of mine who tends to buy new but keep for a long time, changed his 08 Plate 1.6 Focus for a Fiesta back in September. Instead of buying new and being liable to the £140 per annum road tax under the new system, he's opted for a late 2016 model which, being the 1.0 litre Eco Boost was exempt from road tax and will continue to be so. Keeping cars for 8 years or so that saves him over £1,000!

[culzean]

This is a pretty good article from 'Which'

https://www.which.co.uk/reviews/new-and-used-cars/article/petrol-vs-diesel-cars-in-which-is-better

At the end it basically says although general servicing costs for Petrol and Diesel are comparable (?) diesel cars are in general less reliable than petrol and if something goes wrong it is normally a lot more expensive to fix a diesel.  And people who don't regularly use motorways or do other high speed journeys should avoid Diesels with DPF, which will block up and burn out if only used for short journeys and costs £££££'s to fix. 

My boss had a brand new Mazda CX-5 diesel in 2014 and his commute involved 30 mile each way mainly motorway, after about 8 months something happened to the Turbo and a bit or a blade(s) fell off and got into engine,  it took them 10 weeks to get car back on road and if it had happened outside guarantee period it would have cost him the proverbial 'arm and leg' .  For most people driving less than 10K a year a Diesel does not make sense just for fuel saving,  if you need it to tow something then that is a different matter.

[Jocko]

I don't trust Which's statement, that according to their annual review diesels are less reliable than petrol engined cars. Perhaps that is true in their test, but not because of the fact they are diesel. I think it is a case of twisting statistics to prove a point. If you test two cars, a diesel and a petrol, and the wipers fail on the diesel, then the petrol is more reliable. Get my point?
Diesels, vans, trucks, tractors and such, run for ever. Even with no maintenance they will virtually run for ever! Just not at their best or efficiently. It is the nature of the oil burner.
And a turbo failing and dropping parts into the engine, that could happen as easily with a petrol engine. It may cost more to replace a diesel engine with a new one, but diesel engine rebuilds tend to be cheaper than for a petrol engine.

[culzean]

I don't trust Which's statement, that according to their annual review diesels are less reliable than petrol engined cars. Perhaps that is true in their test, but not because of the fact they are diesel. I think it is a case of twisting statistics to prove a point. If you test two cars, a diesel and a petrol, and the wipers fail on the diesel, then the petrol is more reliable. Get my point?
Diesels, vans, trucks, tractors and such, run for ever. Even with no maintenance they will virtually run for ever! Just not at their best or efficiently. It is the nature of the oil burner.
And a turbo failing and dropping parts into the engine, that could happen as easily with a petrol engine. It may cost more to replace a diesel engine with a new one, but diesel engine rebuilds tend to be cheaper than for a petrol engine.

Modern diesels are just so complicated to get emissions even reasonable, that is where unreliability comes in. Modern diesels are nothing like diesels of a decade or two ago which were fairly simple bits of kit and would run for ever on anything you cared to feed them with be it chip fat or bio diesel (ha ha).  Japanese fell out with european car legislators in around 2005 when japs said that emissions wise, diesel is a dead end technology... could not have put it better myself.

One failure that repeats on diesels is the dual mass flywheel tend to fail regularly, these are needed to protect gearbox from diesel low down power pulses, they are cheaper than a new gearbox but still expensive.

[sparky Paul]

As culzean says, modern diesels are complex beasts, and there is a lot to go wrong... and as said previously, it can get very expensive very quickly.

A failed common rail injector pump can easily end up costing £3-4k to repair when you add up the cost of the pump, injector rebuilds, new pipework and the labour cleaning the metal particles out of the tank and the rest of the fuel system. Repeat failures of turbos, and subsequently crank bearings, caused by poor oil circulation are also far more common these days, particularly in certain PSA diesels - and these engines are fitted to many non-PSA vehicles too.

[John Ratsey]

Many people have become cautious about diesels now that the truth about the emissions has emerged and there are plans to have tighter rules on emissions in some urban areas. However, in itself that doesn't explain the overall sales drop. It's more likely, as noted above, that the tax changes moved some 2017 purchases into 2016 plus, with several years of good sales there's a diminished supply of customers for new vehicles. When will the people who have bought cars on 3 year PCPs need to change? There might also be a minority of people who are holding out for a new scrappage scheme.

[sparky Paul]

I think the PCP market must be getting pretty saturated now.

[peteo48]

On the diesel thing I remember back in the 1980s the office where I was working had 2 diesel escorts as pool cars. They were very reliable but were very agricultural beasts compared to those of today - no turbos, no DPFs and very understrained engines (incredibly slow as well). In fact they both got to 100,000 miles if I recall and were the most reliable cars in the pool.

Today's diesel is a different beast as Culzean points out and all the evidence I've seen indicates that they are now less reliable than their petrol equivalents. Part of that may be because people are buying them for the wrong reasons. They do better if they are used for distance work or at least kept constantly running like a Taxi although round here you can't move for Prius taxis. It's why you can't get hold of them that easily second hand. Our local Toyota dealer almost never has a used Prius but loads of Auris or Yaris hybrids.

But government got this wrong by encouraging diesels to meet CO2 targets - the NOX problem was always known about from what I gather. I'm surprised nobody has sued the government on air quality grounds!

[MartinJG]

I have always liked diesels. Bullet proof and indestructable, simple technology and very reliable. I prefer the low down torque and the mid range poke of a turbo but the problem with modern diesels is they are no longer allowed to be diesels. I think one of the reasons they were pushed so much is largely down to Europe where they have always been popular with the low cost of diesel fuel. It used to be much cheaper here until the tinkering politicos realised they could jack up the tax on DERV knowing that the average diesel would get much higher MPG thereby offsetting the impact of the price increase on diesel owners. It's a pity about the emissions issues because the concept of compression ignition makes a lot of sense. On a general level, it is interesting that the 'technology tactics' of the Germans and the Japanese seem to be quite different. The Germans seem much more focussed on stretching new ideas and technology (which partly explains some of the reliability problems) whereas the Japanese seem more intent on perfecting existing technology with tweeks here and there without compromising reliability. Since it seems a matter of time before EV's make the grade, it just doesn't make sense to sink huge amounts of cash into further developing the combustion engine which has largely exceeded its sell by date so the Japanese approach of 'treading water' makes more sense. That said, I have a feeling the rattle box will be around a bit longer than we might reasonably expect.

[jazzway]

My car before the Jazz was a diesel, got it 15 years, 400,000km+ (250,000 miles) and really never had any additional things than an annual service and normal wear in those 15 years. But road tax almost 3 times the Jazz, not allowed in some cities and plain old were reasons to change. But the car never failed us, it was one of the reliable old diesels, i think.

I think the drop in diesel sales is also a reaction to the VW scandal!

[culzean]

If only the driver of a diesel could see what the following drivers see.  I often have to drop back because of thick cloud of grey or black smoke belching out of vehicle in front away from lights, junctions and up hills.  These are not old fashioned diesels, they are fairly new registration high end models.  The trouble is as well some drivers see diesels as 'more powerful' than petrol (due to lower down torque but alas limited rev range),  which explains the number of Diesel F1 cars and diesel dragsters (yes I know Audi win the Le mans 24hr race in diesels but that is down to fewer fuel stops required and they don't measure emissions on racetracks).

Diesel was considered 'waste product' of petrol refining until some bright spark decided it could be used in a vehicle.

My view of things is that Germans were put on this planet to complicate things and Japanese and Americans to simplify stuff. This is down to having to use PLC's in industry - where Siemens kit was horribly complicated and expensive where Allen_Bradley (USA) and Omron (Japan) were much simpler (but no less powerful) and cheaper.   Even in WW2 Jerries were making fewer and fewer larger and larger more complicated tanks that the crews could not maintain in good working order (they probably lost more tanks to breakdowns than to allied action) where the allies and especially Russia just stuck a big gun on a simple to make but rugged chassis and blew the hell out of the Germans by sheer numbers. The T-34 chassis and suspension (also used on successful British tanks) was an adaption of an older American design by a guy called Christie that the Yanks never used, what a pity.

When Jerries captured a T34 and took it to Germany the German tank companies laughed at it and said,  we could not make that it does not meet our quality and technical design standards (Russians did not see the point of wasting labour highly polishing a machine that had a battle life of maybe 20 minutes, they just built them by the 1000's with lowest labour input).

[peteo48]

I think Culzean may have hit the nail on the head here. Certainly the Japanese seem quite conservative and the approach seems to be to perfect existing technologies with small incremental improvements. Toyota have been making hybrids for over 20 years now and they have got it sussed. The preponderance of Priuses going into the taxi business is testimony to that.

Speculating now I wonder if Honda are pursuing a similar approach with regards to EVs. They have done concept cars but it looks like they will be waiting until the next decade to go all out on electric. I bet they won't be short range ones either.