German carmakers may offer diesel upgrade vouchers in compromise

German carmakers may offer owners of vehicles affected by driving bans vouchers for hardware upgrades by suppliers such as Baumot or HJS, German daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) reported on Friday, without citing sources.

That would be a compromise between some German politicians who want BMW, Daimler and Volkswagen to pay for the cost of making older diesel vehicles cleaner and the carmakers who say hardware retrofits would be much too expensive. The report by FAZ comes ahead of a diesel summit at the German chancellery on Friday, in which the government will try to agree by an end-September deadline a way to tackle pollution from diesel vehicles without resorting to further driving bans.

Any solution is likely to cost several billion euros, and Transport Minister Andreas Scheuer said this week his plan would not require taxpayer funds or money from the car owners, putting the onus on carmakers instead.

A coalition committee is to meet on Monday to sign off on any decisions.

FAZ said the voucher scheme would apply to some diesel vehicles meeting the Euro 5 emissions standard and would cover 80 percent of the cost of upgrades, up to a maximum level of 3,000 euros ($3,500) per vehicle, FAZ said.

Older vehicles meeting the Euro 4 standard would not be covered, but their owners would be offered incentives to swap their vehicles for new ones. (RTRS)