German car makers to offer exchange program to old diesel owner vehicles

Owners of older diesel cars in German cities where the air is particularly polluted should be able to choose between trade-in incentives and a hardware retrofit, a coalition paper seen by Reuters on Tuesday showed.

The document said German carmakers had agreed to offer an exchange programme with attractive trade-in incentives or discounts for owners of diesel vehicles of the Euro 4 and Euro 5 emissions standard.

If owners of a Euro 5 model wanted a hardware retrofit with a so-called selective catalytic reduction (SCR) system and if this was available and appropriate, the German government expects the carmakers to shoulder the costs for this, the document said.