BMW rolls out incentives for buyers to opt for cleaner cars

BMW Ireland is offering discounts of €2,000 on all its models with emissions of 130g/km or lower in CO2 if a customer is trading in any car with an engine that only meets EU Euro 4 emissions standards or less. These are passenger car engines built before September 2009.

The move follows last week's so-called "Diesel Summit", where the bosses from Germany's three biggest car firms, VW Group, BMW and Daimler, met with politicians to try and repair the damaged reputation of diesel engines.

Initially started with the VW Group’s admission it fitted cheat devices to its cars to deceive US emissions tests, the scandal has spread across the motor industry as further independent tests revealed the extent to which diesel engines vastly exceed emissions standards in everyday motoring.

The deal is on offer to motorists with a car from any brand and the new BMW cars that will qualify for the discount include such models as the 118i and 318i petrols, the 330e plugin hybrid, the 530e plugin and 520d diesel, the i3 electric car, and much of the Mini range including the Cooper and Cooper S hatchback and the plugin hybrid Countryman.

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Incentives

Billed as the BMW/Mini lower emissions allowance, the move is not a scrappage scheme as BMW is not committing to remove the trade-in cars from the Irish motoring fleet.

BMW Ireland claims that, in conjunction with other offers and promotions currently available, the incentives will take as much as €15,000 off the price of a new i3 range-extender (that figure includes the existing €10,000 rebate on VRT and the SEAI grant), and as much as €9,500 off the price of a Mini Countryman plugin. There’s as much as a €5,300 price cut on the BMW 330e plugin hybrid.

The BMW scheme follows a similar announcement last week by Volkswagen. Daimler is planning a similar offer for it Mercedes-Benz models, but has yet to confirm details.

Ford is the latest brand to be investigated by German authorities for emissions irregularities. According to the Wirtshaftswoche business magazine, the Mondeo 2.0-litre TDCI diesel model has been singled out for investigation by the German federal transport authority, the KBA, after inconsistencies were found in its emissions results.

Same engine

Ford Germany chief Gunnar Herrmann told the magazine that "no illegal shut-off devices were used in our diesel exhaust after-treatment systems. We have neither cheated, nor used tricks."

In an official statement Ford confirmed that both the Focus and C-Max models using the same engine had been checked by the German authorities as part of ongoing diesel investigations, and that both had received a clean bill of health.

The statement also said: “In addition, the UK government’s department for transport tests in 2016 on the Mondeo 2.0 TCDi noted that there was no evidence of test-cycle manipulation.

“We continue to work with the KBA, and are confident that its investigation also will confirm that there is no illegal defeat device fitted to the car.”