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Germany’s Wreck Premium

Germany’s trying to stimulate its economy by giving new car buyers a $2500 Euro for junking their old car in exchange for a model that meets the latest emissions standards. The new car need not be German. One wonders if there’s an interesting long German word for this program.

Not everyone is convinced the plan from Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government is best for the car industry or the environment.

Ferdinand Dudenhoeffer, a professor of automotive economics at the University of Gelsenkirchen, said Merkel’s move was little more than a political gift to the car market and predicted only 20 per cent of the new cars sold would be from German companies.

“One could say the wreck premium is an economic program for the factories in Italy, France, eastern Europe and Korea. For workers in Germany, the bonus will contribute little,” Dudenhoeffer said.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, February 5th, 2009 at 7:44 am and is filed under Cars, Environmental factors, Etc.. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

One Response to “Germany’s Wreck Premium”

  1. ScottF Says:
    February 5th, 2009 at 10:57 am

    I’ve seen the “wreck premium” called “Abwrackprämie” in German articles.

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How We Drive is the companion blog to Tom Vanderbilt’s New York Times bestselling book, Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us), published by Alfred A. Knopf in the U.S. and Canada, Penguin in the U.K, and in languages other than English by a number of other fine publishers worldwide.

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