Big discounts
About fourteen years ago we were introduced to the phenomenon of the ‘scrapping premium’ in the Netherlands. Have your car scrapped and get a discount on a new one. This is in the context of greening the vehicle fleet. This has made a comeback in London.
You probably remember it; In 2009, a phenomenon came to the Netherlands from Germany and the United States: the demolition premium. The Dutch government made money available for those who had an old passenger car or van scrapped, with the aim of rejuvenating the Dutch vehicle fleet and making it cleaner. Rewarding people for making a choice that was better for people and the environment is not a bad idea in itself. On the other hand, there will also be plenty of excellent cars that have been scrapped and you may wonder how sustainable that is. Sometimes there were cases that simply hit the heart of the car enthusiast, such as the old Peugeot 205 of colleague Frank Jacobs, which was in perfect condition for its age and was actually taken to the scrap yard by a later owner for a demolition premium.
In the Netherlands, such practices are now behind us, but in the capital of the United Kingdom it is again the order of the day. Last year, the mayor of London allocated 110 million pounds (€128 million) for demolition premiums and this was expanded again last month to €187 million. It goes hand in hand with the expansion of London’s so-called Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ), which was introduced in 2019. A zone in which passenger cars that do not meet emissions requirements have had to pay to access them since the end of August. In practice, this applies to petrol cars from before 2006 and diesel cars from before 2015. To help Londoners rejuvenate their fleet, £2,000 is available for the less fortunate if you have your non-ULEZ-friendly car scrapped.
This also leads – just as in the Netherlands at the time – to actions by car manufacturers who actively respond to the returned scrappage premium. They often come with their own ‘demolition premiums’. For example, the British branch of Volkswagen now reports that up to 4,500 pounds (€5,257) discount is available if you have your old car scrapped. This maximum discount applies to a Volkswagen ID5. Renault previously gave a discount of up to 2,000 pounds (€2,337) and Tesla also responded with a discount of up to almost €5,000 if you had your old car scrapped.
– Thanks for information from Autoweek.nl