Motorpoint Finds Diesel Drivers Face £515 More a Year in Fuel, Doncaster Hit Hardest

• A typical diesel car covering 9,200 miles a year will cost around £515 more to fuel over 12 months, as diesel passes £2 a litre, up more than 40% from February.
• Doncaster is the most diesel dependent city in Motorpoint’s analysis of 50 towns and cities: 41% of private cars run on diesel, a combined extra cost of £32 million a year.
• London has the lowest share at 14.3%, but its 344,000 diesel cars still add up to £177.4 million in extra fuel costs, while 41% of diesel drivers say filling up is squeezing their finances.

Diesel drivers face a bill of around £515 more a year to fuel the same car, and the towns with the most diesel cars will feel it hardest. The figure comes from new analysis by the used car retailer Motorpoint, published on 8 October 2026, which looked at privately owned vehicles across 50 UK towns and cities to find which areas rely most on diesel.

The average cost of diesel has now passed £2 a litre, an increase of more than 40% from February, according to the analysis. Motorpoint worked out that a typical diesel car travelling 9,200 miles a year will cost around £515 more to fuel across 12 months than it did before the rise. In a survey of diesel drivers, 41% said the cost of filling up is now putting pressure on their finances.

Doncaster Tops the List of Diesel Dependent Cities

Doncaster emerged as the most diesel dependent city, with 41% of privately owned vehicles refuelling at the black pump. With 62,098 diesel cars on the road in Doncaster, Motorpoint calculated that higher prices could see a combined extra £32 million paid in one year if prices stay at the record high. Divided across the cars, that matches the £515 a year figure for each one.

South Yorkshire is the region with the most exposure. Three of the top four towns with the highest proportion of diesel drivers are there. The four highest were:

• Doncaster, where 41% of privately owned vehicles are diesel.
• Peterborough, at 40.3%.
• Rotherham, at 38.9%.
• Barnsley, at 38.3%.

Bradford ranked sixth for the share of diesel vehicles at 36.4%, but it has the largest overall number of diesel cars in the study, almost 80,000. The West Yorkshire city could see its residents pay an additional £41.2 million for diesel over the coming year if prices hold.

In the four most exposed areas, roughly four in every ten private cars run on diesel. A household with two diesel cars, each covering the same 9,200 miles, would face about £1,030 more a year (two lots of £515), which is a Motoring Chronicle calculation using Motorpoint’s per car figure. Households with a diesel van or a company car are not part of the privately owned vehicle count in the analysis.

At the other end of the scale, only 14.3% of Londoners drive a diesel. That still equates to 344,000 cars, and Motorpoint estimates it could cost the capital some £177.4 million in extra fuel costs. The pattern shows that a low share of diesel cars does not protect a city from the bill when the car count is high.

The per car figure is the same in every place. Dividing each city’s extra cost by its diesel car count gives roughly £515 in Doncaster, Bradford and London alike. That is a Motoring Chronicle check of Motorpoint’s numbers, and it confirms the analysis applies one annual cost to every car, based on 9,200 miles a year. A driver who covers more miles than that will pay more, and a driver who covers fewer will pay less.

How the Pump Price Reached This Point

The RAC recorded the average price of diesel at 200.01p a litre on 2 October 2026, the first time it has been above £2 a litre. The same RAC release put unleaded petrol at 174.71p, which leaves diesel 25.3p a litre dearer. A full 55 litre tank was £110.01 for diesel and £96.09 for petrol, a gap of £13.92 each time a driver fills up.

That price is above the previous all time high on RAC records, which was 199.09p a litre in June 2022, so drivers are now paying more per litre than at the peak of the last fuel price shock.

A rough check of the maths shows how the £515 is built. A car doing 9,200 miles a year at 45 miles per gallon uses about 204 gallons, or roughly 929 litres. At an extra 55p a litre, the gap between a price near £2 and one near £1.45, that comes to about £515. The 45 mpg figure and the price gap are Motoring Chronicle assumptions used to test the number, as the coverage of the analysis does not state the mpg Motorpoint used. A car that does fewer miles to the gallon uses more litres and so faces a bigger bill.

Diesel engines usually travel further on a litre than petrol engines, which is why many high mileage drivers chose them. At 45 miles per gallon, the RAC worked out that diesel at this price costs about 20p a mile to run.

Motorpoint’s car expert Tim Rodie said some diesel owners “would undoubtedly benefit from selling and swapping to a different fuel type”, while those covering long distances towing heavy items could still gain from the fuel efficiency of diesel on long trips, even at current prices.

Can You Avoid It?

Not every diesel driver can switch, and Motorpoint is a seller of used cars, so its advice to compare costs is worth checking against your own figures. These are the steps backed by figures.

• Work out your own cost per mile before doing anything. Mr Rodie’s advice is to compare what your car costs you now with the realistic cost of changing. Look at your annual fuel and running costs, then find out what your current car is worth. Motorpoint’s £515 uses 9,200 miles a year. Multiply your own yearly mileage by 5.6p a mile (£515 divided by 9,200) for a quick estimate of your extra cost. That 5.6p figure is a Motoring Chronicle calculation.
• Avoid motorway forecourts. The Competition and Markets Authority’s Enhanced Road Fuel Monitoring Report, published in spring 2026, found motorway sites charged up to 17p a litre more for diesel than off motorway forecourts, worth more than £9 on a 55 litre tank.
• Fill up at a supermarket. The same CMA report found the gap between supermarket and non supermarket forecourts reached up to 11p a litre for diesel, about £6 a tank.
• Check the price within a short drive. The CMA also found variation of up to 17p a litre for diesel within a 10 minute drive of the same area. A price comparison app or website can show the cheapest nearby station before you leave.
• Check what a diesel is worth before you sell. Cap HPI, the used car valuation firm, reported that diesel values fell for a fifth month in a row in September 2026, by 0.6% over the month. A fall in value is a cost of swapping that has to be set against the fuel saving.
• Keep the diesel if you tow or cover long motorway distances. Mr Rodie said that drivers covering long distances and towing heavy items could still benefit from diesel efficiency, so the sums are different for them than for a short trip commuter.

For the 62,098 diesel cars in Doncaster, the 80,000 in Bradford and the 344,000 in London, the extra cost is already built into every fill up. The practical question for each owner is whether the car in the drive is still the cheapest way to cover the miles, and a ten minute calculation with the figures above is the way to find out.

Sources:

• Motorpoint analysis of diesel dependence across 50 UK towns and cities (reported by Motoring Research, 8 October 2026)