I'm not sure anyone could say for certain without seeing the evidence. It is easy enough to say that there has been this modification or that, but until enough cars have done enough miles, you can't really say. If you were planning to buy new, and follow the manufacturers advice on the regen procedure, then, in theory, you should be safe under warranty.

But ultimately, given the mpg the petrol TSI engines can manage, unless you are doing mega miles, what would the benefit of going diesel?.

Given VAG's 'form' on honesty in recent years, I'd reserve judgement until these engines have been around for a decent amount of time. Besides - modern, efficient petrol-engined cars (especially the best turbo-petrols) can easily match a diesel for fuel efficiency on short trips because they get warmed up quicker, are lighter, in addition to the fuel price being generally cheaper and the purchase cost of the car being lower.

Unless you're regularly lugging heavy loads around, owning a diesel for low annual mileage and/or mostly short trips is a waste of money, in my opinion.

Any diesel's DPF will clog up - it's just how well the car can deal with the forced regens that is the key to how they can cope with short journeys. Either way, they use extra fuel and/or adblue to help reduce the gunk or clear/burn it away, which in the end reduces mpg and costs more than if no DPF were present.

Modern diesels are better at looking after their DPF than older ones, they will regenerate at much lower speeds and clear the filter in a few minutes. Once warmed up the soot can be burned off with less than 10 minutes driving at just about any speed. They work by injecting fuel into the exhaust that gets burned in the catalyst and the heat produced heats up the DPF to over 600C.

You will get issues if the car is denied the opportunity to regenerate when it needs to or if you regularly switch off in the middle of a regeneration.

There is a great little app called VAGDPF for Android that along with an inexpensive bluetooth OBD reader can tell you when your car wants to regenerate, when it starts and when it has finished along with other useful information. A must have for all VAG diesel owners in my opinion.