Back in 2015, Audi got itself caught up in what was to become a massive, industry wide scandal about the emissions that come out of the back of many diesel cars across the globe. Also known as ‘dieselgate’, the Volkswagen Emissions Scandal was thanks to the US government discovering a special piece of software installed on Volkswagen’s ECUs which adjusted the car’s setup when it detected that it was undergoing testing.
For years, we were advertised that diesel was the future for ‘green’ motoring, and this was reflected in the fact that diesels were more economical and most notably, much cheaper to tax. During the 2000s, diesels became the far more popular choice for buyers, with over half of sales of Volkswagen’s popular family car, the Golf, being diesels.
Unfortunately, this scandal affected far more people than just Volkswagen. Audi, Seat and Skoda were amongst the other most notable companies to be affected due to the fact that they use a whole variety of different TDI engines from the VAG parts bin. It was revealed that this scandal could affect well over 10,000,000 cars worldwide and that cars were producing up to 40x more nitrogen oxide than what US laws allow.
In the UK at least, many cars were issued a recall notice that would install new software to the car’s engine management system. However, people have since been reporting reduced MPG figures, reduced performance and reliability problems (most notably with turbochargers and EGR valves) since the update. If the scandal itself didn’t dent the reputation of the VW Group, then the response to the situation most certainly has.
So, how has the scandal affected the car industry in the last 3 years? Well, we can see that sales figures for diesel cars has dropped significantly with lower petrol prices and the rise of modern turbocharged petrol engines which offer lots of power and near diesel levels of fuel economy. It has also seen new regulations for diesels, which makes it harder than ever to own one. Not only have we seen the rules about diesel emissions in the yearly MOT become much more strict, but we are also seeing the introductions of emission zones that restrict the use of diesels in certain areas (most notably, the new ULEZ zone in Central London).
The big question that we continue to ask ourselves is how the popularity of diesels will change over the next few years, with a real rise in hybrid and electric technology, not to mention the return of petrol for many buyers, will we begin to see the demise of diesels, only a matter of 10 years after the government recommended we buy them?
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