Petrol vs diesel residuals

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Mr slow

Active Member
Joined
Feb 18, 2016
Messages
63
Location
Orkney Islands
Car
C200 sport premium
Question for any dealers or those in the trade.... with all the talk about those nasty diesel cars in the papers, has anyone noticed a rise in demand for petrol cars yet or has the media scaremongering fallen on deaf ears given diesels torque and economy. Not thinking of changing the motor anytime soon, just curious.;)
 
Question for any dealers or those in the trade.... with all the talk about those nasty diesel cars in the papers, has anyone noticed a rise in demand for petrol cars yet or has the media scaremongering fallen on deaf ears given diesels torque and economy. Not thinking of changing the motor anytime soon, just curious.;)

Honest John declares that "everyone is buying petrol cars" now (May 2017)

You are a long way up in Scotland :D
 
Even the March SMMT stats show an annualised shift to petrol

The March SMMT stats show a tangible (10%) annual shift to petrol for new registrations, and that's BEFORE the latest Bruhaha has converted to changed buyer behaviour, with Diesel remaining essentially static.

But obviously there will be all kinds of variances in different product segments. You can imagine that higher mileage commercials will be slow to change, and that low mileage Yummy Mummies will be the first to shift - for all the obvious reasons

Here's the stats:

https://www.smmt.co.uk/2017/04/records-tumble-as-march-uk-new-car-market-hits-all-time-high/
 
I suspect it will also differ depending on location, with the London area affected first.
 
There will be a trickle down effect....

I suspect it will also differ depending on location, with the London area affected first.

As we can see from the stats, the fleet market is a large percentage of new car sales but less than 20% of all cars on the road. As the fleet market changes, there's a time-lagged effect on used car availablility.

Put simply, people buy diesels at 3 / 6 / 9 years old, at the moment, because the fleet market bought them 3 / 6 / 9 years ago. in the future, there will be "slightly" more (10% at the moment) petrol cars out their to be sold on.
 
Future tax effects

The current Diesel car bias in the UK is purely the result of Gordon Brown's reshaping of the tax structure on cars and diesel back in 2001.

https://www.theguardian.com/busines...rong-to-subsidise-diesel-says-former-minister

It's highly likely that the incoming government will change the taxes and Tom and Dianne (other politicians are available) change policy to raise taxes and address pollution in Cities, pulling back Gordon's policies.
 
People buying secondhand don't have any choice but to buy diesel in a lot of cases,mainly due to fleet sales in previous years. I don't think it's fair to punish people who can only afford to buy secondhand.
The only way I can see to solve this problem is to make it more expensive to buy new diesels .
 
to be honest so long at a car has passed stringent tests prior to being sold I cannot see the point hitting on diesel's.Tomorrow it'll be something else to hit on the problem is people who do next to no miles getting diesels and causing more pollution seeing as a diesel does not reward you until the engine is hot unlike a school run.
 
Basic spec C and E class diesels are still being offered on contract hire 24m deals for sub £300pm with crazy high mpg and no risk to the hirer as they just hand back at the end of the deal.

Hence they will still be shifting quite a lot of these I imagine.
 
Interesting comments

Thanks for your thoughts guys, I bought a petrol car because of, mostly, low mileage trips up in the Orkney islands. A lot of petrol cars locally as dpms get killed here. Notice more people at the green pump!
 

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