UK to Pay £2,000 for Your Old Car

Photo: kbass941

It’s official: the UK is going to start giving incentives for drivers to trade in their 10 year or older car. The reason? To get older, less efficient, more polluting vehicles off the road. According to the government, there are almost 10 million passenger vehicles and 1 million commercial vehicles on the road in the UK that will qualify for the scrappage credit, meaning a lot of people could soon be buying new cars.

The plan will work in a number of ways:

• Auto manufacturers and the government will split the bill 50/50, meaning that it won’t be all government money going to this program.
• Participation is voluntary for the automakers.
• There are only about £300 million of government funding available for the project, which is intended to run from May of this year until the middle of next year, or until those funds run out.
• The car must’ve been registered before July 31, 1999 in the UK in order to be eligible; you can’t import cars just to capitalize on the credit.
• The credit will go towards the purchase of a new car.

Scrappage Scheme: A boon for UK auto sales

Under the plan there are about 11 million cars that could be scrapped in order to purchase new cars. The global auto industry is clearly in dire straights, so this plan may be a good way to mesh environmental responsibility with economic stimulus.

This is the angle that the government and automakers are pushing. They hope that getting old cars off the road will help reduce air pollution as well as CO2 production from the current UK fleet.

But is it greenwashing?

The jury is still out on this, but my gut tells me that yes, it is. A 16% decrease in CO2 emissions doesn’t sound like much of a benefit when you consider the CO2 that will escape during the scrappage and production of 11 million new cars. While I don’t have any numbers to support this, common sense and an old adage go a long way in this sort of situation: “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

Outside of most major cities, air pollution from automobiles is a decreasing problem. Amid the natural turnover of older vehicles, old cars represent a smaller percentage of vehicles and play a smaller role in the total air pollution picture. In time, these older cars will be all but gone on their own, without artificially increasing the rate of production and destruction of vehicles.

On a personal note

It has been my rule for a few years that I won’t buy a new car until I can find a new car that can easily beat the fuel economy of my 1991 Honda CRX on the highway. While some cars could trounce me in the city, most of my mileage is on the highway, and I still haven’t seen an affordable car hit the market that can get 65 mpg on the highway so I won’t be turning in my car anytime soon.

What about you? Would you go for the scrappage program if it were available to you?

Source: Treehugger

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