From the BBC:
More than 60,000 orders for cars under the UK's scrappage subsidy scheme have been placed since the initiative was announced, new government figures show... Business Secretary Lord Mandelson said the scheme had given the carmaking industry the boost it needed. The scrappage scheme was announced at the end of April and the latest figures cover orders from then until 7 June.
OK, my magic fag packet says there are twenty million cars on the road, and that the average age at which they totally conk out is 15 years. So assuming all drivers 'need' a car, rather than just owning one (e.g. me, I find having a car bloody handy, but since Her Indoors bought herself one as well, she only having a licence to drive an automatic, I wouldn't say I 'needed' mine any more. Sniff.) we'd expect people to buy about 1.3 million new cars every year, or 150,000 in a six-week period (the scrappage scheme has been running for six weeks). So on that basis, orders are still down by sixty per cent.
Basically, there are far too many unknowns to say whether the car scrappage scheme will have any overall effect (or even what the net cost/benefit to the taxpayer is), in particular, we don't know how many people have merely accelerated a purchase from next year to this.
Further, as the bulk of cars on UK roads are built abroad, it might have helped "the carmaking industry" but not necessarily "the UK carmaking industry".
Monday, 15 June 2009
Meaningless/Misleading Statistic Of The Day
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6 comments:
Its purpose was to help Lord Mortgagefraud.
My 13 year old car is stil worth between 3,000 and 5,000. It works fne. Why would I scrap it for a couple of grand and go into debt?
The government are launching a new car. It doesn't do much except spin like mad.
WV = spini. I shit you not.
Is 'her' always indoors? I should have thought the presence of the car would preclude much of that. :)
My guess is that most of the cars bought under the scheme would have been bought anyway. Given that a good proportion of the cars will be foreign, the net effect on UK car manufacturing will be slight. A typical govt scheme that is primarily designed to to make it look like they are DOING something, rather than actually helping.
I gather the initial rush for car scrappage in Germany did little for their economic outlook or their credit crisis.
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