July 1, 2026 - The End of The VW Golf Diesel

This is the Telemetry Transportation Daily for July 1, 2026, and I'm Sam Abuelsamid, Vice President of Market Research for Telemetry. 

While Volkswagen wasn't the first automaker to introduce diesel engines into its cars, it has been one of the standard bearers for the technology for 50 years, since making it available on the Golf.  For several decades, the VW Golf was the bestselling car in the world, and a substantial proportion of those hatchbacks were equipped with diesels, especially in Europe, where fuel prices have long been high, and diesels were extremely fuel efficient. 

Despite the modest power output, diesels provided almost electric motor-like low-end torque that combined with fuel efficiency to make them appealing despite some emissions challenges like particulates and NOx. Eventually, particulate filters addressed smoke issues, and common rail injection systems made diesels quieter and more powerful. But nitrogen oxides proved to be the undoing of diesels in mainstream passenger vehicles. In the late 2000s, VW and other German automakers began heavily promoting clean diesel as an alternative to hybrids and early electric vehicles. Unfortunately, it turned out that VW and its suppliers and competitors chose to meet tightening NOx emission standards in North America and Europe by cheating. They concocted a means that would enable their diesel engines to pass certification tests while bypassing the emissions controls during normal operation. The resulting scandal that broke in 2015, known as dieselgate, ended up costing VW tens of billions in fines and vehicle buybacks and triggered a steady decline in adoption of diesels. According to the ICCT, diesel market share in Europe fell from 44% in 2017 to 16% in 2024. 

VW discontinued all of its diesels in North America after the scandal, but it still sells some vehicles with diesel engines in Europe. But the Golf is no longer one of them, at least in the UK, with the rest of Europe likely to follow soon. As a former owner of a Jetta TDI wagon, it was definitely a fun and efficient car to drive, but the scandal made me realize this wasn't a technology for the long term. We switched first to a small turbocharged gas engine in a Honda Civic that was nearly as efficient as the diesel, and more recently, we've gone electric and will probably never go back. 

Thanks for listening.