why CASH for CLUNKERS is super-green and saves consumers BIG $$$$

[nashville_brook]

http://www.mpgillusion.com/2008/06/help-with-calculating-gallons-per-mile.html

There's a mathematical illusion at play in figuring out fuel efficiency/economy.

Consider a decision between two cars--a current vehicle and a new vehicle that is more efficient. Which improvement will save the most gas over 10,000 miles?

A) An improvement from 10 to 11 MPG
B) An improvement from 16.5 to 20 MPG
C) An improvement from 33 to 50 MPG

Surprisingly, all save about the same amount of gas over 10,000 miles: About 100 gallons.

The way to calculate the amount of gas used is to divide distance by MPG. A quick check of the numbers above will confirm the following gas usage over 10,000 miles:

10 MPG = 1000 gallons
11 MPG = 900 gallons
16.5 MPG = 600 gallons
20 MPG = 500 gallons
33 MPG = 300 gallons
50 MPG = 200 gallons

As the examples above shows, small MPG improvements on inefficient cars can save a lot of gas. Of course, most people look at an improvement from 10 to 11, or 16 to 20, and think, why bother? But replacing an inefficient car with a car that is more efficient -- even by just a few miles per gallon -- is valuable in both gas savings and greenhouse gas reductions. Every 100 gallons saved reduces carbon dioxide emissions by 1 ton.

In short, you cannot simply look at an MPG increase from one vehicle to another to know the gas savings. Also, when a family thinks about its average fuel consumption, it cannot simply take an average MPG levels of two vehicles. Given two cars that are driven the same distance, the combination of 18 MPG and 50 MPG uses more gas than the combination of 28 MPG and 30 MPG. Direct comparisons of MPG is what leads to illusions. In each case, you have to convert MPG to know the amount of gas used.

Consider this graph. Lets say I have an old clunker that gets 10 mpg and I upgrade to a newer car that gets 25 mpg. If I drive 10,000 miles a year, I save $1,500 with gas at $2.50 a gallon. That's real money in your pocket for every mile you drive, in addition to the initial program incentive.

[nashville_brook]

1. wow -- an UNREC? you have to be kidding me. who's against this... why don't you post about it?

[csziggy]

3. Don't take the Unrec presonally - there are those who are unrecing everything

At least it is looking that way since so many posts get an instant unrec before anyone responds.

[nashville_brook]

8. i call that out so that fellow DU'ers are aware of it.

[Shagbark Hickory]

2. Forgive, I'm not so great at math but...

What if I trade in a car that is in perfect working order and gets 18mpg for a brand new suv that gets not much better mpg?
Is that still green?
Is it green to send a perfectly good car to the crusher?

[nashville_brook]

6. there is a great deal of improvement from 18mpg to say 25. it's about $400 per 10K miles.

And every 100 gallons of gas reduces carbon emission by a TON. So, in that 10K miles you're putting nearly 2 tons less carbon into the air. For me, that would happen in less than a year. So, yes, it's significant.

I feel you about the sadness about wasting "perfectly good" machinery. I heard a story yesterday on NPR where they actually had the audio of a car "dying" and that was intensely sad for me! But, sacrifices have to made, and I'm much more okay with sacrificing machinery than sacrificing living things, the atmosphere and the environment.

Add the cost benefit, and to weep for the "perfectly good clunker" seems silly. Besides -- no one is compelling you to trade that clunker in. You love that 18mpg SUV? Keep it. No problem.

[Shagbark Hickory]

24. It's got nothing to do with "sadness". Or savings...You said "GREEN"

I don't give a damn about the sadness. Our disposable cars require more natural resources and create more pollution. Driving a car that is more fuel efficient doesn't necessarily result in a net savings or net reduction in consumption/pollution. I can guarantee you if I had one of those VW diesels that get 40+ mpg, I'd be driving up a storm.

But C.A.R.S. (C4C) is not about greeness or getting people into fuel efficient cars.
We don't have very many fuel efficient cars in this country and with gas in the $2- range, people are more open to driving larger more powerful vehicles than they need.

What C.A.R.S. is about is about stimulating the economy...
Getting suckers to go into debt buying some p.o.s. disposable, lousy MPG car (by int'l standards), that they don't need, with money they don't have, just to get factory workers back on the assembly line.

If they wanted to make this about being green, it would be very, very, very different indeed. PArt of being green, according to most environmentalists you ask, is to reduce consumption. Not to destroy something that is perfectly useful.

Shoot, if they wanted to make this about being green, they'd pay people $4500 to crush their car if they agreed not to buy another car and instead use transit or bicycles. Then again you don't stimulate the economy when people aren't blowing most, if not all of their pay check on car payments, gas, insurance and other bullshit.

[SammyWinstonJack]

33. +1 nt

[lumberjack_jeff]

35. +2 n/t

[taught_me_patience]

4. 250k "clunkers" traded in

250mm car stock in America. This is .1% of all cars in America. mice nuts.

[nashville_brook]

14. 250K cars each putting 2 tons less CO2 in the air every 10K miles.... yeah, it's green, and doable

and it's real world.

and the best part is, it's just the beginning. this is a place to work from. next up, modern passenger rail.

[taught_me_patience]

22. Very inefficient

$1B for .1% change in total car stock. A better way would be to raise the gas tax by $1. That would get the clunkers off the road in a hurry.

[lumberjack_jeff]

34. Each was replaced by a new car...

... the construction of which released 9 tons of CO2.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=111511131

[nashville_brook]

15. dupe

[Warpy]

5. I'm just thrilled there will be fewer of those damned things

on the road. My dad always called them "Those damned rolling billboards" because of the inability of anyone in a sensible car to see around them.

I transitioned from a Ford Ranger to a little Kia 3 years ago and it was a tough one. Four dollar gas made it a little easier as the "billboards" got parked. Most new car tags I've seen over the last couple of years have been on sedans.

Dealers haven't been taking trade ins around here of the behemoths for a while, though, because no one was buying them and the lots were full of them. This program just compensated for that by taking them off the road permanently, offering the seller a trade in value, and getting the dealer off the hook.

People are going to find sedans are a lot easier and more fun to drive than the big hogs were. I hope the trend continues.

[nashville_brook]

11. that is a great point! the big SUVs were/are getting quite difficult to trade-in b/c the market

evaporated. this was big news a while back, i'm surprised it's not more a meme wrt to the CFC.

another trend i like is that we're getting better designed vehicles -- cross-overs built on a car chasis instead of a truck chasis provide as much cargo space, are more fun to drive and safer.

[fascisthunter]

7. great program

kick

[taterguy]

9. Unreccing because any program that promotes automobile usage is not "green"

It might be a good idea for other reasons but it's sure as hell not green.

[nashville_brook]

12. yeah, in BrookWorld (TM) there would be no gas-powered engines...

ah... BrookWorld. Such a better place.

[taterguy]

20. What the hell is BrookWorld?

In the US cars are vastly over-used.

They come in handy once in a while but not all the time.

[Touchdown]

10. It's SUPER GREEN! Bzzzzzzt!

[mkultra]

27. +1 for giving your self a hand.

[Egalitariat]

13. So $4500 reduces 2 tons of carbon per year. How much does it cost to buy enough

carbon credits to offset 2 tons? Like the ones that Al Gore buys to offset his boat.

[nashville_brook]

17. not feeding...

[Egalitariat]

31. I found the answer. It costs between $2/ton and $99/ton to offset carbon

according to this website --> http://www.ecobusinesslinks.com/carbon_offset_wind_credits_carbon_reduction.htm

If you believe in carbon credits, you could offset between 45 and 2250 tons for $4500 at those prices.

Therefore, if we were going for green programs, the US Treasury would have been much better off buying carbon credits than Cash for Clunkers.

The real benefit of Cash for Clunkers is it's going to get a whole bunch of new cars sold. Which is good. To oversell the other benefits is a bit disingenuous.

[RB TexLa]

16. And people who owned the running clunkers need the new debt of a car loan during the

worst economic conditions in the last 70 years. That 1,500 saved in gas money doesn't pay the loan off. But hey the car dealers want their welfare payments. :puke:

[Warpy]

21. You don't get it.

These are people with stable jobs who wanted new cars but were unable to find a dealer to take a clunker as a trade in. Nobody was buying them any more and the used car lots were choked with them.

Consider that the average odometer reading on these things is 138,000 miles. That means the clunkers were starting to nickel and dime them to death with small repairs with major repairs coming up.

The program only gave them a trade in value on something that was impossible to trade in while getting the dealer off the hook for it.

Anything that gets clunkers off the road is a good thing. While I think it should have been extended to efficient used cars as well, it wasn't. Still, it's been a good program for everyone so far.

[gmoney]

25. +1

And this could just be a pilot program... my guess is that with its success, the folks in the administration are considering ways to offer a program to qualifying used cars, or extend the 25 year limit, or other refinements to keep things moving.

[Name removed]

28. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Warpy]

29. Not a troll, just wrong

We all get to be wrong about things from time to time.

[Uzybone]

18. KnR

[Uncle Joe]

19. I believe it's a step in the right direction.

Thanks for the thread, nashville_brook.:thumbsup:

[Expedite Trucker]

23. Great post very enlightening

[mkultra]

26. Excellent post! K&R for actual facts.

[alarimer]

30. This is mostly likely not true.

It is not "super-green" and may in fact be an environmental dud.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2009/08/05/is-the-cash-for-clunkers-program-an-environmental-dud/


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Is the Cash-for-Clunkers Program an Environmental Dud?
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clunkerThe popular “cash-for-clunkers” program instated by the federal government is clearly giving a boost to struggling auto companies by convincing people to trade in their old gas-guzzlers for new, fuel-efficient vehicles: More than 240,000 Americans have traded in their clunkers so far, and the program has already burned through its first round of funding . But as Congress debates adding $2 billion to the program, some calculations show that it may have only negligible environmental benefits.

The program’s rules are lenient enough to raise the ire of some environmentalists–new passenger cars must have a fuel efficiency rating of only 22 miles per gallon, and must be only 4 miles per gallon more efficient than the old car being traded in for a consumer to get the $3,500 credit. Still, people have embraced not just the letter but the spirit of the law. Consumers are snapping up fuel-sipping cars, led by the Ford Focus and followed by models from Honda and Toyota. The average mileage of the clunkers was 15.8; the new cars average 25.4 miles a gallon. That’s a 61% improvement—much more than the program’s rules required .

That all sounds like good news. But new calculations show that the improvements in fuel efficiency (and therefore the reduction in tailpipe emissions of greenhouse gases) will have little overall impact, because the program is relatively small. Calculations by The Associated Press, using Department of Transportation figures, show that replacing those fuel hogs will reduce carbon dioxide emissions by just under 700,000 tons a year. While that may sound impressive, it’s nothing compared to what the U.S. spewed last year: nearly 6.4 billion tons…. That means on average, every hour, America emits 728,000 tons of carbon dioxide. The total savings per year from cash for clunkers translates to about 57 minutes of America’s output of the chief greenhouse gas .

Some researchers also worry about a phenomenon known as the efficiency paradox: as we get more efficient at using energy — through less wasteful cars and appliances — the overall cost of energy goes down, but we respond by using more of it. In the case of cars, that means driving more .

[lumberjack_jeff]

32. Good: it better illustrates the economics. Bad: it depends on a fallacy

The fallacy is the assumption that people who buy 10mpg vehicles have the same purpose in mind as those who buy 50mpg vehicles.

A 50mpg vehicle won't tow the boat. A 10mpg vehicle isn't going to be the main commuter.

I don't think it's super-green at all, and the only consumers who save $$$ are those who have a actual need for a new car AND a marginal $500 piece-o-shit rusting in the side yard.