Cars too old for the road? Strategy being developed for aging vehicles in SA

Will determine when vehicles must be 'retired' and how they are disassembled and recycled. An end-of-life vehicle strategy and framework is being developed for South Africa’s car population. It will determine when a vehicle will be “retired” and can no longer be driven on the country’s roads. The framework will be a legal system that also ensures vehicles at the end of their lifespan are disassembled and recycled to prevent them from polluting landfill sites. Automobile Association (AA) CEO Bobby Ramagwede said on Thursday it will be pitching that the starting point for retiring vehicles should be vehicles 15 years and upwards because that is the age where there are the most unroadworthy vehicles. But Ramagwede admitted there is likely to be robust engagements to determine the appropriate age because there are socioeconomic parameters that need to be considered. However, Tshetlhe Litheko, chief policy officer at automotive business council Naamsa, said on Thursday the retirement of vehicles will not be based on their age but how well they do in a “health assessment”. “The average age of vehicles in South Africa is about 15 years so it’s really figuring out which car is healthy enough, based on roadworthy tests, to continue being on the road. “It’s got nothing to do with how old the car is,” he said. Recycled ‘content’ needed for exports The Motor Industry Staff Association (Misa) said this week that without such a framework, South Africa risks losing access to its largest export market. Misa CEO Operations Martlé Keyter said about three out of every four vehicles exported from South Africa are destined for Europe, where new vehicle circularity rules are being finalised by the European Union. These rules will require recycled materials, circular design and full lifecycle responsibility from manufacturers. She said failure to comply could lock South African vehicles out of Europe, threatening export revenue of R291 billion and hundreds of thousands of jobs. Road safety aspect Ramagwede said the AA is a promoter of the end-of-life vehicle strategy because in its mission to promote road safety, the condition of vehicles quickly comes up as an issue. He said the proposed strategy is the second phase of the AA’s SaferCarsForAfrica programme with Global NCAP because it has realised that with an ever-ageing car parc, South Africa is one of the few established auto markets that does not have a dispensation that addresses the age of the vehicle population. Ramagwede said in many regions, such as Europe and the Asean, they have very clear parameters on when a car is deemed no longer roadworthy. “This is not from an ability to function but from a general safety, emissions and condition perspective.” He said that is typically tied to the age of the vehicle and in some markets the age is 10 while in others they assess vehicles from the age of eight to 12. “Should the vehicle fail a series of tests in that time window, then it’s scrapped from the list of viable vehicles but once it gets to age 12, ‘that’s it’ in those markets. “I know this is a hot potato in South Africa because we have big affordability issues but the other side of the coin is that we are haemorrhaging people on our roads and there is good evidence that suggests we are haemorrhaging people because of the condition of cars. “The absence of regular assessments of the condition of the car parc through annual roadworthiness inspections means we have no guardrails protecting road users,” he said. But Ramagwede said there is always a dispensation for classic cars. Study, funding model, task team Litheko confirmed that Naamsa, in collaboration with Toyota Tsusho, commissioned Benchmarking and Manufacturing Analysts (BMA) to conduct a research study into an end-of-life vehicle strategy. He said it was completed in February and resulted from collaboration between the South African and Japanese governments on SA’s commitments to the environment, including how the country can create a circular economy with the recovery of materials from retired vehicles. Litheko said the next step involves determining the funding model, who recovers the recyclable materials from vehicles, the regulations – because amendments to the Road Traffic Act will be needed – and what industrial incentives will be available. “It’s multifaceted and it does not all rest on one government department,” he said. Litheko said the Department of Trade, Industry and Competition (dtic) has created a task team in which the auto industry is playing a role. “This task team has met twice and they are meeting again next month to evaluate the terms of reference and what the next steps are.” Litheko said it is too early to indicate when the end-of-life vehicle strategy will be implemented. He added that the research study by BMA focused on five elements. Litheko said there is a need to have a way in which cars are retired, which requires laws that are incorporated within the Road Traffic Act. He said this would include how often vehicles must have a health assessment test and whether it is every two years, every year when the owner renews their vehicle licence disc or every five years. “Then how do you retire that car? When you feel it has failed enough tests for it not to continue being on the road? That is a road traffic issue.” Landfills and ‘zombie’ cars Litheko said another issue involves cars that are written off after being involved in an accident and end up either in a landfill site or a place where it becomes “a zombie car” after people recover and repurpose it. He said this is an issue for the Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment because it involves polluting the environment. Litheko said oil, steel and other materials can be recovered from a “retired” vehicle but the recovery is an industrial process, which means the dtic plays a role in this. He said the dtic has a challenge because the European Union (EU) has laws related to polymers that are sourced from vehicles that originate from the EU or have an EU approved quality standard. He said if these polymers are recovered as “inputs”, they will then be accepted as local content. “What that means is that if you recover enough polymers and plastics from these vehicles, you are able to repurpose them and use them as non-virgin materials in the cars that we produce, which increases the local content in the vehicles we are exporting into the EU. “Even within that framework, the dtic needs to be concerned about the environment because we are continuously sending cars to the EU.” Litheko said another issue is that some of South Africa’s neighbouring states, including Botswana, Namibia, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Swaziland and Lesotho, are importing 20-year-old vehicles that do not have replacement parts. These types of cars are left on the side of the road as soon as they break down. “What happens then when you introduce an industrial recovery process where you teach the region how that fits into the ecosystem locally?” This article was republished from Moneyweb. Read the original here.