Elon Musk says “It’s time to move on from diesel and petrol.”
Elon Musk, boss of Tesla Motors, doesn’t need much excuse to stick the boot into carbon-based fuels. The Tesla Motors boss waded in on the VW emissions scandal, telling journalists VW had been found out because manufacturers have ‘reached the limit’ with conventional fuels.
Speaking to assembled journalists in Belgium, Musk was asked whether consumers would ‘lose their faith’ in green technology’ as a result of the scandal, which erupted when VW was discovered to have installed questionable emissions systems in its diesel vehicles that could cheat emissions tests.
“I think it’s the opposite,” musk said. “What the Volkswagen […] is really showing is that we’ve reached the limit of what’s possible with diesel and gasoline. The time has come to move to a new generation of technology.”
That ‘new technology’ is, in Musk’s eyes, electric power – specifically battery electric technology, as used in his company’s Tesla Model S.
Musk has a point. It could easily be argued that, were it easy to achieve emissions targets, VW wouldn’t have risked the huge fallout that resulted from its apparent dishonesty while attempting to conceal just how toxic its engines really were.
So, does diesel have a future? Or does the industry need to rapidly make a shift towards greener propulsion? Let us know in the comments below.
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