Diesel cars have gotten a very bad light, especially in the US when the whole Volkswagen Dieselgate issue erupted. So much so that Mercedes told in an interview with the Detroit Bureau that they are stopping sales of their diesel variants.
Ola Kallenius, the head of research and development for the Mercedes-Benz Car Group, said in the interview that the new diesel engine the automaker has designed is one of the most advanced internal combustion engines ever developed by the automaker. However, Mercedes has concluded that there simply isn’t enough consumer interest in diesel to warrant bringing it to the U.S. market.
“It does much better on emissions for Europe,” Kallenius said during an interview at the North American International Auto Show.
Even in Malaysia, Mercedes isn’t pushing a lot of their diesel variants instead, focusing on petrol and hybrid models here. Lately, there has been a lot of bad press about diesel cars with the emergence of electric cars and various cities in Europe have already announced plans to ban diesel vehicles in order to curb pollution in cities.
This however mostly affect consumer vehicles instead of commercial vehicles where Mercedes will still continue to sell diesel variants of them.
