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Just wondering if it is worthwhile looking for a 2nd hand diesel £4000 ish. I know the tax is likely to rise from the current low £30 but by how much, any ideas? or should I be looking at petrol only? Hoping to keep it for a reasonable length of time.

Might also depend on where you intend traveling. If that includes anywhere likely to have an LEZ ...

It also depends on your intended use : long/short journeys , high/low annual miles , towing ?

Different cars are suited to different tasks .

Make sure it's Euro 5 or 6 for emissions (but if it's £30/yr it probably is). As Pontoneer says, if most of your journeys are short don't go for a diesel, but if you intend to keep it for a while, go for it.

I don't think there will be significant tax rises on cleaner diesels (at least I hope so), but who can second guess our legislators?

Purely personally I wouldn't buy a diesel car for the following reasons.
Modern petrol engines are becoming increasingly economical and the parts long lasting.
I like the low down thump of a decent diesel, but prefer a free revving petrol motor.
The future of diesel is uncertain and even vans are now being made with petrol engines.
It is quite likely that there will be an increasing list of places where diesels are not acceptable.

I doubt tax will rise. Government rarely punish retrospectively. I'd be more worried about reliability on an ageing car, particularly with a modern diesel. If you want one, I'd get an older one that in particular is pre DPF.

OTOH if you're going in and out of london regularly then I can see things being tightened up and the older cars may be excluded.

It's interesting how unintended consequences play out. Carbon dioxide emissions appear to have increased already as public policy concerns about the health implications of nitrogen oxides and diesel particulates have risen.

If, as seems expected now, diesel powered cars are going to become less common, it would be reasonable to expect government measures to significantly increase the running costs of petrol engined vehicles, in order to allay environmental fears.

Taxing cars by carbon dioxide emission was always going to lead to the situation we found ourselves in. Nobody likes paying road tax so manufacturers build cars that minimise the tax payable. Eventually the take from road tax drops to the point where Government finds it necessary to rejig the system using whatever means possible to bring the revenue back up. Only two certainties.

NOx and PM are mainly created by lean burning fuels i.e Diesels. With modern petrol engine were moving towards leaner burning in the search for efficiency improvements, it means they too are starting to produce more NOx and PMs and need extra measures such as GPFs to reduce the tailpipe emissions. Not sure whether they’ll suffer the same problems as the DPFs... Or if it’s not GPFs it’ll be SCRs or lean NOx traps, either way they’re going to be a lot more complicated/expensive that the Standard catalysts that we’re used to now.

Jonquirk wrote:Taxing cars by carbon dioxide emission was always going to lead to the situation we found ourselves in. Nobody likes paying road tax so manufacturers build cars that minimise the tax payable. Eventually the take from road tax drops to the point where Government finds it necessary to rejig the system using whatever means possible to bring the revenue back up. Only two certainties.

Only too true I'm afraid. And it also means that at some point HM will find a way of extracting money from pure electric car owners ....