Asking diesel customers to buy new car with help of scrappage premium would be “indecent” – opinion

Hardware retrofitting of older diesel cars would be “an economic waste of tax money or carmakers’ money”, writes Daniel Delhaes in an opinion piece in Handelsblatt. The retrofits would take years, when driving bans are already being introduced, and the cars’ fuel use, as well as CO₂ emissions, will increase. Delhaes criticises transport minister Andreas Scheuer’s call for more attractive car swap offers from automakers. “It is downright indecent by politicians and manufacturers to ask customers, who trustfully bought “clean” cars, to buy a new car with the help of a scrappage premium,” he writes.

Find the opinion piece (behind paywall) in German here.

Get background on the diesel story in the updated CLEW factsheet "Dieselgate" - a timeline of Germany's car emissions fraud scandal.