Revealed: the carmakers now not selling ANY new diesel models in Britain

Drivers are finding it increasingly difficult to get their hands on new diesel cars as manufacturers reduce their availability in Britain, new sector analysis shows.

Motorists have ‘no more choice’ when it comes to purchasing models with diesel engines, as car manufacturers discontinue them from their ranges and the number of new diesel models falls to a record low.

Nearly half of mainstream brands will have completely phased out diesel engines by 2024. We reveal which popular brands no longer sell them.

The choice for new diesel cars in 2024 has shrunk by 68 percent in less than ten years, according to an analysis by the second-hand marketplace Car Gurus.

Today, there are 65 diesel variants available from the 30 most popular mainstream engine manufacturers, the analysis showed.

That is scarce availability compared to ten years ago; in 2015 there were 202 different diesel models on sale in UK showrooms.

The declining availability of new diesel cars partly explains why diesel registrations have fallen from the brink.

Turning back the clock to 2014, manufacturers in Britain sold 1.24 million diesel cars, accounting for more than half (50.1 percent) of all new passenger car registrations.

At the time, diesels were heavily incentivized by the government’s emissions-based vehicle tax (Vehicle Excise Duty) system, which rewarded lower CO2 emissions from oil burners with cheaper annual VED costs.

However, everything changed in 2015 when the automotive emissions fraud scandal made headlines and the environmental agenda against ‘dirty diesels’ accelerated.

Increased VED rates for diesels followed, along with the introduction of low emission zones such as London’s ULEZ, which have much stricter compliance rules for diesel cars than for petrol cars.

Pressure has also increased on manufacturers to limit tools for developing diesel engines – and all combustion engines – as governments around the world set dates to ban their availability in the next decade.

As a result, diesel registrations have fallen.

Only 142,434 diesels were sold in Britain in 2023.

Lack of availability and concerns about paying daily emissions zone charges, combined with growing demand for electric vehicles and hybrids, saw diesels’ market share fall to just 7.5 percent last year.

When we look at the number of new cars on the road every year, statistics show that diesel volumes have fallen by as much as 89 percent since 2015.

And the decline continues this year; Only 97,650 diesels have been registered so far in 2024 (down 12 percent year-on-year) and the fuel type is on track to have an even smaller sales share of just 6.4 percent.

Is demand for diesel dead or is it due to a lack of available cars?

For many Britons, the lack of availability of new diesels is a huge frustration.

The fuel type has held a strong place in the hearts of British buyers over the past two decades, partly due to their higher fuel economy compared to petrol alternatives.

For high-mileage drivers, they remain a better financial option than gasoline and a more practical solution than electric vehicles, given the need to charge them regularly.

This could explain why the latest new registration data from September showed a rise in demand for diesel from private buyers, with sales rising 17.1 percent – ​​a volume increase of 1,367 units – compared to a year earlier.

This was a larger increase in usage than that of electric vehicles that month, although based on a much smaller sales volume.

While the overall trend still favors gasoline and alternative fuel vehicles (EVs and hybrids), this suggests that the buying public is not quite ready to move on from diesel.

Chris Knapman, editor-in-chief of CarGurus, said: ‘While the choice of new diesel vehicles has declined in recent years, it remains the fuel choice of choice for some drivers.

‘The good news is that there is still a huge choice of diesel vehicles on the second-hand market, including many that have been fitted with technology to make them ULEZ compliant.’

Which brands have already eradicated diesel?

Car Gurus has been tracking historical data on diesel model availability for the past ten years.

It shows that in 2015, only two of the thirty mainstream brands – Lexus and Smart – did not offer a car with a diesel engine in their range.

Fast forward to 2024, and the number of manufacturers ditching diesel has risen to almost half, with 14 brands no longer offering a new model with an oil burner under the hood.

And many of these are big brands, sold by the thousands in Britain every year.

Vauxhall, which had eight different new cars in dealerships in 2015 with a choice of diesel engines, now has none.

Toyota has also gone from a selection of seven diesel models to zero over the same period, and Volvo (eight diesel variants available in 2015), Hyundai (seven), Fiat (seven), Nissan (six) and Honda (four) have also followed suit .

Mini has also killed off its ‘D’ model variants.

Other popular car brands have reduced their diesel offerings to just one or two models by 2024.

Ford has gone from 13 different diesel options in 2015 to just two this year, while Peugeot has scaled back from 11 models to just a few.

Kia and Renault, which offered a selection of diesels ten years ago, also only have one vehicle in their range this year.

The table below shows how car brands have dramatically removed diesel engines from their ranges over the past decade: