Quote:
Originally Posted by oldtamiyaphile
Here are some newish figures showing that only 3% of passenger vehicles are diesel (year to date):
Diesel on the nose for car buyers
And that's before the VW scandal. |
Their information appears to cover just one month of Australian car sales, from early this year based on the date stamp of the comments. They quote 46,761 gas cars and 1459 diesels.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics shows, for January 2015, 42,200 cars, 30,489 SUVs, and 19,530 "other" sold countrywide. I wonder why you Australians don't count SUVs as passenger vehicles?
Regardless, there are--again, according to the ABS--more than 1.5 million diesel passenger cars on Australia's roads at the moment, which is a more significant percentage than in the US (where <3% of registered cars are diesels, according to Forbes), but not as much as Europe. And, with sales slowing, more of those diesels are likely older and dirtier than new non-VWs.
So, going back to the original comment that started this tangent: Australia does seem to love diesels more than the US, but the number of diesel passenger cars on American roads is higher than in Australia (because the number of cars we have in total dwarfs yours). As to why Australian cities don't seem to have the smog problems of European or American metros, perhaps that total number plus the size of the continent has something to do with it?