Decrease of New Diesel Vehicle Sales in Europe

Last several years have shown that Europe loves diesel vehicles. The new-car market accounts more than 50% of sales. Some European governments promote diesel-powered vehicles in order to cut CO2 emissions.

LMC Automotive conducted the Dieselgate and a market analysis. It shows that diesel popularity crawled below 50% in Western Europe in April. This happened after new-car purchasers started to obtain petrol cars or EVs. Diesel market share crawled down by 2.2% to 50.1% (from January till April). In April the sales of diesel vehicles went down to 49.7%.

Most of all, this situation affected subcompact offerings, small MPVs and compact hatchbacks. According to the analysis, large diesel-powered sedans faced a less important decrease. Meanwhile deliveries of diesel mini-cars stayed the same.

If to believe the analysts, new diesel vehicles will decrease in future because of stricter pollution restrictions in Europe. Smaller offerings will suffer most of all as their after-treatment technology takes too many costs.

LMC’s study showed that the total new-vehicle market had 4.87 million cars in Western Europe in the beginning of the year. This is a considerable increase (7.7%) in comparison with the same period last year.