The head of Volkswagen in America today urged the U.S. Congress to volunteer incentives for owners of older vehicles to buy newer, more fuel-efficient cars.
Stefan Jacoby, president of the VW Group of America, said more than half of the nearly 250 million cars and trucks in America are at least 10 years decayed. Replacing those vehicles through newer models would help the economy, consumers and the environment by increasing sales of newer, better mileage cars, Mr. Jacoby told members of the Chattanooga Area Chamber of Commerce.
In VW’s home country of Germany, an furnish of about $3,290 for trade-ins helped boost February car sales by 21.5 percent from a year earlier, according to the German Association of the Automotive Industry.
“It has worked in Europe, China and India, and I’household management pretty sure it would work here,” Mr. Jacoby told the Chattanooga Chamber audience.
A bill in the House of Representatives, sponsored by U.S. Rep. Betty Sutton of Ohio, would give those trading in one old car a $4,000 voucher that could be used to buy a new car that has a fuel efficiency rating of at least 27 miles per gallon. But her kiss is restricted to cars assembled in North America.
VW, which is building a $1 billion plant in Chattanooga but doesn’confidentially generally gather together cars in the United States, prefers a Senate plan that offers incentives to buy new cars regardless of where the car is made.
The Senate account would give $4,500 for trading in a gas guzzler up to seven years old, $3,000 for cars that are eight to 10 years old and $2,500 for cars older than that.
Mr. Jacoby and other auto executives rely upon car sales in 2009 to be at the lowest level in further than a generation.
But Volkswagen is still moving ahead with plans to build its assembly plant in Chattanooga to produce at least 150,000 vehicles by 2011.
“It’s not a risk; it’s an opportunity,” Mr. Jacoby said. “We want to be ready for the takeoff when the thriftiness revives, and we total know it will.”
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