Toyota to Stop Selling Diesel Cars in Europe
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Beginning the phase-out this year, Toyota announced on March 5 that it will stop selling diesel cars in Europe.
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"We will not develop new diesel technology for passenger cars, we'll continue to focus on hybrid vehicles,¡± said Johan van Zyl, president of Toyota Motor Europe, said in Geneva, where Europe's first major car show of the year opens this week.
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Last year nearly 15% of Toyota's sales in Europe were from diesel vehicles, down from 30% in 2012.
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Meanwhile, sales of Toyota's hybrid models have risen sharply.
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An emissions cheating scandal, which blew up at Volkswagen in 2015, has heaped discredit on diesel technology, criticized for belching out nitrogen oxide and harmful particulates.
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This has been a major blow for car makers, who had essentially sought to bet the house on diesel as they strove for years to cut CO2 emissions with the support of public authorities.
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Major cities including Paris have announced plans to ban diesel, while a top German court last month opened the way for cities to ban older diesel cars from the streets on air quality grounds.
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Diesel's fall from grace has pushed manufacturers to turn their attention to producing more in-demand petrol models or make the jump to electric, or at least hybrid, vehicles.
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Toyota vice president Didier Leroy said that back in 2011, before "Dieselgate" erupted, the company had "already started to anticipate the fact that we should not allocate resources to develop a new small diesel engine."
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08 Mar,2018
