The price for ‘Dieselgate’ is still being paid by the Volkswagen group but there is no doubt that the carmaker does make very good diesel cars
Some people still wonder what ‘Dieselgate’ is all about. To cut a long story short, a team of US researchers found out that diesel cars sold by the Volkswagen group in the United States — that is Audi, Volkswagen and Porsche — had cheated in their emission tests. The car was fitted with a fairly sophisticated bit of software which detected if the car was on an emissions testing rig and put the engine into a clean mode.
For years, Volkswagen and other German carmakers had lobbied and marketed hard to ensure their diesel cars could enter the American market. In the United States, petrol is cheap, around forty rupees a litre today. Yet, the Germans argued that modern diesel cars were not only more economical, they delivered more than enough power and most importantly, were cleaner. The problem was that to get that power and economy, the cars could not run in the most environmentally-friendly mode. So, as methodical as the Germans are, a very meticulous method was devised to hoodwink the authorities. And this past week, German newsmagazine Der Spiegel came out with a report that indicated that it wasn’t just the Volkswagen Group but also Mercedes and BMW who colluded in this cheating scam.
There have been some fairly dramatic fallouts from the ‘Dieselgate’ scandal. First and foremost, Volkswagen has paid huge fines, fines that have seen the company dramatically cut back on expenditure. And the dramatic growth of diesel vehicle sales has been stopped in its tracks. Dieselgate has given a massive spur to the development of electric vehicles, with the UK government a couple of days ago announcing that they would stop all petrol and diesel car sales by 2040.
However, in India, because of the historical price distortion between diesel and petrol, buying a diesel car made incredible sense. Yet, the National Green Tribunal and the Supreme Court acted against diesel vehicles last year, first temporarily stopping sales of diesel engines greater than 2000cc and then preventing the operation of diesel vehicles over ten years old on the roads of Delhi-NCR.
Sure, many people flout the “old vehicles” rule in India. Technically anyone operating a vehicle older than 15 years needs special permission but the inability to transfer ownership of older vehicles is a problem. So someone who buys a diesel car in the NCR today will have only ten years of life on their car. A petrol or CNG car owner has 15 years of legal operational life. Thus a diesel car will have accelerated depreciation.
But over the past few weeks I have had the opportunity to drive two really nice diesel cars from the Volkswagen group, and feel that any predictions of diesel’s demise are premature. The first was the new A4 but this time featuring the 2.0TDI engine (marketed as the 35TDI), Volkswagen’s standard EA189 engine that does service many, many cars in differing states of tune, producing between 140 and 190 horsepower. If you recall, Audi had launched the A4 with just a 1.4-litre turbocharged petrol engine, which I drove in Odisha. That was not a bad engine but felt a little wheezy out on the highway. Obviously, you don’t have that problem with this car, with more than enough power and enough toys to play with, including Audi’s Virtual Cockpit. Although I believe Audi could do better integration of Apple CarPlay and Android Auto with the virtual cockpit at least for music and phone operation. I’m sure they’re working on it though.
Now the A4 35TDI technology edition which I drove costs Rs 42.6 lakh ex-showroom Delhi, just over a lakh more than the 30TFSI version. Keep in mind these are ex-showroom prices but dealers continue to give interesting offers. The diesel variant is more powerful and definitely a car one would buy for the highway and longer commutes. But if your usual drive is just 10-15 km or less one way and you want a nice comfortable sedan, the logic of the diesel becomes questionable. Particularly if you consider that after five years if you sell the car, the diesel would likely have lost more value than the petrol because it will only have five years of “usable” life left versus ten for the petrol. Kind of makes you think.
But while the Volkswagen Group gets hammered for their diesel technology issue, they did come up with something else very useful in the past couple of decades, that is the Direct-Shift-Gearbox which is what the DSG on the shifter of the Ameo I just drove had. So did the Audi, but you expect a top-notch gearbox when you are paying forty lakh, not when you’re paying between 8.5-9.5 lakhs for the Ameo DSG TDI. Now, simply put, DSG is a “double clutch” gearbox that keeps the next gear in sequence primed and ready, so shifts are as near as can be called instantaneous. The DSG gearbox offered by Volkswagen on the Ameo makes it by far and away the most advanced automatic in its segment.
But Volkswagen entered the segment so, so late, it isn’t funny. And personally, maybe they could have entered that segment under the Skoda brand, instead of sticking the VW logo on the Ameo. The plain facts are no matter how good the Ameo is, the Dzire is going to trash it on the sales charts, but, if it is a diesel automatic compact sedan you want and you drive yourself, you cannot choose Dzire AMT over the Ameo DSG. This isn’t because the Dzire is a bad car, it is superior in terms of kit and possibly better looking, but comparing a five-speed sluggish AMT to the seven-speed DSG is rather pointless, because the DSG coupled with the more powerful engine is just so much better.
Now, I must admit I have not been a fan of compact sedans primarily because their rear ends look ugly and they were only born due to a tax loophole which has effectively been plugged now. Yet, they remain popular among buyers and that is evident in the sales of the Dzire, even though the largest buying segment for compact sedans seems to be Uber and Ola drivers nowadays. Personally, I’d buy a petrol hatchback but I must admit I do miss the Ameo DSG now that it has gone.