Are scrappage schemes a good deal and could your next car be electric?

Car scrappage schemes are back. After waiting in vain for the government to launch an official scrappage scheme to get dirty diesels off the road, car makers have taken matters into their own hands.

But is this an altruistic move to help replace more polluting cars with greener ones, or are they just trying to flog more cars?

These new scrappage schemes have coincided with falling sales of new cars, so you could be forgiven for being cynical, which if we’re going to be honest is exactly what This is Money editor Simon Lambert and deputy motoring editor Rob Hull are.

But there’s another important question to tackle, are these scrappage schemes a good deal?

Simon, Rob and host Georgie Frost take a deep dive into them – and the murky world of cars sales and finance.

What you probably won’t be buying if you take advantage of a scrappage scheme is an electric car – but wait a few years and your next one could be. There’s been a string of news on this and in a show that goes more than a little electric we take a look at what the future holds.

Will it be Nissan’s new £20,000 Leaf that wins out, Jaguar’s plan to offer every model with an electric or hybrid version, or could it even be a Dyson car that storms the market?

If you’d prefer to go a bit off the beaten track and electric motorbike with a detachable battery you can charge in your office might even be the answer. Rob spent a week with a Super Soco to test out that theory and reports back here.

And what about your house? This week we told the story of Darren Widdowson, from Northamptonshire, who decided to try generating his own electricity with solar panels and a battery storage unit from Ikea.

He now pays just £4.50 every month for electricity to power his home and electric car.

Also on this week’s show we look at the case where This is Money’s Tanya Jefferies won £7,000 back from HMRC for a couple who paid to bump up their state pension and then discovered that wasn’t possible and we ask if Neil Woodford, once one of the best performing fund managers in the UK, has lost the Midas touch.

And finally, would giving your house a nice name add to its value – and exactly what are the rules on this? We explain what you need to do if you fancy calling your home Trevor, Nigel, or Dunroamin.