Poll respondents rejected suggested options, indicating scepticism about scrappage deals for new vehicles
Last week’s poll received a strong response, with 452 readers contributing to the result. This, however, was a surprise, with the largest group of respondents, 47 per cent, rejecting our suggested options and selecting “None of the Above”.
This is a relatively rare event and usually indicates that we missed an obvious option off our suggestions. We can’t, of course, determine what the bulk of the 212 readers who picked this option thought. However, among the 31 people who left us comments, there was a strong agreement that discounting a new car by £2000 in return for scrapping an old model was more a marketing move than environmentally-friendly policy.
“If you buy a new car you lose 20 per cent just by driving it off the forecourt (VAT element) which for an average £30k new car is £6K so a £2k scrappage scheme doesn’t even cover the VAT on a new car,” said Peter Thomas, with other comments agreeing with this sentiment.
Some commenters argued with the 9-year cut-off date for the scrappage, saying that it makes more environmental sense to keep older cars that still pass MOT tests running than to scrap them, and that lifecycle environmental performance needs to be taken into account. “Scrapping a perfectly good diesel car is far worse for the environment than keeping it running well,” commented Tim Preston.
Of the readers who did choose suggested options, the largest group, 28 per cent, thought the Ford scheme was a good idea that other manufacturers should be encouraged to copy. The next group, 12 per cent, liked the Ford scheme but thought it needed to run for longer than three months; 10 per cent thought the government should levy oil companies to foot the bill for scrappage schemes, and 4 per cent thought that manufacturers should not have to pay for scrappage.
Please continue to send us your opinions on this topic.
As a cynic I would contend that Ford’s stance may not be 100%altruistic. Falling sales might just be a bigger motivator..
Also who can calculate whether producing another car is more/less polluting than keeping an older one (although at 7 years not that old) on the road?
As for fuel levys, I have not yet been able to understand why one of the world’s greatest pollution sources – Air Travel Industry- is allowed to continue with tax free fuel.
If you’re driving an eight year old plus car a I don’t think a 2K discount is likely to be enough to help you afford a new car.
We also tend to forget that both making and scraping cars are polluting activities; does taking a car of the road roughly 2/3 of the way through it’s expected life really reduce overall emissions by a worthwhile amount?
You are right that building a new car and scrapping an old one may be more polluting than keeping an of one going, but the politicians of the world have demonised tailpipe emissions to such an extent that other forms of pollution are forgotten by the general public.
How old is ‘old’? And how low is ‘low’ with regard to emissions? I have often found that people who advocate the removal of ‘old’ cars from the roads don’t consider the energy cost (and resultant pollution) associated with the manufacture of new vehicles.
If you turn up at a Ford Dealer as a Cash buyer looking for a brand new car you can probably negotiate a discount approaching £2k anyway.
It is purely a marketing opportunity. What isn’t clear is how determined they are to actually remove the scrapped cars from the roads. The previous government scheme had some quite strict terms applied
The energy associated with making and eventually breaking a car is substantially more than that consumed during its relatively short life. That much was known in the early 90’s. The pollutants created by the vehicle are also better known and measured than those of the manufacturing process. What are the NOx and particulate emissions of the total manufacturing process per vehicle.?
The industry success is making vehicles last longer using less energy over the life cycle. This is a triumph of engineering for the environment but a disaster for sales. You only sell half as many cars, if the market is not growing. Also it takes twice as long for changes to emissions levels of vehicles to work though the market. Progress is seen to slow.
On the other hand has any one done the work of measuring the improvement if an area is restricted to the new emissions levels. Have we validated that outcome.
Its easier to achieve change if the benefits are clear and present.
It is strange to surpricing to experience how the holistic understanding is ignored.
How many years of normal usage of a car does the environmental loading caused by producing a new cause?
It is more a question of how do the car producers manage the overall load on the environment. Why do they produce cars With lots of functionallity that are hardly used and require more maintenace?
This does not help those people that either cannot afford a new car or those who wish to buy a 2 or 3 year old vehicle to avoid the depreciation inherent in buying a brand new car. So this is no help to many motorists who will continue to run an old car.
Ford is obviously not doing this altruistically; If it was a government backed scheme, there might be a sliding scale of incentives depending on what car was being scrapped, but also what car was being bought; I agree with the above comments about total energy costs, but a sliding scale of incentives to buy, with hybrid or electric cars at one end and new generation smaller engined cars at the other might encourage the market in the right direction.
This will motivate me.
Next time I buy a new car, I will look for the dirtiest most polluting environmentally damaging car I can find, hoping that when I come to replace it, some sucker will pay me thousands of pounds scrappage to get rid of it.
A better scheme would be to encourage people to trade them in with higher taxes, making the polluters pay, rather than rewarding them.
Cant help thinking that this has to do with falling sales rather than a sudden conscience regarding health & environment I`ll stick with my 11 year old very economical Mazda thank you.
The scrappage scheme is obviously a nonsense – the car manufacturers clearly reckon that they will benefit. What would make more sense is to tax polluting vehicles more heavily, eg by hoisting all Congestion Zone and council parking charges (rather than reducing or eliminating these for electric vehicles).
I wonder how much would it cost to retrofit older cars with additional filtering and/or other improvements to emissions performance. The costings in both ££ and in environmental impact would be interesting – I suspect it would work out far better than replacing an entire vehicle?
You can save more than the scrappage scheme will pay you by buying a year-old car that is zero-rated for vehicle tax because of its emission rating. This is a discount scheme by another name to encourage sales.
WIth over 220,000 miles on my van (08 plate) and 150,000 on my Land Rover (08 model). Both of which still adequately pass emisions testing and are very good to use still perhaps we should levy scrappage of vehicles with < 200,000 miles or maybe more so on them. making sure maximum vehicle life for the energy put into manufacture is achieved. Most more modern vehicles will happily last 15 years with engines still in good condition. Why scrap good vehicles?
I am in the same camp as George; I generally buy a 3+years old car and aim to keep it until at least 10years old. As long as it continues to pass MoT tests, remains economical to run, and is reliable I feel this causes less pollution overall than replacing it more frequently. As others comment, I also suspect this is more about falling sales rather than any environmental concerns for planet Earth.
Whole heartedly agree with other people posting here, I have always bought 4 or 5 year old cars and run them until they are no longer economic to repair. If you buy a new car you lose 20% just by driving it off the forecourt (VAT element) which for an average £30k new car is £6K so a £2k scrappage scheme doesn’t even cover the VAT on a new car. I seem to recall they tried this some years ago, but for people like me who refuse to borrow money to buy a steeply depreciating asset it will never appeal. As others have mentioned you need to consider the whole of life cost to the environment of a car not just the pollution caused by running it. Re-use is almost always more enviro friendly than recycle
Echoing L Richardson’s comment, I suspect it wouldn’t be too difficult or costly for OEMs to develop ICE replacements that drop into existing vehicles up to a certain age/condition. There would be benefits from lower development costs – as they would only need to develop an engine to power an existing specification of vehicle, lower material costs, plus an opportunity to draw on feedback from their techs on maintenance and known issues – a chance to put right what was wrong or badly designed in the first place rather than start again with an entirely new product with “faults” (design or otherwise) of its own.
Taking end to end pollution into account running an older ‘polluting’ car for 18 years is less polluting than replacing it with two cars every 9 years or worse yet three ‘super clean’ cars every 6 years!
More utter nonsense backed by ill informed government ministers. One of the biggest environmental issues is waste and these ridiculous scrap page schemes make this problem worse. We are being increasingly governed on the basis of ill informed and hysterical headlines based on meaningless ‘data’.
Scrapping a perfectly good diesel car is far worse for the environment than keeping it running well.
Then, I suppose that we will be encouraged to buy hybrids which are exempt from the MOT emissions test – of course this is because of their engines being subject to multiple cold starts which dramatically shortens the life of the catalyst…. I wonder how many older Priuses are polluting London’s streets more than a typical diesel?
So why are the government not giving £2000 to the most polluting cars and converting them to LPG -simple Ford wont make money nor will the petrol companies -the only winner immediately will be the environment -no cars needlessly scrapped -cleaner air until an alternative is genuinely offered by Ford- we do it for old building by insulation and glazing so why not cars –
I agree with the comments about needing to look at lifecycle pollution not just in service emissions.
Also those who run old cars generally do so because they cannot afford to run newer ones so this scheme is unlikely to result in lots of old cars coming off the road but it is good publicity for Ford!
This looks like a PR and sales gimmick to this old cynic.
Blimey, a ‘The Engineer’ comments section with all commentators in agreement – some kind of record?
It has to be “None of the above.”
ANPR cameras are used on petrol station forecourts for detecting uninsured or untaxed vehicles and those who leave without paying.
Why not use this technology for for differentiating between the more and less polluting vehicles?
A punitive pollution tax should be applied to petrol and diesel with those vehicles that meet the latest emission requirements getting a discount or exemption.
The polluter must pay!
I think you’ll find that the tax on petrol and diesel is already pretty punitive, and has been for decades.
For those who consider that the tax on fuel is already punitive, the solution is clear. Trade in your ICE car and go electric.
Whichever way you look at it, absolute nonsense, bordering on a con.
MY 15 year old A4 TDI gets on average 64MPG with 231k on the clock. No one I know that has a new diesel can get anywhere near that, so maybe for me I use less fuel than a modern car but which car is better? Do these g/km values actually mean anything…..no unless you live in a lab and wear a white coat. Car manufacturers make cars and sell cars so their incentive is veiled for people to consume more, I cannot afford a new car and do not want the debt, but that is what the manufacturers want you to do…….in the name of pollution prevention.
Once the IC engine in cars is banned, where will the billions that the government takes in fuel duty then come from…….think about it……and do not get me started on trucks.
Remember that fuel consumption is related to the overall efficiency of an IC engine. For those who drive for speed and not efficiency do you think they care about pollution doing +80 on the motorways, few people really care, if you have a company car and a fuel card would you drive efficiently, most don’t.
It’s not just trucks, busses constantly belching out exhaust in towns and cities, appear to be the worst polluters. Many European cities and larger towns run trolley busses or trams as did the UK until some short sighted bureaucrat decided the bus was better!
All this concentrating on diesel cars……….. has anyone watched at diesel loco start up?
Ref “Lucky Eddie’s ” comment, no one has mentioned other transport-waiting for a train at Ipswich, there’s often a diesel loco standing there ticking -over ( ticking is hardly the the right word) when you arrive and still standing there when you leave, belching out diesel smoke. Makes you wonder just how efficient this type is-I suppose that there is a valid reason why they stand with their engines running?
I think I’m right in saying that the energy input required to melt two tonnes of steel is comparable to the energy usage through a car’s life. That is to say, most of the energy cost of making, using and scrapping a car is in the making of it. It’s been a while since I did the maths though and I’ve not been back to check.
Jet aircraft give out burnt kerosene which is far more aromatic than diesel & affects your throat much more. The particles from this are far more carcinogenic & they are flying continuously all day. On take off they are worse at polluting and spread the particles all over our cities. I used to live in Birmingham and when they last had the runway changed all of the aircraft take off & land to the north of the city constantly every day on average every 2 minutes. No one thinks twice about the pollution levels from this. When I was a kid it was very rare for any one to have asthma (Worse polluting vehicles back in the sixties); since the runway change the amount of kids getting asthma has gone through the roof.