Dieselgate: the sequel
March 3rd 2025
A shocking number of the most polluting diesel cars are still on UK roads ten years after Dieselgate, emitting huge amounts of excess pollution.
We want to see car manufacturers held to account.
In February we protested outside the High Court to highlight the scandal of the amount of excess nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions we are still breathing in.
Excess NOₓ emissions
Our new analysis reveals that 7.5 million of the UK's 10.7 million diesel cars are Euro 5 and 6 models, emitting 51,400 tonnes of excess NOx annually above legal emission limits. Cars certified to these standards were shown to be using defeat devices which cheat emissions tests.
Not only that, those 7.5 million diesel cars make up just under a quarter of the cars on UK roads, yet they’re responsible for almost 30 per cent of all NOx emissions from road transport, including that from vans, buses and HGVs. This is far higher than previously thought.
Collectively, the 10.7 million cars account for 52.2% of ALL NOx emissions from road transport.
Dieselgate class action
Jemima Hartshorn and Rosamund Adoo-Kissi-Debrah outside the High Court
The largest class action lawsuit in UK history is in the High Court this week. The court will decide if it should release documents about diesel cars that used illegal defeat devices to cheat emissions tests.
Last week we presented our open letter to the court, signed by MPs, over 50 major charities & organisations and hundreds of individuals, demanding that all details be made publicly available.
A huge thank you to all who supported this analysis and action, including the hundreds who signed the open letter and all those who came to the High Court to present our open letter. We were so pleased to have Rosamund Adoo-Kissi-Debrah, Jonathan from Asthma and Lung UK and Richard from the UK Health Alliance on Climate Change supporting us in person.
You can read coverage of this in the Sunday Mirror and Air Quality News.
What comes next?
The case is scheduled to be back in court in October, yet there has been no wider government or media engagement. (Let’s change this! Email us to get involved).
After the original Dieselgate scandal, US car manufacturers paid $2.7bn into a clean air fund, while in Germany they paid €250m when threatened with a recall of the cars. In the UK there was no legislation that would allow for a governmental recall and the manufacturers were not held to account here.
The law has now changed, and as a result of this court case, we want to see all affected cars recalled by manufacturers and a major UK fund worth at least £1 billion put together to pay for measures to alleviate the impact of the air pollution the manufacturers have been, and still are, responsible for.