Dealers want a £4,000 scrappage scheme, twice the 2009 payout

Dealers have a design for a British electric car scrappage scheme, and it is twice as generous as the last one. A survey of 60 retailers for Startline Motor Finance found the most popular answers add up to a £4,000 allowance, a trade-in more than 10 years old, new and used electric cars both eligible, and a 12-month window. No scheme of that kind exists. The support a private buyer can claim this month is the Electric Car Grant, which applies to new cars only.

What the survey asked

The November Startline Used Car Tracker was compiled by APD Global Research and questioned 60 dealers, alongside 301 consumers. The scrappage questions went to the dealers, and Automotive Management reported the results on 10 November.

On what should qualify, 45% wanted the incentives to apply to both new and used electric cars. A further 28% would restrict it to new cars, and 27% to the used market alone. On the age of the car being scrapped, 45% chose 10 years, 28% chose five years, and 27% chose 15 years.

On the money, 35% put the minimum allowance at £4,000, 28% at £3,000, 20% at £5,000, and 8% at £2,000. On duration, 45% wanted the scheme to run for 12 months, 40% for six months, and 15% for three months. Asked whether scrappage should sit on top of existing electric car subsidies or replace them, 53% said add it and 47% said replace.

The scheme the answers produce

Take the most popular answer in each row and the result is a 12-month scheme paying £4,000 to a driver who scraps a car more than 10 years old and buys a new or used electric vehicle.

Paul Burgess, chief executive of Startline Motor Finance, said: "We've found quite a wide spread of opinions but, if you pick the most popular options for each response, you have a scheme subsidising both new and used electric models, with the cars submitted for scrappage over 10 years old, and an allowance of up to £4,000 available for 12 months."

He said whether the government could be persuaded to back a programme on those terms was "open to question", and that it "would be expensive at a time when budgets are tight". The research did not cost the programme or estimate how many buyers would qualify.

The tracker follows an earlier Startline survey that found dealers backed the idea in principle. Burgess said that research showed "dealers overwhelmingly back the introduction of a government scrappage scheme promoting electric cars".

Twice the 2009 payout

The last British car scrappage scheme paid £2,000 towards a new car, with the Treasury providing £1,000 and the manufacturer the other £1,000. Thirty-eight manufacturers representing 41 marques signed up. The scheme opened on 18 May 2009 and closed at the end of March 2010, and government funding rose from £300m to £400m after the money ran short. A freedom of information request in 2014 established that 392,227 claims had been submitted, according to the House of Commons Library.

Set £4,000 against those figures. The allowance is twice the discount the 2009 scheme offered and four times the Treasury's share of it. At the same volume of almost 400,000 cars, a £4,000 payment funded entirely by the government would cost £1.6bn, four times the £400m the last scheme consumed.

The 2009 scheme was a recession measure rather than an environmental one. It followed a fall in car production of more than half in early 2009 and a 30% drop in registrations. The government's own assessment forecast that the long-term costs would exceed the benefits, and Lord Mandelson went ahead because sales made during a recession were worth more than sales deferred until recovery. The National Audit Office concluded in 2010 that the scheme had avoided some of the pitfalls seen elsewhere, and found a modest environmental benefit as more efficient cars replaced older ones.

Used cars, which 2009 excluded

One answer in the survey departs from the 2009 template more than the money does. Under the old rules the new vehicle had to have no former keepers, so the buyer had to be the first registered keeper. A used car could not attract the discount at all. The 45% who want used electric cars included are asking for something the last scheme never offered.

The current grant does not offer it either. The Electric Car Grant pays £3,750 in band one and £1,500 in band two, applies to cars priced at £37,000 or below, and covers new zero emission vehicles only. That makes the used question the one with the widest reach. Used electric sales rose 23.2% in the third quarter, and a scheme that excluded used cars would leave that part of the market untouched.

What it would sit beside

The 53% who want scrappage added to existing support are proposing a compound discount. On the most popular answers, a driver scrapping an old car for a band one electric model at £37,000 would collect £7,750, which is 20.9% of the price cap. The 47% who want scrappage to replace the grant would withdraw the only purchase subsidy a private car buyer can claim today. Our guide to the autumn grant bands sets out which cars qualify and at what level.

The allowance could be matched by manufacturers, as it was in 2009, which would halve the Treasury's bill while requiring every brand to sign up. The survey did not ask that question, so the split between government and industry funding is not in the answers. The pressure behind the question shows in the sales figures: electric cars took 32.0% of October registrations, five points behind petrol.

The pool it would draw from

SMMT's Motorparc data for 2025 counted 36,676,185 cars in use, with a record 45.7% more than 10 years old and an average age of 9.7 years, up from 9.5 (SMMT, 24 April 2026). The over-10-year share comes to about 16.8m cars, close to half the fleet, so a 10-year threshold would not be a narrow filter.

The 2009 scheme used a registration date rather than an age, admitting cars first registered before 29 February 2000. In the spring of 2009 that meant cars at least about nine years old, so the age line the dealers chose is close to the one the last scheme drew.

SMMT's argument is that renewal has slowed. Its release describes the rising average age as a brake on emissions improvement, and Mike Hawes, the trade body's chief executive, said "the pace has to quicken if ambition is to match demand with the average age of vehicles on our roads actually rising". The scrappage question is one answer to that, aimed at the oldest end of the parc rather than at the price of a new car.

What it means for buyers

Nothing has been announced, so the scheme remains a set of survey answers. The practical point is where the money would land. A £4,000 allowance is 10.8% of the £37,000 grant cap on a new car, and a larger share of any cheaper vehicle, new or used.

For a driver with an old car and a limited budget, the answers describe a scheme built around the trade-in rather than the showroom. Whether ministers take it up is a different question. When diesel scrappage was floated after 2015, the government stayed cool on the idea and more than 20 industry schemes appeared instead, the Commons Library recorded by 2018. A grant that pays a fixed amount off a new car remains the policy in place, and the dealers' design is a proposal about what should replace it.

Sources

Automotive Management, "Dealers set out how an EV scrappage scheme would work best", 10 November 2026. https://www.am-online.com/news/dealers-set-out-preferred-4-000-ev-scrappage-scheme
Motor Trader, "Startline explores dealer attitudes towards electric car scrappage scheme", 10 November 2026. https://www.motortrader.com/motor-trader-news/automotive-news/startline-explores-dealer-attitudes-towards-electric-car-scrappage-scheme-10-11-2026
House of Commons Library, "Vehicle scrappage schemes", briefing paper CBP-8091, 7 March 2018. https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CBP-8091/CBP-8091.pdf
SMMT, "One in 22 vehicles now zero emission as UK fleet reaches record high", 24 April 2026. https://www.smmt.co.uk/one-in-22-vehicles-now-zero-emission-as-uk-fleet-reaches-record-high
GOV.UK, "How to apply for vehicle eligibility for the Electric Car Grant", 15 July 2025. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/how-to-apply-for-vehicle-eligibility-for-the-electric-car-grant/how-to-apply-for-vehicle-eligibility-for-the-electric-car-grant
GOV.UK, "Zero emission vehicles eligible for a grant: overview". https://www.gov.uk/plug-in-car-van-grants