Word: carli
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Amid the gruesome news generated by the world's auto industry these days, this bit of information almost reads like a typo: new car registrations in Germany rose 21% year on year in February, the country's Association of the Automotive Industry (VDA) announced on March 3. This, though, was no error. The 278,000 cars put on the road, crowed VDA president Matthias Wissmann, amounted to the highest level of sales in the month of February in a decade...
...reason for the surge: under a German economic stimulus program started in January, car owners who trade in vehicles that are more than nine years old for new, more environmentally friendly models can expect individual rebates of $3,172 from the German government. Buyers also get a break from paying road tax for at least a year. Similar scrapping schemes have been launched in recent months in France, Italy and Spain, while motor manufacturers in Britain are pleading with their government to follow suit. (See the 50 worst cars of all time...
...face the kind of long-term structural problems dogging Detroit. Instead, policymakers in countries with substantial automotive industries are rolling out programs to ease the short, sharp shock of plunging sales by giving consumers incentives to start buying again. In January, China slashed its sales tax on cars with engines of up to 1.6 liters. The measure, designed to get Chinese to buy smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicles, had an immediate impact. January sales of small cars jumped 19% compared with the previous month, according to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers. The buying binge meant that, for the first...
...Scrapping schemes can have similar effects. The aim is to pump up weak car sales while at the same time taking older, potentially more polluting vehicles off the road. This seems to be working, at least in Germany. The VDA expects registrations for the first quarter of 2009 to trump those seen in the same period last year. But a more modest $1,300 on offer to French motorists who give up their clunkers hasn't been enough to prevent car sales there from sliding 13% last month. Scrapping schemes in Italy and Spain failed to halt even steeper falls...
...That might help explain the British government's hesitation to launch an initiative of its own. Almost 90% of all cars sold in the U.K. are imported, with most of those arriving from Continental Europe. So while 61% of those polled in a survey for Britain's Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders said they'd likely take up such an offer, a British scrapping scheme "wouldn't be a huge boost to British car factories," says Garel Rhys, president of Cardiff University's Centre for Automotive Industry Research. "In a sense it would be the British taxpayer subsidizing factories...