[RavenAvi]

Toyota will make hybrids it's core interest in the coming years as it plans to pull the plug on all new diesel offerings in Europe from this year onwards.

Smart move. Toyota's diesel sales have been on a steady decline since 2012 while hybrids have grown in acceptance to over 40 percent during the past 2 years.

Toyota will place hybrid cars at the core of sales as the possibility of a ban on diesel cars in cities in Western European countries such as Germany and Britain has accelerated consumers' shift away from such cars toward gasoline and electric cars.The revelation came during an interview with Nikkei and other media ahead of the 88th Geneva International Motor Show which kicked off on Tuesday.
Johan van Zyl, CEO of Toyota Motor Europe, said diesel will be phased out because customers do not want it.
The new policy will target not only Western Europe but the rest of Europe as well, including Russia and Turkey.

Asia Nikkei

[blackwasp]

Toyota has revealed that from this year onwards, the company will start phasing out diesel engines from all its passenger cars in Europe. The move comes at a time when the company has reported a fall in the sales of the diesel engine vehicles. The numbers for the hybrid vehicles on the other hand have gone up considerably.

Toyota Motor Europe CEO, Johan van Zyl, revealed at the Geneva Motor Show that diesel would be phased primarily based on customer demand. According to the 2017 numbers from the company, sales of the diesel cars in Europe have fallen to mid-10%, while those of the hybrid cars have gone up to 41% in just 2 years, with a year-on-year growth of 38%. This new plan from the Japanese automaker will not only cover Europe, but also Russian and Turkish markets. It must be noted that Toyota will continue to offer diesel engines on its commercial vehicles like the Hilux, Proace and Land Cruiser.

Additionally, regulation in Europe requires automakers to limit the average CO2 emissions below 95 grams/km in 2021. Toyota aims to meet this by raising the total share of hybrid car sales to over 50% and launching all-electric vehicles by 2020. For now, the company will release its Auris (Corolla based hatchback) without any diesel option while offering two hybrid options in Europe.



Link to the Team-BHP News

[GTO]

Originally Posted by RavenAvi

Toyota will make hybrids it's core interest in the coming years as it plans to pull the plug on all new diesel offerings in Europe from this year onwards.

Wow, diesels sure are getting a bad name, thanks in no small part to Mr. VW. Recently read articles about German cities banning diesels too. Still, diesels do sell in good volume in European countries & Toyota will lose some market-share because of that. The Big T currently has a little under 5% of the EU market. While diesel car sales are declining in Europe, they're still over 40% of the market.

Interesting times we find ourselves in. We're witnessing a paradigm shift in the industry like never before.

[Sankar]

Hope all this noise about banning Diesels get manufacturers to do something about reducing the purchase price of a ZEV or a hybrid. Till that happens the noisy war cries on Diesel will remain as noises. Give me a proper hybrid at a reasonable cost (over its Petrol/Diesel counterpart) and I will happily switch over and don't limit these to the luxury segment.

[benbsb29]

While Toyota claims to stop selling diesels, its interesting to see that wont be the case with the Hilux and Landcruiser. If not these, how much of an impact is this in real terms?

[Rocketscience]

Well this really is happening worldwide, and if i'm not wrong the trend of diesel engines had originated from Europe too, and this resulted in tremendous development in the following years, so much so that atleast the cars on sale in India, the diesels are not only more practical and fuel efficient, they are much more fun to drive because of the turbo and that addictive torque, they have been my favorite and i always thought buying them as a win win situation.
Euro 6 in India and the resultant R&D costs and hence the increase in price of the cars because of this does not justify offering diesel powered cars for many manufacturers, Jeep, Fiat (Multijet) have been announced to be phasing out the diesels in the coming years, diesels are loosing the battle worldwide too even if for a different reason, diesels have become from being pretty much the kings to an endagered species real quick, i don't see a very bright future for them in the coming years, and honestly there is no immediate replacement for them, which offer the same performance and efficiency at a similar cost.

[Jeroen]

Originally Posted by GTO

Recently read articles about German cities banning diesels too. S

Interesting times we find ourselves in. We're witnessing a paradigm shift in the industry like never before.

Obviously, the diesel banning was highly contested, all the way into court. A recent ruling made it clear that cities can ban diesel completely. So it is still up to the individual city to impose such a blanket ban on diesels. It’s not mandatory or automatically. In addition earlier last year, an environmental group took the German government to court as they believed they were not doing enough to combat pollution in cities. They won their case, so national and local authorities are under pressure to do a lot more!

Even so, today there are hundreds of cities in Europe with some sort of low emission zone in place. Germany has many cities which imposes so called umwelt zones.

Every car needs to get a sticker, three colours, the colour is determined by the emissions of your car. Green gets you in,no problems, any other colour you will face restrictions. No stickers is either a fine, or just don’t go into that city. (Classic cars are exempt). I have three of these green stickers or our Fords and Jaguar, just in case we pop into Germany. My classics are exempt, but you do need to put the official registration cards behing the front window if you park in an Umwelt zone.

My home country has several cities with low emission zones. Whereas it differs from city to city / country to country most are more or less based on relatively simple criteria, such as age of the car, petrol versus diesel, private cars versus trucks.

All monitor fully automatically with cameras and system hooked up to the relevant databases. You drive into these zones in a car that is not allowed, it’s a Euro 100 fine automatically.

Again, the schemes are all different. But to simplify, if you drive a diesel 10 years old or more you are going to find yourself not being able to drive into many European cities as it is already today!

Jeroen

[avira_tk]

I'm not sure what kind of market share Toyota diesels had in Europe, at 10% and falling out and they just cut their losses and managed to virtue signal. The reason why diesel is popular is because the government promoted low CO2 vehicles, only diesel could manage that. The same governments raised taxes on fuel deliberately skewing demand for diesel. No one wants to pay more for something essential as transport. Now, we have the same cities showing off their progressive credentials by banning diesel.
Toyota always focused on hybrid, and it is a good alternative, but the problem is practicality is compromised with hybrid. An SUV without a spare or a big boot is not the best option for the category.