Earlier this week, BMW’s head of sustainability has told the press that buyers shouldn’t purchase as many new cars as we do. Monika Dernai spoke to an audience in London and said that purchasing less new cars would help reduce waste across the entire automotive industry. Dernai also mentioned that there still is a need for car ownership, especially in the US, but he UK as well as public transport systems can be a worry and outside of London, the services aren’t the best.

“We really need to think about prolonging the life of cars; not having a used car market where you sell cars to each other, but maybe take a car and extend its lifespan. The idea could be that you could freshen up the interior.

We need new skill sets in the aftermarket and to design cars so that the seat can be removed and a fresh seat can be moved in – then it’s a used car that looks like a new car. It can have the same owner, who then doesn’t buy a new car, but we still have a business model as BMW and the whole of society benefits from that.

Can we actually just move everybody to public transport? I think the answer is no. You’re worried about the public transport in the UK, but if you look at the US it’s even more desolate. So I think there’s still a market for cars out there.”

Monika Dernai – Head of Sustainability, BMW

What Dernai spoke about basically goes against the business model of BMW. BMW needs people to buy cars to stay in business, pretty simple stuff but it is good that they allowed her to say these things and that the company is focused on helping owners improve the lifespan of their vehicles.