It's perplexing to me that after all that has happened in recent years, VW's CEO is now talking about a diesel renaissance.
After committing the company to going full speed ahead on EV development and even lobbying German officials to end diesel tax breaks, his quote, "Once the knowledge that diesels are eco-friendly firms up in people’s minds, then for me there’s no reason not to buy one," is especially confounding.
In all of this, I see leadership and corporate direction issues at Volkswagen that could put them behind their competitors in the coming years. Regarding a diesel renaissance at Volkswagen, I'll believe it when I see them on dealer lots.
Considering the interview was at a European auto show, I would take it more into the context of the European market.
As for the U.S., that's still a pretty shaky bet. Although reps at the Detroit auto show for VW and Audi apparently have heard the "when are the diesels coming back?" a thousand times already. So, if they feel there is still a market then *maybe* they'll come back. But I would assume not a moment before the last CPO "fixed" TDI is off dealer lots.
But the fact remains that it is indeed possible for diesels to meet the latest stringent emissions and still get fantastic fuel economy and make that awesome torquey power we all know and love here. So, that aspect won't be a hurdle. It's been figured out and we still have GM, BMW and Ford diesels fully certified with the more stringent test procedure here.
Now, as for realistic longevity, especially in a city environment, that's a whole other story... They still make sense for those rare individuals who do a ton of freeway driving. But if I had a stop n go traffick-y commute with a fair bit of city driving in there as well, a hybrid or electric makes much more sense and will ultimately be cheaper to operate as well.
But that's all I'm advocating for, just because diesel is not necessarily the best tool for all jobs doesn't mean it should be abandoned altogether if they can infact legitimately meet the latest strict regs (they can). Don't remove the choice from those of us who still see it as the best tool to do what we need it to do just because of popular perception.
The switch to battery electric will NOT happen overnight. It is far too massive a scale on which we burn oil for personal transportation. It is not at all feasible to fully make the switch to battery electric so quick considering infrastructure and the lead time needed to scale up production of batteries and parts for electric vehicles. So, why not encourage the adoption of fuel efficient vehicles of all kinds, so long as they don't cheat emissions, in the meantime? We need good, efficient internal combustion engines until the day comes it is feasible to switch virtually all personal transportation off oil. Until then, completely abandoning one of the best technologies to help reduce oil usage and CO2 output is ridiculous. Europe's CO2 output has already risen for the first time in the last decade thanks to the rapid abandonment of diesel. This has put automakers into panic mode over there as they now have fears they may not meet the EU's targets for CO2 thanks to it.