http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7995928.stm I swear there was another thread about this on the German and French incentives, but I cant find it, so anyway: thoughts? If someone gets 2k for scrapping a 10 year old car and the cheapest car available in the UK, new, is what? 6-8k? A 10 year old car like mine is worth 1k (S-reg Astra) - what real incentive is there to get 4-6k in more debt?
They have already done this in Egypt with the Taxi services over there, and it works quite well from what I have heard. If you have a crap car, and have been saving up for a new car, getting a grand or two on top of your savings for a new car is better than nothing.
Well, it's pretty stupid as it's 2k off Retail price, but at the moment with all of the deals you can get you don't gain any money at all.
£2000 is a big discount on a new car, no matter how you look at it. And it's one I'd be happy to benefit from. The thing is, my Fabia is 7 year old now, and worth maybe £1500 - £2000? It'll still be worth atleast £1000 in another 3 years, and I presume it'll still be running as fine as it is now. So it doesn't make any sense to scrap it. Particularly from an environmental point of view, scraping a ton of steel after just 10 years use just isn't sustainable. As I understand it, cars put out most of their carbon during manufacturing, and don't burn much fuel throughout their life (unlike say an airliner, which burns its own weight in fuel in a few days).
Well I'd be up with this, a 1993 Mini, not really worth a whole lot, it was 2k when we bought it in 2002ish The point is they don't have to be properly maintained, you can scrap your banger and get 2k. It gets older, more inefficient cars off the road and creates demand for new cars that the car industry desperately needs. If your car is still decent and worth more than they're offering then you don't have to scrap it. They're not forcing you to scrap a car older than 10 years if you're getting a new one.
and these scraped cars will be recycled so... this is kind of good, my old VW smoker edition will be reborn as a clean and efficient VW polo.
Is there anything that stops you buying a POS for £300 then trading it in straight away to get the £2000 discount?
i doubt it. the goal with a program like this isn't to help the consumer, it's to help the car companies. so as long as you are going to go out and buy a new car, they're happy. and there probably won't be too many people selling £300 cars if they can get £2000 credit for them.
You wouldnt, you would get rid of the car thats falling to bits and costing £1k a year just to keep running...
£1k a year to ensure it's road legal and gets through its MOT? **** me. The most it's cost me is half that, and that's when a cambelt snapped and took a few valves out, amongst other things. That was on an R-reg, 12 years old now, and I still see it around town. It looks better than when I had it as the rust around the wheelarches has since been repaired.
http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?t=166251 I might point out that since these incentives were put into place, the Uno/Punto manufacturing lines have gone from silent, to 3 full shifts. And there are a few other car lines that are seeing the same sort of pick up. So at a time when it's really needed, I think this is one of the few government programs that is really working. Getting older, less efficient cars off the road while at the same time raising the overall level safety equipment on the roads while at the same time getting people back to work.
I actually have to say - about older cars - this is what Japan does: the government taxes them more the older the car is, so eventually it becomes uneconomically viable not to buy a new one. A better method than free money? Correct me if I'm wrong.
Well, it sort of works like that here, going off the co2 emissions bands. Older cars that splutter out panda-killing fumes are put in a general band that is far dearer than 'greener' running cars that spit daffodils from their rear ends. My old Scenic (a 2l '97 model) was £185 for the year. My current Laguna (a 1.9 02 model) was £135 iirc. A recent-ish Megane 1.6dci is £35 for the year.
Sounds like a good idea to me rather than your tax scheme depends on when the car was made, it's too confusing to have all of these different tax bands.
What happens if your 10 year old car is well serviced and doesnt give out bad emissions? it would be unfair to simply tax it on the "chance" it would since its simply old - Allot of people take good care of their cars and they run fine if not better than newer ones. I think the £2k rebate towards another car is a good thing, personally its simply too difficult and expensive to afford anything in this country now, cars, houses, electricity, fuel...its getting beyond ridculous that everything is taxed and expensive....
It is clearly the better idea than some one off scheme, lets face it, some uk people that have been saving up for a new car might buy one now instead of waiting until 2010 or 2011 due to getting 2k, but in my opinion it will just end up having only a temporary effect. Anyway, buying a car is the easiest part as you can just save until you have enough, but what stops people from owning cars is not being taken care of in any way. Problems like no place to park if you work in a city center or close to one, insane insurance and petrol prices... Personally I would not even buy a new car if it would only cost 1£. Why? No parking near work (except for prices that would exceed my monthly income), 3 digit sums for the insurance and with the traffic conditions around cities no car can get even close to decent MPG numbers, so the car would just end up as a weekend toy and I would still take the bus to work.
