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Renault, PSA criticize France's about-face on diesels

4K views 32 replies 19 participants last post by  RedVee8 
#1 ·
Renault, PSA criticize France's about-face on diesels
Bruce Gain
Automotive News Europe
December 2, 2014

RENNES, France -- PSA/Peugeot-Citroen and Renault have criticized the French government's plans to end its diesel-friendly policy for cars.

French Prime Minister Manuel Valls has said the government will undo policies that in the past have "favored the diesel engine."

Next year, the government will raise excise tax on diesel fuel and remove incentives for diesel car purchases. Valls said at an environmental conference on Friday that the government will "progressively" undo policies that encourage diesel car sales.

The government has yet to specify how it plans to dismantle diesel car purchase incentives.

About 80 percent of French motorists drive diesel-powered cars.
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#2 ·
Good for Renault and PSA for retorting.

Sometimes the "cure" is worse than the "disease". In using government as a stick to prod people in one direction or another, you have to think five steps ahead to what kind of future behavior you are (directly or indirectly) encouraging. If more people switch to gasoline-powered engines (which are less fuel-efficient) or just purchase more used diesel powered cars/hold onto their diesel vehicles longer, they may indirectly create a worse problem for themselves (assuming, of course, that you think there was actually a problem to begin with or this was done just to play politics/placate or win favor with a domestic French interest group).

I'd like to see how this pans out ten or twenty years from now.
 
#7 ·
Cherchez le government. Crony capitalism gets its comeuppance. The incentives were wrong in the first place. Those who depended on government to force others to their will now see that government can force them, too.
Any government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take everything you have.
Including your choice of an automobile engine.
Ed
 
#3 ·
In a perverse way, I hope the French govt goes ahead with this - due to the EU open market policy, the UK gets a lot of goods from mainland Europe delivered on trucks who fill their massive fuel tanks with cheap French diesel, drive all over the UK adding considerably to congestion and road wear but without contributing a penny towards the upkeep of the roads.

If French diesel was the same price as UK diesel, they would at least fill up in the UK some of the time, and the UK duty on the fuel would go towards the UK funding.
 
#19 ·
France is the land of Onions, surely?
 
#23 ·
#28 ·
Propping up diesel has helped ease the imbalance between it and gasoline (producing gasoline involves making all hydrocarbon products resulting from it at a certain proportion, you cannot just make gasoline and no other hydrocarbons), so that diesel became in demand and now costs the same as gasoline and refineries can work at full efficiency. It also helped manufacturers achieve lower CO2 standards, as diesel technology made a quantum leap and how can deliver astonishingly low l/100 km.

But diesel is by no means clean and it isn't quite environmentally friendly, even with the introduction of DPF. The French tax preferences gave the French manufacturers an incentive to become leaders in diesel technology (they still are, especially PSA), but I guess more than worried about competition in the gasoline-powered front (they've caught up as well) it is more about further limiting incentives for businesses and individuals to buy new cars, and to drive in the first place. Which is exactly what the government is trying to limit to reduce reliance on imported fuel and limit emissions.
 
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