Platinum and diesel engines have been joined at the hip, which has created wonderful demand for the locally mined product over decades – and then all hell broke loose when the Volkswagen emissions scandal broke in 2015.

Since then, diesel has been progressively demonised, to the point where a German federal court last month ruled that German cities may ban diesel vehicles from their roads.

Et tu, Brute?

Germany and diesel development are synonymous and now a German Federal Court has ruled that German cities can ban diesel vehicles that pollute the cities.

At the same time, a host of non-German cities have the knife out for diesel and Copenhagen wants diesel vehicles banned from next year.

But the German court ruling places emphasis on the need to increase platinum loadings to eradicate the nitrogen oxide (NOx) problem in new diesel vehicles.

But motorists with offensive Euro 5 and below diesel vehicles are in a predicament. What are they going to do about trade-ins and, if they cannot trade in, will they be able to afford Euro 6 vehicles that stop excessive carbon dioxide (CO₂) and NOx pollution?

Coming to the rescue, thank goodness, is the World Platinum Investment Council in an alliance with key concerns.

This alliance sees retrofitting as the answer. Noncompliant vehicles have the option of two retrofits, one which has considerable platinum content and a second that has little or no platinum content.

Off-road and on-road testing of these retrofitted devices has met both CO2 and NOx requirements and is expected to save the day.

The auto industry has been too slow in using platinum to exorcise the demons out of diesel, which has hurt South Africa.

But the move away from buying diesel vehicles towards the use of petrol alternatives has also reached a point that works in platinum’s favour.

The use of palladium in preference to platinum in petrol vehicles has historically been price-based.

It has always been acknowledged that platinum is a superior catalyst in autocatalysis, but palladium has historically been cheaper than platinum.

But the rush has pushed the palladium price so high that it is being dubbed ‘unobtainium’ because of its growing scarcity.
Rhodium, which is used to offset NOx, has also rocketed in price and the job it does can also be covered by increased platinum loadings.

The upshot is that expectations are sky- high that platinum will return to centre stage, but exactly when this will happen is always the problem for hard-pressed platinum mining companies being hit by the double whammy of low dollar prices of platinum and now also low rand prices because of the strengthening of the rand.

It’s a battle that’s hard to win.