Germany's dirty diesel cars en route for Eastern Europe

24.08.2017

Car owners in Germany can claim a rebate of up to 10,000 euros when they trade in their old diesel car for a new car. Many of the old vehicles may end up in Poland – and put pressure on car dealerships.

The used car importer "Global Imports" in Gdansk does not have any diesel cars on offer at present. "We are moving away from diesel more and more," says a salesman, adding that his boss rarely orders them anymore. Used car dealers cannot rule out the fact that the introduction of the environmental rebate in Germany could change this. "There are many discussions in the industry," a trader reports. The problem is, however, that no one knows how this financial incentive will affect the Polish market, he adds. "That is why everyone is waiting to see what happens."

Read more: Dieselgate forces German carmakers to rethink their future

According to media reports, most of Germany's old diesel cars will be scrapped before their owners can benefit from the environmental rebate when they buy a new car. Volkswagen and Audi are expected to pay up to 10,000 euros - a large amount of money for many Poles.

BMW, Mercedes and Toyota are offering around 2,000 euros when car owners trade in a diesel model that is at least 7 years old and that meets the EURO 4 emissions limit, but the old car will not be demolished. Apparently, they may later end up on the Polish market. In 2016, BMW was the sixth-most popular brand among Polish secondhand car buyers. Toyota and Mercedes came in ninth and tenth, respectively.

Fear of cheap used cars from Germany

The used car market in Poland has grown steadily since 2011. The latest annual report published by the "Association of Automotive Manufacturers of Poland (PZPM)" reveals that the Polish market grew by 20 percent between 2015 and 2016 alone. Used cars account for two-thirds of first-time car registrations in Poland – new cars only make up one-third. Around 1.5 million cars are registered every year, more than half of which are over 10 years old and thus especially detrimental to the environment (54 percent).

Read more: Dieselgate exposes cozy ties between Germany's car industry and Berlin

"The question is how the environmental rebate will be implemented," said PZPM President Jakub Farys in an interview with DW. "If the old diesel cars are not scrapped, we may have a problem." However, he cannot imagine that Berlin would merely move the environmental damage across the border just as a campaign tactic for September's parliamentary elections. According to Farys, it is foreseeable that diesel cars built between 1992 and 2009 may end up in the eastern part of the EU if they are not scrapped in Germany.

The old diesel cars can still be driven perfectly legally in Poland. "These cars will be cheap and thus in high-demand in Poland," fears the association president. "A hundred thousand diesel cars aged seven years or under are not a drama, but a million older models would be a disaster," explains Farys. They would not only exert massive pressure on the price of secondhand cars, but also of new ones - and would only further pollute the air in Poland.

Germans and their cars Mobility made in Germany The reputation of Germany's famed carmakers may have taken a hit, but their sales still soar. Yet German brands make up less than two-thirds of all cars on German roads, which is still a male-dominated territory: Only one-third of all owners in 2017 were women. Interestingly, that number has virtually not changed over the past decade. Germans and their cars A decade on the road German passenger vehicles, are growing steadily older, from 8.1 years a decade ago to 9.3 years in 2017, the highest-ever age. By the way: By no means is Germany the car capital of the world: It ranks 20th in motor vehicles per capita - 17 spots behind the US, where every 10 people own eight cars. The world's least motorized country? Togo. Germans and their cars Land of the vintage automobile Roughly 600,000 vehicles - 13 percent of all cars on German roads - are considered vintage cars which means they are more than three decades old. 380,000 have a historic license plate, which requires the vehicle to be in "contemporary, original preservable condition." Germans and their cars Steady motorization As of January 1, 2017, 45.8 million passenger vehicles were registered in Germany. Based on a population of 82.8 million, it translates to 684 cars per 1,000 people. Today, there are five times as many cars in Germany than there were half a century ago when roughly 9 million vehicles drove on the "Autobahn." Germans and their cars BMW country is king The average passenger vehicle age in Germany varies from state to state. Maybe not surprisingly, cars in Bavaria, the home of BMW and the state with the highest economic per capita output, are the youngest at nine years, while the average vehicle on Brandenburg's roads, the state surrounding Berlin, is almost a decade old. Germans and their cars Germany lags behind While the number of gasoline-powered cars have remained remarkably stable over the past decade, their share steadily decreased to two-thirds of all engines in 2017. The number of diesel cars has risen from 10 to 15 million since 2008. Electric and hybrid cars combined made up 200,000 of all 45 million - that's 0.5 percent. In Norway, the share of electric vehicles alone is more than 1 percent.

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Paul Flückiger