Currently reading: Peugeot kills off diesel hybrid

Diesel hybrid is not part of Peugeot's future plans, as it concentrates on petrol-electric and plug-in hybrids

Peugeot has confirmed it no longer plans to offer a diesel hybrid engine, concentrating on plug-in hybrids and petrol-electric hybrids in the future.

The company’s CEO Maxime Picat confirmed that the technology, which currently features in the Peugeot 508 RXH, will be killed off.

“You have a really efficient diesel [engine] in terms of CO2 plus the hybrid but where you are in countries where there is no diesel you have to redevelop,” he said.

The company wants to offer the same engines in many different countries, and the combination of diesel and electric is not cheap enough to produce for the small number of markets that it appeals to.

“It is not efficient in terms of economy of scale and we know these new energies are costly to develop,” he said. “We have to make sure we have the same technical solution for Europe, for China, for Norway, for all the countries.”

Peugeot has recently stopped selling the Peugeot 3008 diesel hybrid in the UK, leaving the 508 as the only model that offers the technology. Picat did not say whether the diesel hybrid option would be pulled from the range before the 508 is replaced, but it will not be offered on any replacement for the car, which is likely to be on sale until 2017 at least.

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xxxx 18 September 2015

Noise,weight,cost,vibrations,size,NO2 = Not twaddle Mr mellon

All those things go with Diesel compared to petrol mr mellons. And you think diesel is efficient, check your physics school book out and find out how efficient an electric motor is. Face it the EV and/or the PETROL range extender is coming despite your hatred of them.
LP in Brighton 18 September 2015

Why give up so soon?

Just because this heavy first generation hybrid didn't work doesn't mean that the diesel hybrid is fundamentally flawed. I quite like the idea of an EV with a small size range extender diesel for long journey work. That diesel engine would not need to be big or sophisticated, just so long as it could provide around 20kw of power to maintain a reasonable cruising speed. By attempting to build petrol electric hybrids, Peugeot will always be playing catch up with Toyota and Honda.
Mikey C 18 September 2015

The problem with diesel engines...

Are the pollutants, and if big cities start charging extra for diesel cars to enter, then the low CO2 emissions will be of little benefit to the owner...