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The word “diesel” is now officially synonymous with bad and I don’t think it’ll ever recover in North America. The constant battering continues on all fronts since it was discovered that VW had used cheat devices on their “clean-diesel” 4-cylinder engines.
Since then, countless investigations were launched against FCA, Porsche, Nissan, Audi, GM and now Mercedes. Last May, a prosecutors and state criminal authorities searched Daimler sites with the result being that Mercedes has agreed to recall over 3 million diesel-powered vehicles in Europe at a cost of 220 million Euros.
This is only the latest round of recalls and investigations pertaining to diesel engines. Some OEMs are under scrutiny for allegedly using cheat devices on gasoline powered cars as well. It is easy to draw a number of conclusions from these debacles including the possibility that internal combustion engines are at, or near, the end of their tenure as the go-to powertrain.
A number of OEMs are doing quite well with their collection of ICE vehicles, namely Mazda, however it seems increasingly obvious that electrification is the inevitable next step. Volvo has already embraced the fact and many others will or have done the same. Some countries, such as France, have taken drastic steps where the near future will be zero emissions, or walking.
The dust will not settle any time near on the diesel debacle but one thing seems fairly clear: the days of the fuel-burners are numbered in North America, and likely the world.
