Gas stations may stop selling diesel in the coming years due to decreasing demand
Diesel? We don't have any! In the coming years, drivers might increasingly hear such information from gas station attendants. The demand for diesel is significantly decreasing partly because of lower sales of new vehicles with diesel engines. Thus, selling diesel is becoming unprofitable for gas stations.
Diesel engines have long been a symbol of the domestic vehicle fleet. It wasn't too long ago that vehicles like the Škoda Octavia 1.9 TDI were among the elite of local motorists, quickly disappearing even from car dealerships. However, those days seem to be long gone, partly due to increasingly stringent emission limits and especially the dieselgate scandal, after which not only lawmakers but also the car manufacturers themselves started to distance themselves from diesel engines. Fewer and fewer diesel-powered cars are forcing not only car manufacturers but also gas stations to abandon them.
According to data from the company Cebia last year marked another year with a decline in the sales of diesel-powered vehicles. These vehicles are now struggling to compete with the rapidly growing sales of petrol and electric vehicles, leading to a drop in demand for diesel at gas stations.
According to Transport & Environment (T&E), an organization striving to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and green transportation within the European Union, diesel could start disappearing from gas stations on a large scale in the coming years. The reason is simple – motorists won't be interested in diesel, making it unprofitable for gas stations to maintain supplies.
The same trend as in the Czech Republic is reflected in new data from London, where diesel sales have dramatically fallen over the past four years. This leads experts to predict that diesel could disappear from gas station offerings sooner than expected.
Matt Finch, UK Policy Manager for the Transport & Environment (T&E) organization, which advocates for climate protection, states that the situation in London is particularly serious. “Diesel sales in the capital have dropped nearly 40 percent since 2020, which is a huge decline,” Finch says. According to him, we are approaching a tipping point where gas stations will have to reconsider their fuel offerings.
According to the Ministry for Energy Security and Net Zero, sales analysis shows that the decline in diesel sales is not just a local phenomenon in London but affects the entire country. Although the decline is less dramatic outside the capital, here too sales have decreased by 15 percent.
T&E states that the decline in diesel demand is driven by changes in consumer behavior, with more people turning to alternative and more environmentally friendly energy sources. “If you’re a profitable business and sell a product that people stop buying, you stop stocking it,” explains Finch. “It’s very likely that some gas stations in London will only have petrol on stock by the early 2030s, not diesel.”
