There’s been a lot of noise in the media, recently, about diesel pumps closing at filling stations as demand drops. Naturally, this has resulted in lots of people panicking about whether it’s going to become harder to fill up their diesel car, which they may well be planning to keep for the foreseeable future.
Let’s get a few things straight. These reports have popped up in the newspapers off the back of a press release from automotive think tank, New AutoMotive, which has taken data from garage owners as well as car sales, and has come up with the (you might say speculative) line that “It is likely that some, and perhaps many, filling stations in London will stop stocking diesel before the end of the decade.”
To me at least, it seems somewhat obvious to say that there won’t be a huge demand for diesel by 2030 in the heart of a city that will have spent well over a decade taxing diesel vehicles off its streets. So why all the headlines?
There’s no question that diesel is in huge decline in the UK. Fewer than 104,000 new diesel cars were sold in 2025 according to the SMMT (Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders), accounting for just 5.1% of the market.
For some context, petrol cars clocked up just under 934,000 sales, hybrid and PHEV cars combined accounted for just over 505,000 sales, while pure EV cars managed just over 473,000 sales. Looking at those numbers, the answer to the question ‘is diesel dead?’ seems like a resounding affirmative.
But, hang on…
While new passenger-car sales data clearly points to diesel being in its death throes, diesel is still very much king in the realm of commercial vehicles. Some 98% of vans and lorries (there are roughly five million on the roads in the UK right now) are diesel-powered. And many millions of those are vans that need a normal diesel pump to fill up at, rather than the more powerful, HGV-specific pumps that are often hidden round the back of the filling station (near the burger van and the outside loo that’s permanently out of order).
Even though the UK has just seen its first HGV-dedicated EV charging hub open, and has also confirmed that electric lorries can travel on the freight Eurotunnel service, there’s no question that electric-powered lorries are currently almost non-existent, while uptake of electric vans is also slow.
More than that, there are also over 11 million diesel passenger cars already on the roads in the UK. New AutoMotive’s report suggests that there will only be around 250,000 of them left in 10 years, but that seems more than a bit pessimistic to me. In my mind, there’s no doubt that, between them, commercial vehicles and the existing diesel car fleet are going to sustain a reasonable business case for diesel pumps for a long while yet.
Are we going to see forecourts begin to phase out diesel pumps, then? Eventually, of course we will. The Petrol Retailers Association has stated that only 57% of its members believe that fuel (petrol and diesel) will be a core source of their income by 2035, with EV charging an ever-increasing factor that may well see some forecourts sacrifice some fuel pumps in favour of more space for charging stations.
But all of this is going to take a long time, and while diesel pumps in bigger cities are sure to go first, it’ll be a long while before diesel drivers out in the wider UK will start to notice a lack of fuel availability.
Basically, if you own a diesel car and have seen some recent headlines about declining numbers of diesel fuel pumps, don’t panic. There will be millions of diesel vehicles on the UK’s roads for many years, and demand for used diesel cars is still strong.
Don’t get me wrong: there is no question that diesel is in sharp decline and EVs are going to become an even bigger part of the UK’s vehicle fleet as the years roll on. But you don’t need to sell your diesel car if you don’t want to: it’s still an efficient and effective fuel. And just for further reassurance: that 2030/2035 deadline that the British government keeps changing its mind about is only for the sale of brand-new non-EV or PHEV cars. It doesn’t apply to existing vehicles registered before that deadline. Further indication that the forecourts aren’t going to stop selling diesel any time soon.
So, is diesel dead? No, it’s not. Dying? Yes. But only very slowly, and it most likely won’t be gone for a very long time yet.
