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From the November (not yet online) issue of Automobile Magazine, we learn the hard numbers from this summer’s Cash-for-Clunkers program.
1: Rank of the Ford Explorer as the most-traded-in clunker.
1: Rank of the Toyota Corolla as the most-often-purchased new car.
$2.878 billion: total cash dispensed
15.8: average mpg rating of the clunkers traded in
24.9: average mpg rating of the cars sold under the program
28: days’ supply of Chrysler Corp inventory at the program’s end (typical inventory is 60 days)
55: days the program was in effect
$4,170: average clunker rebate
690,114: total number of cash-for-clunkers transactions
106 Comments
No one paid me to say this, but I was a charter subscriber to David E Davis’ (and now Jean Jennings Lindamood’s) Automobile Magazine. If you are into cars and very seldom get an opportunity to drive really expensive and terrifically fun cars, their team does a great job of letting you live vicariously through them. Check it out.
Teddy Partridge: Gearhead – who in the hell knew ?
Mornin’ All
You might be surprised by how many gear heads you’ll find at this site
Not all liberals drive Priuses
Personally I’m waiting for affordable plug in electrics to hit the market
I saw a Tesla pull away from a stoplight the other day ,instant torque from 0 rpms and up, the car was gone in a flash, that thing flew
I think once these type of cars catch on people will wonder why they ever drove gas powered cars ,no tune ups no oil changes no anti freeze . I could go on and on about the advantages of electric powered vehicles
wouldn’t be surprised at all ‘bugs, we occasionally break out in the comments but usually find release in bmaz’s F1 threads :D
– Siun and I came out to one another as nascar fans 3 or 4 years back – we both have since moved on
just always a hoot for me personally to find out something about someone I wouldn’t have suspected
I used to support NASCAR but lost interest too much glitz for me .
Sports cars are my favorites now ,they turn left and right, enjoy watching the SCCA run-offs on Speed Channel
SCCA ? you and oldnslow would get along famously – (”no darling, I really don’t need to know about the rule changes on gear ratios“) now you have me thinking about a confab of some kind over at The Seminal
Emptywheel affords us the occasional Car trash talk thread … lots of car lovers here, including me. Wholly agree with you about EVs, I’d love to own the Tesla 4-door when it becomes available. But the price has to drop considerably while increasing the power output, so in the meantime, Gas & Diesel plug- in Hybrids should be encouraged.
I agree that these are a step in the right direction ,but still rely on fossil fuels .
We need to get away from burning things to produce our energy,that is why I’m such a strong supporter of solar energy
Absolutely agree, my point was simply that, until Battery technology catches up to real world demands, we should adopt plug-in hybrid technology into engines that use fossil fuels instead of staying the current, wasteful options.
these folks concur
cbl2 !
Thanks for the link.
OT some: I’m one of those gearheads (out of the garage now). I own and sometimes drive a ‘92 Ford Taurus SHO, which has a rather high tech (for the time) 3.0 liter engine that was built for Ford by Yamaha. This is (for my wife and I) a highway vacation and fun car, usually garaged during the peak of the winter. Now here’s the thing: we took a near 1,500 mile vacation this past Summer (Oregon to Montana and back) and carefully tracked the mileage, and this 3,400 pound curb weight sedan, + add gas, two people, and 300+ pounds of luggage and goodies, got 26+ mpg over that distance. That includes slow mountain driving and some 80+ mph cruising (speed limit on Interstates in Idaho and Montana is 75).
Amazingly, this is a very fast car, capable of 140 mph! It’s faster than any Mustang or Camaro from that era except the performance models.
So what had Detroit been waiting for since that time? If you had detuned the engine and put it in a smaller car, like say a Tempo, or later a Contour, it would have been capable of 30+ mpg, and would have certainly held it’s own on the freeway. Yet they first emasculated them by not offering a standard shift after 1995, putting in a more fragile V8 that did not outperform the six cylinder that earlier SHOs had, and then discontinued them after 1999.
Detroit Marketing: ya gotta wonder…
Teddy! Who would have thunk???
I like Automobile, the writing is first class. My favorite automobile mag remains Car and Driver, their sense of humor is not as subtil as the one displayed by Automobile, but their sense of “camaraderie” is unequaled. A bit like a college frat, but with great writers…
Those numbers are revealing, going from 15.8 miles to the gallon to 24.9 is astounding. I believe that a saving of about 65%, huge numbers that will help on the environmental count.
Thanks for the post, well done.
Mon ami !
I’m a huge fan of caranddriver. Autoblog.com is pretty good too …
And according to Ford Motor Company, this kind of fuel-economy improvement translates to a reduction of five to ten million barrels of oil consumed over the next five years. (The nation currently consumes nine million barrels a day.)
Suppose next year we get a cash for clunkers program for the GM volt?
The Province I live in – Ontario – will offer a $10,000 rebate to purchase EVs, starting in July ‘10.
Just think if that money was spent converting cars to different fuels how much money it would Have saved in foreign oil. Just think if the Government being as they bought the car companies would have made them make all the new cars to use ethanol or natural gas. Then partnered with the private sector to put in the infrastruture to supply those fuels, putting the whole Country back to work. Farmers in all fifty States could be growing crops to make the ethanol, and the natural gas businees would be booming. This would have called for one brain in Washington, but that’s something that isn’t there. The old farts that run the place, have no ideas, and nothing left to think with.
Yeah, ethanol. Let’s put our food into our cars.
A dinner date to the local Shell station?!
Ethanol = biggest scam evah
Ethanol is the smart way out. Just like the fools that didn’t want nuclear power, we are paying today because the uninformed won the conversation.
Yup. If we really want to support our local farmers — who have indeed been getting hosed over the last few decades, up until the artificially-pumped-up ethanol boom — we’re better off paying them to to put wind turbines on their grazing land. (Oh, and while the tax-supported ethanol industry has helped grain farmers, it’s been hell on most livestock producers — though in a weird way, it’s helped the all-grass sustainable beef ranchers by reducing the cost differential between their product and the more common and cheaper cornfed beef.)
Was this the main thing Al Gore was pitching? Farmers in Latin America, make way for biofuel crops, less hectares of carnations for the florist trade.
Glad the Twins got to stay up late so they can fly cross-country and get whooped by the Jankees.
Fuck the Yankees. Go Dodgers.
Go Rockies
hey. Hey! HEY!!!!!!
The Bombers are tough this year (they finally got the team chemistry to go with their combined paychecks); but don’t discount the Twinkies entirely. I watched their runs in ‘87 and ‘91 with a certain amount of trepidation but–as a Minnesota sports fan–we realize that our subconscious has us conditioned to failure because of the Vikings. The Twins have shown an ability to make their own destiny, base in a large part on Coaching. Tom Kelly was world class and did amazing things with almost no budget. Ron Gardenhire is doing even more incredible things if you compare his budget and talent pool with the rest of the league. Yes, the AL Central was bleak for most of the year, but that was a hell of a game last night!
Well, if the policy removes the predomination of maize from the food chain, that’s not all bad.
Yesterday’s news, I’m sure, but The Carnavor’s Dilemma is a sad story about how corn pervades our caloric intake.
A happy, grass-fed cow might cost more to eat, but they taste better anyway and besides, if you’re going to outsource your hunting requirement, why would you want to support an industry that only kills miserable animals. When I watch the VS Versus channel, I get the impression that the only good way to kill an animal is when it is enjoying itself in the prime of its life.
Wind turbines have to be connected to high voltage transmission lines. It cost over 1 million dollars per mile, to construct feeder lines to the main grid.
The answer is to have each home and office building become an electricity producer via direct conversion solar panels or the new small home wind turbines that are on the drawing board. This would take an army of workers years to accomplish but it would be as impressive as any government project in the past century. Full employment and energy independence in less than a decade.
Local solutions to global problems.
Can we use cauliflower? I hate it and it’s pretty gaseous.
But not as gaseous as beer, I take it.
LOL … Lentils, the energy of tomorrow.
Gas up at Taco Bell
LOL …
Don’thave a Cow, man !Teddy !
Dubya chose to trumpet Ethanol as an alternative to Oil because it creates more pollution and is more expensive to produce.
After a few years of this, the people would then have been assailed with “Alt. energies just aren’t as good as Oil” meme and we’d be back to being held hostage by the Oil Cartel.
The new guy sorta put a dent on that plan …
“Food” (corn kernels) isn’t the only potential source of ethanol.
But, rather than bait you, note that the reason most ethanol is currently made from corn grain is bacause of the influence of ADM Corp. and the oil industry.
Noting that, there is tremendous waste even in corn growing because whatever corn stalks aren’t used for silage could be, if research on the cellulosic ethanol technology and production is adequately funded, then the material available for ethanol production would leap exponetially.
Big oil doesn’t want that, either.
Hey dummy, ethanol can be made from any crop that has starches or sugars in it. That means even the weeds in your yard could make ethanol. There is no need to use food crops for ethanol, like the corn lobby talked the Government into. Hemp and many things like that grow fast, and can readily be used to make ethanol. Brazil did it with sugar cane, if they ate all that sugar they would be dead. Bashing something without thinking about it is dumb. Flex fuel vehicles can run on ethanol now, and would save billions that you will have to pay if we continue as we are doing.
We don’t call people names around here, dummy.
It takes more energy to produce a gallon of ethanol than a gallon of gas. Converting food crops to fuel crops will cause the price of those crops to increase to the point where corn, for example, will be unaffordable as a food. To say nothing of the impact of ethanol refineries on the local environment.
Just curious- how does Brazil do it?
Climate.
Sugar cane I thought also had more sugar than corn I think thats a factor too plus labor is cheaper in Brazil.
It about the digestive processing system.
The entire sugar cane plant is digested as cellulose, while the corn digestive system processes the grain kernels, not the more abundant cellulose in the corn stalks.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corn_ethanol
As usual the US system is based on what is best for ADM, Cargill, etc. which are corn processing companies. If the US had chosen cellulose these companies would lose their economic advantage in the market place.
Corn ethanol is a giveaway to Big Corporate Ag. When the US makes the switch to cellulose processing then and only then will ethanol be a cost effective renewable source of energy.
I won’t get into the discussion about how dirty ethanol is to use as a fuel.
Is it true that Corn is 8 times more polluting than Oil ?
I haven’t read that, but I do know it is dirtier than oil.
But the Brazilian’s seem to have figured out how to process cellulose ethanol so that it is not as dirty.
“Sugarcane ethanol has a verifiable reduction in greenhouse gases of 90% compared to gasoline. Sugarcane ethanol will easily meet the LCFS, not just in 2020 but today,” said Marcos Jank, UNICA’s President & CEO, following submittal of a 25-page letter to the California regulator.”
More here
Dunno. I’ll hafta look it up later. There was talk of building a refinery on the Gulf Coast and those findings were included in a report. I’ll hafta look for that too. Last year some time.
Now I’m really outta here.
Brazil deforests the Amazon rain forest, plants sugar cane, and converts the sugar to alcohol.
Deforesting the rain forset is so ecologically sound, I’m amazed at Brazil’s example. (Nordic Blue Parrot Skit amazed).
I was thinking it’s sugar (not sure though).
Brazil’s Ethanol crop is Sugar Cane, which takes a lot less energy to produce than Corn-based Ethanol. It is also less polluting.
Of course, Brazil is flattening the Rain Forest to produce more meat and Sugar Cane, so it’s not all good there either.
Yeah and cows are fed corn so meat prices go up.
It costs alot to make ethanol because there is not enough refineries to do it. If you don’t think that gas is costing you now, and to what it will cost you in future years.
Ethanol is crap.
Take out your plea for adding more corn based crap to be introduced into our economy and replace it with hydrogen, algae or even compressed air, and I’ll buy your argument.
Algae, yes. Powder it and inject it directly into a diesel engine.
Hydrogen? How do you make it, how do you store it, and how do you transport it?
Compressed air does not have enough energy density.
Algae, yes, very exciting chemistry there.
Hydrogen and geothermal fueling combinations are interesting. If issues surrounding transportation and distribution of hydrogen fuel cells can be overcome, Iceland could become the next Saudi Arabia.
Compressed gas technology…yeah, that’s a pipedream (sorry ;-)
The solutions probably will not come from the US. The US is too conservative.
Conservatism is a function of too much money wanting a steady return in the wrong places. Becuase of the steady return money wants no disruptive technologies (messses up the ROI), and new ventures may generate large capital gains, but do not deliver steady returns on investment.
Thanks Again Wall St. Your bad money (cash flow derived from gambling), has really screwed up private investment in innovation. We spend more on Amtrack subsidies than we invest in venture capital.
America invention used to happen in garages and workshops. It is sad to think that the technological requirements of our modern problems preclude a creative, free thinking and self funded inventor from participating in any solution. I am an incurable romantic, I know, in my continued belief that innovation and invention can occur at a garage-roots level and screw Wall street’s vultures out of a free meal.
Not any sort of scientist, so I may be looking at this all weird, but it seems to me that the best way to store it is as a liquid mixed with oxygen (that is, H2O), and convert on-demand or small tank levels to hydrogen using solar, geothermal or other technologies yet to be invented. Storage is only a problem when you try to store it for a longer term that immediate or near-immediate use, right?
(Please correct me if I’m wrong!)
Problem is it takes a huge amount of energy to make the conversion.
The best place to make hydrogen is by-product/down stream of nuclear power plant. And we know how much love that gets.
Hydrogen production seems like a very complex and therefore expensive process.
Is this really a step in the right direction?
Producing Hydrogen with current technology is v. expensive. MIT and others are developing far cheaper ways of doing this.
Personally, I think ethanol is great, just not as a fuel.
I can see you are really intelligent. When the next oil crisis comes, and you are walking, we will see if you fell the same about ethanol then.
Really? So the stimulus is fine with you as long as it is spent how YOU think ti should be? LOL Grow up.
Socialism! Commies! Nazis! Fascist-Marxists!
[snark]
The Honda dealer we go to had a record month in August. Funneled taxpayer monies tend to have that effect.
Teddy you forgot two.
4,352,786 – number of complaints by rethugs over the program
________ number of jobs enabled as production lines reopened.
semi muddled landscape
Does anyone know the conversion for volume of corn to gallons of ethanol and for diesel compatible fuel oil (that is, corn oil with glycerin removed)?
Just wondering if it would be less damaging to our food supply to simply convert the corn oil to something we can burn rather than to convert it to ethanol (recognizing that neither is a really great idea). I suspect that we are loosing more by fermenting it than simply removing the glycerin and using it as diesel.
It’s not necessary to remove the glycerine. Just heat the feul. It’s a viscosity thing.
0: percent of the truly needy who were helped by the program
Oh, the laid off auto workers and parts suppliers who were hired back were not truly needy? Do I have that correct?
I’m with you on this … totally disgusted that Cash for Clunkers didn’t cure AIDS. /s
These cocaine-for-the-masses programs never do cure anything, but they shure are popular!
Looks like people are already jonesing for Cash for Clunkers-Jobs Edition:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10…..ax.html?hp
But it’s taking too long for the dealers to get their $$$!!!! This program was a total failure!!!!! I heard it on FOX so it must be true.
Go Bullwinkles
LOL.
CIT is involved in a bitter dispute with their bondholders over how they will get through a CIT bankruptcy.
Little Bear Investments is one of the companies involved with in the discussions. Below is a screen shot from the Little Bear web site.
http://www.littlebear.us/team.html
I guess it’s true that anyone could hang out a shingle and be an investment house during the Bush years.
Are there any further questions as to why the US is in deep financial trouble?
This is exactly why we need to increase the Death Tax.
Anyone buying 12% yield bonds has precious little right to complain when they default.
These kids are playing in a very big sand box and they are there the same reason Willy Sutton robbed banks.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willie_Sutton
BREAKING – for me anyway
“Tom DeLay quits Dancing with the Stars!”
Look up !
The answer to our energy problems is right over our heads
More development on battery technology and the sun could not only power our houses but also our cars.
Some day I would like to see solar panels on every house in America ,I’d like to see solar systems become as commonplace in our homes as running water is
Someday !
This point really needs more attention … the Auto industry’s quest to improve Battery technology for Cars would greatly help the Solar industry as well.
Speaking of cars and rednecks, there is this BBC show Top Gear. And they went to Alabama to get shot or arrested. Well let us go to the video…
I’ve seen this show a couple of times on the Beeb these guys are nuts ,funny as hell though !!!
$4,170: average clunker rebate
Paid for by everyone who didn’t get a new car.
Probably not. Probably paid for by funds borrowed from China, India, Japan.
I’m not in favor of that either.
What do you think the federal budget balance would be if you tried to balance it? What would the unemployment rate be?
Thats Keynesian economics for you the haves pay to help others stay haves and the have not move up.
It worked for FDR.
Obama’s plan the Helicopter Ben throw mega money at the banks and allow Obama only small real stimulus programs like Cash for Clunkers.
I don’t think is working as well as FDR’s plan to fix the economy did.
We need Obama to admit wrong and invoke FDR.
So are you implying that the fact that people will take lots of free money is somehow indicative of a brilliant policy mind?
Someone mentioned hydrogen as a fuel? Why that is un American. It robs the Oil Companies of their complete control over the world. Also there would be no oil wars. Also the coal companies would be out of business. No neo-con would ever support that.
In that case, let’s break all the windows in town. Think of all the window installers and glass manufacturers it will help.
I prefer the digging holes & filling them up method.
It’s called war.
Jane has a new post up…
Number of jobs saved or created by Cash for Clunkers:
The car companies got a brief, one-time boost in monthly sales as people accelerated their buying plans to take advantage of the program. Overall sales as a yearly amount / average continue(d) to drop. Taking serviceable older cars off the road cost jobs among the mechanics who would have serviced them, and since the cars had to be crushed and melted down rather than stripped for parts it didn’t even boost the salvage (”recycling”) industry.
And the dealers didn’t even get paid!
Result, as usual: net horrific losses covered up by the crowing over short-term gains that cost more than is admitted.
Regards,
Ric
The cars did not get “crushed and melted down,” whatever that means. Their engines were disabled with a sodium silicate solution, but all other parts are usable for spares.
It was a bonus for junkyards and will keep the older cars on the road longer, thus leading to more repair work.
98% of the dealers have been paid, but now that I read that claim I realize you are just here to recite talking points.
Farmers getting hosed? Give me a friggin break.
ONE that I am friends with gets 50 thousand to NOT plant some of his acreage! and he has that x 4 lots so he gets 200 thousand a year to sit on his backside! ALL farmers are getting help and have been for years.
Crushing perfectly functioning cars to see little, if any environmental benefit? Sounds like a good plan to me!
Also, to the guy who called me a “fucking idiot” because I didn’t drink the water and blindly followed the Greenpeace alarmist crowd, I demand an apology.
Careful! Don’t be so quick to paint folks with the same brush. I own a couple old cars myself, and I’m restoring both. Including my beloved 1957 Plymouth Belvedere with the dual quad Fury V800 factory option.
My daily driver is a 99 Taurus w/236,000 miles on the odometer. The 3.0 Brookpark, Ohio built Duratec engine still gets over 27mpg.
‘57 Plymouth? Neat, what’s the other oldie you have?