Scrappage is through

[fredfelt]

There is the other side of this in that the car businesses are going bust and that costs us anyway so is it better to spend money now in the hope thay they keep their jobs and therefore cost the country a lot less overall?

Lots of people being unemployed is very expensive.

There are far better ways of securing employment than throwing £300 million at mostly imported cars.

Also modern car plants are very mechanised, if you are looking for a job creation scheme invest in labour, not capital, intensive industries - such as renewable energy.

 

[fredfelt]

except of course that a modern car is more fuel efficent, more recyleable and get's better mpg than anything produced in the last 10 years...

so more un informed toss as per then...

There is no way that this scheme is about efficiency. If it was intended to be it would impose CO2 limits on the new car. If you wanted to you could scrap your economical VW Polo for a Landrover.

 

[Oswaldtwistle]

There is no way that this scheme is about efficiency. If it was intended to be it would impose CO2 limits on the new car. If you wanted to you could scrap your economical VW Polo for a Landrover.

Yes, one of my issues with it. The EU (rightly IMHO) wants us average 130g per km of co2 for new cars, so why aren't there some requirements here.

Indeed, when we can make cars of pretty much every type (including Estates) that emit less than that, why are we selling anything else?

 

[HAL9000]

How much are they, then?

about £7k

 

[newharper]

except of course that a modern car is more fuel efficent, more recyleable and get's better mpg than anything produced in the last 10 years...

so more un informed toss as per then...

Apparently not,

"In the Green Party's view, cars - like most things - should be quality-built to last. They should be capable of being upgraded and retrofitted as technology improves.

"Some years ago a study showed that if a car's life was extended from ten years to twenty, there were significant benefits in terms of both pollution and employment. Specifically, doubling the car's life reduced its lifetime energy-use by 42% compared with scrapping it and building a new one, because repair and maintenance were more energy-efficient than new manufacture. And at the same time it increased the labour involved by 56%, because repair and maintenance were more labour-intensive than new manufacture.

"This is a very important factor as we try to tackle both a recession and the climate crisis - we need jobs and we need reduced emissions - so we need to go with the processes that involve more labour and less energy use. And that ultimately means building cars to last, then looking after them.

"Scrapping a perfectly good car is an outrageous thing to do from a Green Party perspective. Some 15% of the total energy associated with the car is in its manufacture - what's called the "embodied energy" - and when you scrap the car before its useful life has ended, that's energy thrown away.

"There is uproar in Germany at the moment over the present scheme, and with good reason. A lot of people are trading-in relatively efficient cars and buying new cars which are up to four times worse. For us Greens, that's entirely the wrong policy, both because we need to create jobs and because we need to reduce energy-use."

http://www.greenparty.org.uk/news/2009-04-12-budget.html

Here’sanexample. A CCW staff member bought
his 1994 Volvo940 estate at auction on FridayMarch
0; as usual with auction buys, it had to be assessedalmost entirely
almost entirely on external appearance, and wasn’t test-driven prior to purchase. We knew,though, that it was a one owner car,direct main dealer part-exchange and as such precisely the type of car that a scrappage
scheme will target; an older car traded in by someone who buys a new
or nearly-new replacement.On the way home,we called into an local
MoT testing station and,with no pre-test preparation
whatsoever,the car’s CO was measured at .045%
(legal limit for new cars .2%), and hydrocarbons 18
parts per million (legal limit is 200).These figures are
far lower than the levels achieved by manynew cars,
and therefore the environmental impact of this car’s
continued use will be less than the costs of scrapping a
perfectly good and useable car and replacing it with a
newly-manufactured one.

This was a good older car.But these are precisely the
ones that will be lost if scrappage goes ahead!

http://www.great-cars.co.uk/images/stories/pdfs/ccw-scrapthescrappage.pdf.

I'm sure you can chase down the original sources if you doubt the figures.

 

[fredfelt]

Yes, one of my issues with it. The EU (rightly IMHO) wants us average 130g per km of co2 for new cars, so why aren't there some requirements here.

Indeed, when we can make cars of pretty much every type (including Estates) that emit less than that, why are we selling anything else?

For some years the EU has been trying to introduce binding emission targets for motor manufacturers, but mostly due to lobbying these targets are massively watered down. This resulted in most of the latest models not being as efficient as they could have been.

Now the market has changed the manufactures are demanding subsidies to bring more efficient cars to the market in forms of preferential loans.

If the EU emission targets were introduced as planned manufacturers would be in a far better position today in terms of the product range that they could offer.