The wholesale cost of diesel is now approximately the same as the cost of petrol, yet on average the price on UK forecourts is 6p-per-litre higher for diesel than it is for petrol.
In late May the wholesale cost of petrol was 103.5p, while the cost of diesel was just 0.5p more.
Meeting Europe’s tougher CO2 regulations is intensifying the pressure on the people penning vehicles.
“In the last five to 10 years designing cars has gotten a hell of a lot tougher,” Opel/Vauxhall design chief Mark Adams told the Automotive News Europe Congress in Brussels.
In the US one in every four new cars goes off the dealer lot in a lease, not a conventional purchase.
“That is abruptly up from 11% of new vehicles as recently as 2009,” said Jesse Toprak, chief analyst at Cars.com.
The UK car industry is enjoying its strongest period of growth for a decade, according to the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT). New car registrations increased 7.7 per cent in May to 194,032 units – the most in May since 2004.
Chrysler said it was recalling about 10,700 sport utility vehicles to fix a defect that leads to unintended acceleration in cruise-control mode.
