Car scrappage petition

Lemonade_Pockets

In response to the last two posts.

Sorry "yawn" probably wasn't required, just frustration on my part. Your opinions do not bore me, i just find it frustrating that some of them seem to be base on little or no fact at all.

Cars in Germany have always been more expensive 2nd hand than in the Uk as they are in France. I doubt they have shot up that much in the last few months. But feel free to tell me otherwise.

Debt does make the world go round which is why the whole bloody thing almost stopped when creditors stopped taking on new debt.
Modern society could not function without the facility for debt, if you don't agree perhaps you might like to look up how a bank works.

I would like to point out that i'm not 100% convinced by the idea, but just trying to provide counter arguments to the schewed facts that our sensationalist press present to the masses. Often these are then regurgitated by their readers with little or no appreciation of the bigger picture. I'm just trying to challenge those views.

Also let me quantify what my personal experience was. I left the "trade" a year ago but in the 4 years prior to that my department (which sold new cars) sold something like 4800 new cars of that i would say at least 25% of sales had part exchanges of over 9rs old against them. That figure jumps higher if i don't include fleet and van sales. Now more than half of those sales would be made up of little old dears who changed their cars once a blue moon always for a new one and always paid cash.

Lemonade_Pockets

Ahh this is more like it some logic being applied.

However these people wouldn't buy anyway would they? If they where still buying we wouldn't be having this conversation.

New customers who take up this offer who wouldn't before: By your own admission this is a VAT collection that would not of occurred ordinarily so can be offset against any taxpayers money.

With regard to jobs:

I suppose you have forgotten about the people that sell, adminsister, valet, distribute new cars. Again i can guarantee jobs will be saved here. For example my old Job no longer exists, the position was made redundant this year - a direct result of a sales drop. Thankfully i got out before this crisis hit.

It doesn't need to be global implication since most of the cars we buy are produced in Europe and visa versa. We are the last of the main markets in Europe to adopt a scrappage scheme!

Or maybe we should opt for the protectionist view and just hope everyone else's goverment doesn't. But that would kind of defeat the point of the EU.

N.b If we continue to use my rough figures. Not all of the 400 cars purchased would be eligible for the scrappage bonus. So 800K is probably way to high, my only point is that people who have old cars can and do by new ones.

Sidmon

Lemonade_Pockets wrote: »

Also let me quantify what my personal experience was. I left the "trade" a year ago but in the 4 years prior to that my department (which sold new cars) sold something like

Ahhh....that's why your all for it!

Lemonade_Pockets

Sidmon wrote: »

Ahhh....that's why your all for it!

I obviously have a vested interest. I still work in the industry although in a very different role. Some of the job cuts have been very close to home! Sorry it was not supposed to be a secret i have said openly in other posts that i work in the industy.

However like i said i'm not 100% i really don't mind if people agree or disagree with it. However i would like to think that if people still disagree they do so having considered the other side of the arguement rather than just going with the, Its just another big waste of money, we don't even British car companies line.

ninky_2

CHR15 wrote: »

Isn't it fair to say that the only people who buy brand new cars, are already driving fairly new cars now??

If that is so, they won't qualify for the £2K scrappage because their current car is too new (and would be worth a lot more than £2K anyway !! )

This leaves the only people who qualify, are people who are driving bangers which are worth less than £2K.

Wouldn't it be fair to say that people who are driving bangers, are doing so because they cannot afford a brand new car (even if they did have £2K knocked off the price)???


I reckon there is going to be more scams and dodgy deals surrounding this scheme than genuine claimants.

not necessarily. i remember reading a survey of millionaires that found a lot of them drive older cars. like for example the guy who owns / started ikea who drives a 10 year old volvo and always flies economy. a large proportion of millionaires also spend less than £100 a year on clothes. this mentalty is a large part of how they became millionaires.

http://www.lonympics.co.uk/new/IKEA.htm

i personally could afford to buy a new car but choose not to because i don't think it's worth the money.

however if someone wanted a new car and wanted to go halves on the 2k i would consider this and put my half towards a newer (but not new) low CO2 band secondhander. there is no way i'd spend more than 2-3k on a car. to me that is like women who spend a fortune on a handbag just because it's the latest thing / right label. it's just to carry stuff in. a car gets you from A to B. reliability, safety and fuel efficiency are important but you don't need to spend loads to fulfill this criteria. expensive cars are also expensive to maintain in my experience.

CHR15

I agree, but these people are out of the equation also, due to the reasons you put forward above, the £2K carrot is unlikely to make them change their ethics.

michaels

Lemonade_Pockets wrote: »

The scrappage scheme has prevented 1000's of jobs IN Germany been lost and to a lesser extent France and Italy.

Old cars however well maintained are a lot more polluting than new ones.

On average a car emits 85% of it emission during its life. 10% during Manufacture and 5% during disposal.

Link to Evidence?

AdrianHi

CHR15 wrote: »

I don't know anyone who has gone from sub £2K banger to Brand New. Nearly new maybe, but not brand new.

I traded in my last car for £1500 and bought a brand new car

I agree without your point though, even for me this move was an exception to my usual pattern of buying nearly new and running until 7 years old. I don't plan on buying brand new again (glad I did it once though) but never say never...
Kept the old car so long because I loved it and after spending 18 months looking for it's replacement bought something brand new that was new on the market as I really didn't want to wait longer and wanted particular options on the car. The alternative would have been to wait another year, worn old car falling to bits around me, waiting for the right used car to come up.


As to the environmental issue, I've read somewhere else greater than 50% of a cars total CO2 footprint is during manufacture when you account for the whole lifecycle, raw materials from the ground to finished product out the factory. I'll try and dig up a link for evidence.

Lemonade_Pockets

michaels wrote: »

Link to Evidence?

This is the only link that i can find at the moment. But i seem to recal reading a similar study in the telegraph.
http://www.green-car-guide.com/articles/127/1/Report-shows-emissions-from-cars-and-from-car-manufacturing-continue-to-fall/Page1.html


With regards to Jobs in germany, well to give you one example the factory in Colgne that produces fiesta's amoung otherthings as recently as January was considering laying off more workers (in addition to jobs already lost) and cutting shifts. It is now doing the complete opposite.

The VW plant which makes Polo's and Golf's is in pretty much the same boat.

I don't think stating that new cars emit less than old cars needs qualifying any further.

With regard to scrappage schemes in a bigger economic context because as one person pointed out to truly benefit the rest of the world needs to do the same thing.
I beleive 12 countries in the EU have already announced schemes. All the main markets bar us have rolled it out already.
China has announced a stimulus package which includes incentives to buy new cars (they can't do a scrappage scheme as most ppl don't own a car or haven't had one for very long)
America and Japan are considering similar schemes.

AdrianHi

As a percentage of total life cycle CO2 emmissions I'm seeing anything between 10% and 28% claimed. On the other side of the argument there are people saying these figures are flawed because it only reports on final production line CO2 emissions, emisions from component manufacture and raw material mining and processing are not included. Soem are estimating that you should multiply manufacturer reported figures by 3 to get nearer the truth, so that would be 30% to 84% of total life cycle emissions down to production.

I'm not convinved there is a definative study on this, very hard to do.