Since the announcement that the car scrappage scheme in the UK will be extended (see article) a host of important industry names have been having their say on the plans, with a cautious but generally positive welcome for the proposals.
The Finance and Leasing Association (FLA) welcomed the news and expressed the need for Lord Mandelson to ‘get a good result’ in his talks with Brussels for additional support for the motor finance sector. According to the FLA’s head of motor finance Paul Harrison, this is the key for long-term demand for new cars when the economy recovers.
The Government has decided to extend the number of £2,000 grants for people who trade in an old car and buy a new one to 400,000, which Paul Williams, the chairman of the National Franchised Dealers Association, described as a “victory for common sense over dogma”. He believes the development will safeguard a number of jobs in both the retail and manufacturing sectors.
Indeed there has been wide support from the majority of vehicle manufacturers, including Volvo, which has taken 4,200 scrappage orders to date, over 2,000 of which have been for its Volvo C30 Sports Coupe.
There is more caution however, among various environmental spokesmen. Our own Faye Sunderland maintained her scepticism over the green credentials of the scrappage scheme and stated that she hopes the profits earned by carmakers will be invested back into research and development on the next generation of low emission cars. Failure to invest, she believes, would be a “missed opportunity”.
More damning in their criticism of the scheme is the Environmental Transport Association (ETA), which has described the concept as “environmentally short sighted”.
Director at the ETA Andrew Davis hit out at the plans stating: “This is little more than a panicked way of propping up the industry as, given time, those cashing in the grants would most likely have bought the new car anyway.
“Car scrapping initiatives are often mistakenly labelled as green because they subsidise the purchase of cars that are usually, more fuel-efficient than those they replace, but the schemes are by their nature wasteful and routinely fail to take into consideration the amount of energy required to build a vehicle in the first place.”
Here at TheGreenCarWebsite.co.uk we want to know what you think of the decision to extend the scrappage scheme. Please leave a comment below with your thoughts.
