A survey of promoting diesel passenger vehicles in China conducted by official legal Web site, bitauo.com, among 2,830 Chinese netizens, showed that only 15.4% of Chinese disagree with the initiative.

The majority of netizens giving their assent to the popularization of diesel-engined passenger vehicles is because they attach more importance to diesel vehicles' advantage of low fuel consumption. According to the survey, 71.7% of netizens believe diesel vehicles are more fuel-efficient than gasoline vehicles; 22.1% of them think the former is more powerful than the latter.

Other netizens are concerned about the environmental performance of diesel vehicles, and many of them assume there is a slim chance for diesel engines to fail, thus making diesel vehicles more durable.

Those who take the opposing stance are mainly worried about the quality and insufficient supply of diesel, which may have something to do with the diesel shortages recently occurred in many Chinese cities.

In addition, many netizens said diesel vehicles make very loud noise, sort of an inherent impression people have on diesel-engined vehicles, but with the development of technology, these vehicles actually make very low noise now.

At present gasoline engines power more than 70% of sedans in China, and domestic consumers are still not familiar with the diesel passenger vehicles. Although most of netizens favor diesel vehicles due to their higher efficiency and cost effectiveness, it remains very difficult to promote them in the country owing to limitations of local authorities and immature technology relative to diesel engines. Hence, auto manufacturers overall are taking a wait-and-see attitude toward production of diesel vehicles.