At Paris 2018, Mercedes’ CEO, Dieter Zetsche, has rejected once again the ongoing debate about the emissions of modern diesel engines and their impact on people’s health compared to their gasoline counterparts.
Interviewed by our English colleagues from Autocar on the motor show floor, Zetsche is quoted saying: “Emissions with modern diesels have become a non-issue because they are with gasoline [for equivalent emissions]. We don’t need to talk about ideological struggles, just the two topics I mentioned before”.
Another issue is the global decline of diesel powered cars, something that Zetsche has refuted for its own brand: “It has declined but not as much as the rest of our competition and we have now seen stability for some time. But it’s lower than it was: that is also true.”
Dieter Zetsche went on and defended the viability of diesel engines, once more. “For as long as diesel is ‘legal’, is economically viable and can benefit buyers, it will have a place. As petrol engines have become more efficient, the greater cost of a diesel engine has made the cars uneconomically viable because the efficiency advantages are no longer there. There might be a time when we see that in the C-segment but we don’t see it yet. For bigger cars, there is a bigger difference and you don’t need to change diesel,” concluded Zetsche.
