What's the news?
Volkswagen is joining the fast-growing ranks of those offering cash off a new car when you trade in your old diesel-powered machine.
The scrappage scheme (which, as with the recently-introduced Mercedes scheme, really does involve scrapping the cars being traded in) applies to diesel cars conforming to Euro 1 through Euro 4 emissions regulations (basically that means from 1992 to 2009) and ranges from as little as €800 off the price of a new SEAT Mii, to as much as €6,500 off the price of an Audi Q7 e-tron.
The incentive scheme really helps when buying a plugin hybrid or the new all-electric e-Golf, which sees a price cut of as much as €14,000 when you combine the Volkswagen scrappage with the existing SEAI grant and the VRT rebate for electric vehicles, and there's a similar reduction of €12,000 off the price of an Audi A3 e-tron plugin hybrid. For more conventional models, you can trim €3,000 off the price of a new Golf, €2,750 off a SEAT Leon or Skoda Octavia, and €5,000 off an Audi A4. For those looking for a van, there's as much as €4,000 off the price of a new VW commercial vehicle.
Lars Himmer, CEO of Volkswagen Group Ireland, said: "The EcoGrant offers customers of older diesel vehicles the opportunity to change into one of our new, lower emission models across our range, including models from Audi, SEAT, Skoda and Volkswagen. Not only will this appeal to customers of one of our Euro 6 petrol and diesel cars," he continued. "There are additional incentives for our range of plug-in hybrid and full electric vehicles too."
"In the case of the new Volkswagen e-Golf with 300km range, when you combine this offer with the existing government VRT rebate and SEAI grants for electric vehicles, there is a total of €14,000 off the full price of the car. And in the case of the Audi A3 e-tron there is a total of €12,000 off the full price of the car. But what is particularly significant about EcoGrant is that we are actually going to take the qualifying vehicles off the road, with a Certificate of Destruction required to avail of the EcoGrant."
Anything else?
The offer applies, initially at any rate, to vehicles ordered before December 31st this year and to be registered before the end of June next year (2018), and stipulates that the car being traded in must have been registered to the name of the person trading it in for at least the previous six months.