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Cash for Clunkers Program Nets 700,000 More Fuel-Efficient Vehicles

Tuesday 10 November 2009

by: Mary Susan Littlepage, t r u t h o u t | Report

During the Car Allowance Rebate System (CARS program), better known as the Cash for Clunkers program, consumers turned in gas guzzlers and bought nearly 700,000 more fuel-efficient vehicles in less than 30 days, according to newly released government documents.

Participating dealers for the 677,081 CARS submitted that were paid or approved for payment as of Friday, October 16, were for a total of $2.8 million.

“CARS was a wildly successful program that sold nearly 250,000 cars in its first four days alone. There can be no doubt that CARS drummed up more business for car dealers at a time when they needed help the most,” said U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood.

About 85 percent of trade-ins under the program are trucks, and 59 percent of new vehicle purchases are cars. The program worked far better than anyone anticipated at moving consumers out of old, dirty trucks and SUVs and into new more fuel-efficient cars.

The program raised the average fuel economy of the fleet, while getting the dirtiest and most polluting vehicles off the road. As far as mileage goes, new vehicles’ mileage is on average 24.9 miles per gallon, an increase from the average 15.8 miles per gallon on the trade-in vehicles.

The top 10 trade-in vehicles were 1) Ford Explorer 4WD, 2) Ford F150 Pickup 2WD, 3) Jeep Grand Cherokee 4WD, 4) Ford Explorer 2WD, 5) Dodge Caravan/Grand Caravan 2WD, 6) Jeep Cherokee 4WD, 7) Chevrolet Blazer 4WD, 8) Ford F150 Pickup 4WD, 9) Chevrolet C1500 Pickup 2WD and 10) Ford Windstar FWD Van.

The top 10 new vehicles purchased were 1) Toyota Corolla, 2) Honda Civic, 3) Toyota Camry, 4) Ford Focus FWD, 5) Hyundai Elantra, 6) Nissan Versa, 7) Toyota Prius, 8) Honda Accord, 9) Honda Fit, and 10) Ford Escape FWD.

Ford and General Motors reported production increases for both the third and fourth quarters as a result of the demand generated by the program. Honda also reported increasing production at its plants in East Liberty and Marysville, Ohio, and in Lincoln, Alabama.

Here’s a breakdown of the new vehicles’ manufacturers: Toyota 19.5 percent; General Motors 17.6 percent; Ford 14.4 percent; Honda 13.1 percent; Nissan 8.7 percent; Hyundai 7.2 percent; Chrysler 6.5 percent; Kia 4.3 percent; Subaru 2.5 percent; Mazda 2.4 percent; Volkswagen 2 percent; Mitsubishi 0.5 percent; Suzuki 0.5 percent; MINI 0.4 percent; Smart 0.2 percent; BMW 0.1 percent; Volvo 0.1 percent; and all others were less than 0.1 percent.

  

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Mary Susan Littlepage is an intern at Truthout.

Comments

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Oh you mean that quite abit

 Wed, 11/11/2009 - 07:11 — Anonymous (not verified)
Oh you mean that quite abit of the so called fuel-efficient cars brought WENT directly to Japan? Oh that will do alot of horrors to the bond markets! As a bondholder of this dying great nation, it is my duty to pull the punch away before the party has started. Anyways, your Cash for Clunkers only did one thing: burden us with ever MORE debt! So when will this government beings to have a heart attack? I am waiting for it!

The program was a one-time

 Wed, 11/11/2009 - 14:32 — Anonymous (not verified)
The program was a one-time gift to the auto industry, but it only addressed one of the symptoms of the stagnant economy. Unemployed people (and the many who are anticipating losing their job) don't buy cars, and the unemployment rate is actually close to 20 per cent. Has Obama considered a "trickle-up" economic stimulus? Lower income families keep most of their money moving through the economy, whereas bankers invest in commodities, etc., which does little for Main Street, USA.

Most of the cars purchased

 Thu, 11/12/2009 - 05:41 — Anonymous (not verified)
Most of the cars purchased under Clunkers would have been purchased anyway, they were just purchased sooner than they otherwise would have been. After the program ended, car purchases have been lower than ever. Also, since the Clunkers program distorted the GDP for the third quarter, watch it really tank in the fourth.

I think this program did

 Thu, 11/12/2009 - 13:12 — LucindaHG (not verified)
I think this program did more than it i given credit for. At a cost of approximately $4/clunker, the government took 700,000 high-emission, high fuel-use vehicles off the road, a savings for both the environment and our energy resources. the newer vehicles will also make the road safer. And while at least one commentator grumbles at all the Japanese car names, most of those "Japanese" cars are made in the US and so are their parts. The only real downside to this is that it was a one-time shot in the arm for the car makers, but these other, less quantifiable benefits are longer lasting.

PEOPLE DON'T UNDERSTAND.

Thu, 11/12/2009 - 14:27 — Dr. Bernard Lammers (not verified)
PEOPLE DON'T UNDERSTAND. The worst thing you can do to the environment is fail to take advantage of the useful life of a product. If you get rid of it and substitute a new product, you cause all the waste of resources and pollution involved in manufacture of the new product. This outweighs the slight gain in efficiency of the new product. It is not intelligent or virtuous to "recycle" somehing you haven't fully used. That's part of the throwaway mentality. It makes money for the seller but hurts everyone else.

I think I should make this

 Thu, 11/12/2009 - 22:34 — Serious Doubter (not verified)
I think I should make this as clear as daylight from my comment. Whatever good intentions from the above post have shown, the numbers and the mathematics behind it will show the truth. I already knew that this program was bogus to start with because 1) Cash for Clunkers money did not come from the US taxpayers but instead came out of a combination of the Federal Reserve printing presses to replace lost dollars and selling Treasury Bills to other nations in order to fund this. This is an necessary deficit spending which I mean : principal PLUS interest on top for the foreign nations to buy our T-notes. 2) There as been LOTS of reports from the abuse of the Cash For Clunkers that occurred with car salesmen adding the total cost of the vehicle to unfairly legalize theft of what the original cost should have been with the Cash For Clunkers. 3) The Federal Government's inability to give their monies to the car dealerships by actually backtracking on their word to give payments to the dealerships. 4) Cash For Clunkers have DISTORTED the used car market sales by PLACING an artificial bottom at a certain price. This will totally damage quite severely on EXISTING used car market and NOT aiding it. 5) Your so called 'save the environment' approach does not calculate the future costs of ALL of this impact from this government program. 6) This Cash for Clunkers DOES NOT aid America but to OTHER nations. Your bogus claim that the vehicles are being built in this country by foreign companies is totally laughable as I can easily disprove of that. ( You should seriously look at the balance sheets of foreign companies to determine if it does indeed help the American worker who works in these factories) 7) I think people on this forum need to work on their mathematics a bit if your going to believe that it was a success for the taxpayer. Proclamations of success is so naive that you have deluged yourself into believing that is a POSITIVE impact on the environment BUT not a NET negative on the impact TOWARDS Americans! And to further elaborate this what I really meant by impact on Americans is not their wallets but their SAVINGS! Without a doubt this debt will be rollover with INTEREST that will KILL the leftover savings that Americans like me have tried to barely keep up payments for anything. This will come as a curse in a form of higher taxation or some sort of LEGALIZED theft from all levels of government. Please refute what I have basically place this out as a serious concern not as an attack on people on this forum.