Scraopage scheme for encouraging new ev purchases

There's currently an EU investigation into whether the Chinese brands are getting state support etc. The tariff on them coming into Europe is 10% where the USA put a 27.5% tarriff on them.

From reading about it, I think European carmakers are putting pressure on the Commission to do something so if that happens the Chinese brands list prices will increase and I assume stop the downward pressure on prices. So that could change things quite a bit as well.

I was reading a report that anything short of a 50% tariff will just be absorbed by the Chinese car brands

Ah yes, the old perfectly good argument

Define perfectly good, because as I recall in 2014 we were in the middle of diesel gate and an effective admission from car manufacturers that there was no way for them to achieve the emission standards without cheating

So yeah, I'd be quite in favour of getting the old Euro 5 and older cars off the road as fast as possible

Even the latest cars aren't getting close to their stated emission goals, recent EU auditor reports found that any fuel savings for the past 10 years have been completely erased by the trend towards SUVs

If be inclined to run existing fleet into the ground. More environmental friendly , many of the older cars limited mileage , those with high mileage will die sooner

Get rid of new ICE

Not sure sure about that. Even scrapping a car is energy intensive. Recycling all the metal takes a lot of inputs and many of the plastics are probably difficult to recycle and most likely can only be recycled into lower value plastics.

I'm a big believer that the Irish motorist should be heavily incentivised to run what they have into the ground if it meets their transportation needs. Having said that, if one needs a new car, maybe more seats for a growing family, then it makes sense to incentivise EVs.

In general, our throwaway approach that has become endemic in Western society has done a lot more environmental damage than the internal combustion engine.

I do take the point that in large urban areas that air quality is an important consideration. Was in Limerick at the weekend and saw a fully electric bus for the first time. The entire urban fleet should be electric by now really, no excuse for that.

French Government have a scheme to democratize EV adoption with those on lower wages given support to buy EVs.

Scrapping cars early is not environmentally sound.

Meaning less of us will be able to afford an EV ?

I don't believer there should be any government scrappage schemes for this. Any such scheme just means it gets funded by the taxpayer and the money goes straight into the pocket of car manufacturers. That is already the case with the existing SEAI grant scheme.

Another example of how the government throwing money distorts the market is how electricity bills have remained high in Ireland while wholesale prices have reduced. Why would energy companies here reduce their prices by much when the government has been paying towards our bills the last year or so? Now that those payments have finished watch the prices start coming down and competition increase.

Let the car manufacturers figure out themselves how to make their products more desirable if they want to sell them. The likes of Tesla, VW, etc can literally do it overnight when they need to. Any money ring fenced for a scrappage scheme would be better off spent on charging infrastructure instead.

The amounts of carbon used to build a new car is massive. Theres literally no good reason to scrap a ten year old car from an environmental perspective.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.

The CO2 footprint from manufacturing is around one seventh the footprint of fueling an ICE over its lifetime. I don't know how many years were in the lifetime of the cars in this study or if they used industry averages.

# https://theicct.org/a-global-comparison-of-life-cycle-ghg-emissions-from-passenger-cars/

The environmental objective should be to reduce car usage rather than encourage people to buy new cars of any type.

A lot more park & ride needed, along with toilets at every station.

As much as I want to disagree with you, I think you may be correct

The truth is there's always going to be an urban/rural divide anywhere you live

Whereas cycling, walking or public transport work very well in urban areas, we don't have the population concentrations to support them outside the major cities and a handful of large towns

At least not without accepting there'll always be a lot of government support

So, cars are going to be the only viable transport option for a lot of people in the near term

Having said that, there's over 2 million people within the greater Dublin area, comprising Dublin county and Meath, Kildare and Wicklow

Getting a significant portion of that population over to alternative transport would reduce a lot of car miles. There seems to be a lot of people content to sit in traffic in the city centre, reducing that has to be a priority

Cant cars be sold on in a scrappage scheme if there is a market for them? As far as I know they don't have be scrapped

EU - 10% base
USA - 10% base + 15% extra Trump tariff - total 25%

News that Bided admin wants to add 75% extra on top i.e. 100% tariff

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/10/us/politics/us-biden-china-tariffs-electric-vehicles.html

In the absence of a US IRA analogue in the EU, extra tariffs would hurt EU carmakers and consumers alike.

The EU is us, the member states. Not they/them.

And don't invoke the evil Germans. The German car industry is quite successful in electrification, especially BMW and Merc (20%+ sales), VW is struggling but still not anti-EV.

The issue is rather with Spanish, Italian, Czech, Slovak and to some extent French governments and Stellantis + the Japanese are totally lobbying for that too. Those are the ones pushing against EVs, against the Chinese competition and want tariffs on China, not the German carmakers. German carmakers manufacture in China and are not very keen on tariffs.