You can't drive a Mercedes in Stuttgart?
 

In Germany’s Car Capital, the Unthinkable: The Right to Ban Cars

https://nyti.ms/2F7AOnN

tl;dr: German court allows ban on diesel cars in city.

Obviously, the German court people have been "...drinking from the California Kool-Aide punch bowls."

Did someone mention driving Army trucks?! No? Why not?!

I drove a Load Handling System to Stuttgart. It may have emitted excessively. Arguably it created less of a problem than the M915 driving 15 MPH on the Autobahn, but still, a 40,000-pound truck when empty with a 15.L engine, which is probably exempt from emission laws, would not help.

You probably could not drive the Xtra-Large One, either, despite undoubtedly having low emissions.

Why unthinkable? Some people might think that it's better to breathe cleaner air.

IIRC it's still enforced only against older vehicles classified within less stringent emission rules, but it still doesn't seem to be a great idea at all. Pouring some vegetable oil in the tank of an old Diesel jalopy with indirect injection is a far more sensible option than wasting otherwise good cars while spending an awful amount of energy (usually not from the cleanest source) to make a replacement which would be not just more expensive but also less suitable to some alternate fuels.

I used public transportation in Germany, but I could not tell you how good it is. This page says:
https://www.german-way.com/travel-an...rt-in-germany/

It seems backward to me to try to reduce cars if there is room for improvement for public transportation.

Even though I believe the Japanese approach could lead to some good results to decrease congestions and improve traffic flow for a further reduction in emissions related to idling the engines in the middle of a traffic jam, making some oversized vehicles liable to a higher annual tax, I am not any optimistic for the pathway that European Union is following...

Nation-states doing what nation-states do

duckduckgo.com/?t=palemoon&q=countrys+ban+cryptocurrencies

I did an extended bicycle tour in Europe in 1990. Within the first 2 days I was sick of the smell of diesel fumes. That has lasted until the present. I'd ban the damned things just because of the stink they make!

Even though old-school IDI engines were still the rule for Diesel cars and light-duty commercial vehicles by then, I never got actually bothered by the smell of old Diesel cars not even during the summer in Florianópolis when lots of Argentinians and Uruguayans went there mostly in Diesel-powered vehicles. The problem was mostly the Paraguayans and Bolivians who neglected the maintenance. But anyway, I still believe some different approaches could be taken instead of simply forbidding older Diesels, such as retrofitting more accurate emission controls when the engine is due to an overhaul, or even some devices usually more popular among the high-performance folks such as water injection (which not just allows an even leaner burn in order to save fuel and decrease the particulate matter emission, but also decrease the NOx levels which are now under a higher scrutiny than ever).