Italy is poised to become the sixth European country to sell more diesel-powered vehicles than petrol-fuelled ones, Automotive News Europe reported.
Go deeper with GlobalData
Discover B2B Marketing That Performs
Combine business intelligence and editorial excellence to reach engaged professionals across 36 leading media platforms.
In September for the first time, diesel cars accounted for 52.4% of Italian registrations. Year to date, diesels have a 47.3% share of the Italian market and are expected to capture 49% for the full year.
Diesel cars already outsell petrol models in France, Spain, Austria, Belgium and Luxembourg.
Italy is just a reflection of the diesel boom sweeping Europe. In the past four years, the diesel vehicle share of western Europe sales grew four points a year, jumping from 24.8% in 1998 to 40.3% in 2002.
“We expect diesel to reach 43.2% this year, 45.9% in 2004 and to continue its growth in coming years,” said Colin Couchman, auto analyst at Global Insight in London.
Consumers like the lower fuel costs and vastly improved performance of modern diesels. Car makers like the way diesels can help them achieve the ambitious voluntary goal of reducing fleet average CO2 exhaust emissions of 120 grams per kilometre by 2008.
Assuming that car makers actually achieve that pledge by ACEA, the European automakers’ trade association, Global Insight sees two likely scenarios for diesel growth in Europe.
“If CO2 average emissions of petrol vehicles don’t improve substantially in coming years, diesels must grow to almost 80% of new passenger car sales in 2008,” Couchman said.
But if petol engines can reduce average CO2 emissions with new technologies such as direct injection by 2008, the CO2 goal could be achieved with a diesel share of sales of a lower 55 to 60%, he said.
