Dear Forum members,

I'm seeking advice or the following issue:

I live in Switzerland and drive a 8 year old Skoda Fabia (170.000 km). The car is still registered in Germany, in an area that is eligible for the „diesel exchange program“ and is in general in a good shape. I would soon need to register it in CH. It is marked as „umzugsgut“ so i don’t need to pay import fees.

My question is now considering the km and age of the car, 1) should i use this diesel program and buy a newer car, import it and use it in ch. 2) register the car in ch, sell it here and buy a used newer car. 3) register it in ch and drive it till it falls apart. I had almost no issues so far, so i would expect still a good amount of km with it but would loose even more value.
It also needs soon the German TÜV again.

Thanks for your feedback.

What diesel program? What's the deal or no deal?

We don't know the numbers, we don't know how much they offer for your car and what it is actually worth. We don't know if you can get a VAT refund through the program. We don't know what car you would like to buy etc..

So unless you place all the numbers and info here we can't tell you what would be the best decision.

Bear in mind that the new car would no longer be allowed duty-free as an existing possession. Whether it would be cheaper there after paying Swiss taxes is something we can't judge without the detail.

Unlikely to be worthwhile. There will be some hassle and at least a little cost in getting it imported and tested here - you will need the MFK to be done - and the used value will be lower as a result of its imported status.

That depends purely on whether you want a newer car or not. Economically speaking it's almost always better to hang on to a car for longer, so unless there are problems getting it throught the MFK this is most likely the best option.

The price of diesel fuel is higher here, of course, but you already know that, and overall it's neither greener nor cheaper to upgrade from an older diesel to a newer petrol car if the old one is still working correctly. Same with hybrids and e-cars - using an old car for longer, i.e. removing the need for a new one to be manufactured, is an overall lower carbon footprint due to the impact of the manufacturing process, which is much more significant than the actual fuel usage once it's on the road.