Diesels and manual gearboxes will be gone by the end of this decade, according to a new report by automotive data firm VDG. 

The news shows the impact that electric vehicles are having on the overall car market, as well as investments beginning to move away from traditional technologies. 

Analyse by the company shows that not only are hybrids and EVs accelerating the demise of the manual gearbox, but that even when buying petrol and diesel cars demand for self-shifters has dropped by half since 2016.

VDG says that just 14% of cars sold this year so far have had manual gearboxes, illustrating the decline of the transmission. 

Toyota was working on a pretend manual gearbox for its sporty EVs a few years back, but it's had enough trouble just getting EVs to market and the pseudo-manual hasn't made it on sale yet. 

The drop in demand for diesel has been more obvious in recent years, and for clearer reason, as the popularity of the fuel tanked after the Dieselgate emissions scandal of the mid-2010s that was precipitated by Volkswagen but involved many more carmakers, who were found to be defrauding official emissions tests using cheat software and mechanical devices. 

The popularity of diesel-engined cars has dropped by 92% since 2016, and VDG argues that both diesel engines and manual transmissions will soon become unviable in terms of the cost of research and development as well as actually producing. Electric car sales overtook diesel in 2022 and have been growing massively since then.

VDG thinks that both formats will die off in 2030 as they become financially unsustainable for manufacturers. 

The glimmer of hope for the black diesel pump is the commercial vehicle market, where the fuel still holds a majority share with over 60% of sales. Commercial fleets and sole traders have been slow to switch to electric powertrains, despite generous government grants that give up to £5,000 off electric vans.