Cash for clunkers - Page 7

If by already you mean in 2011-2012, sure (the site lists both time-frames). Their Model S should be shipping by then according to their site. The one they sell now will however do 244 miles on a charge. The only problem is, that is the full range. You do have to plug it in, and without their high powered special charger I am not sure how long the charging will take.

Then there is the point of cost. Those cars are not affordable, at all.

I am sure electric cars can be made for less, nobody wants to do it so far. Unless you look at ZapCars... and those are....

http://www.zapworld.com/

And ZapCars range sucks... Likely hence the lower cost.

Here's a local story regarding the impact of Cash for Clunkers:

Cash for Clunkers' impact was temporary


Another resounding success by the Obama Administration!

The program never was advertised or described as a permanent program. It was always a temporary and financially limited solution.

If you have evidence of the contrary please bring it forth.

Then what was the point of the program?
(I have my own theories, but they are just that... theories.)

The point with this program (as with all of the other Keynesian-inspired "stimulus" efforts) was to "jump start" the economy in some way. It is considered the the fiscal equivalent of using a defibrillator. Unfortunately for all of the neo-Keynesians it doesn't really work long term and the logic is flawed to its core.

Link please. Otherwise this is just your interpretation, which however interesting may not be accurate.

Link for what exactly?

A link that shows this was intended as a "stimulus"? From the June 27, 2009 press release from CARS.gov:



And ABCNews on "Cash for Clunkers":



In terms of the faulty logic behind such programs, we'll start with this:


The bottom line is that you don't create by destroying and creating is what grows the economy and provides material well being (including jobs) for people. Furthermore this is, at best, simply a redistributive welfare program. It created absolutely nothing (and it destroyed a lot).

Statement by President Barack Obama on Senate Passage of Cash for Clunkers Extension


Please tell me how Cash for Clunkers "benefits our recovery and our auto industry while reducing our economy's dependence on oil" if it only borrowed from future sales and the effects are short-term?

It only borrowed from future sales and the effects are short-term.
--- This is how.

You agree that there are effects. Our current situation is hopefully short term. In your opinion Mr. Obama and Congress did exactly what is needed for a short term problem: Short term solutions.

That is an incorrect evaluation of my opinion.

Short-term, it boosted sales in one month. Long-term sales are SUFFERING now because of it.

Therefore, the overall impact is virtually nonexistent.

"the overall impact is virtually nonexistent."

so, what is the problem then?

You say you have a problem with something that in your opinion does not exist.


I seem to be unable to understand your writings.

Actually the net impact is/was decidedly negative.

Can someone tell me the positive things that have come out of cash for clunkers as far as the economy and the car companies are concerned? Not the short term cash gains, but something that actually stimulated either one out of the slump they are in? Graphs and figures would be good.

The problem is that it took $3,000,000,000 in tax money to fund this failure.

We have a winner!!!!

It also ruined some cars that people of lesser means could have used. It was a huge destruction of wealth and property funded by loans from the Chinese.

Oh and for those that don't know the point was to pay off a political constituent.

Do you mean like the ones where you check the gas and fill up the oil?

Cars that end up costing the owner 3 times what a better car would in the long run for repairs to keep them running ( when they do run that is ).

Every study i've ever seen indicates that it is cheaper to keep an old car rather than purchase a new one. I'm inclined to believe that this was also the case for the vast majority of "clunkers" that were traded in. Human tendency is to try and justify the high cost of a new car by fooling ourselves into believing that our current car is too costly to maintain. The cash for clunkers program just compounded that faulty reasoning.

That requires some backup from you for this argument. For the average vehicle that was traded in on CFC would this have been the case?

Well that probably would have been the extreme but there is this :

http://www.autotrader.com/cash-for-clunkers.jsp

It's also been my experience that once a car gets to a certain age even though it's been faithfully been maintained it costs more and more to keep it running. Couple this with it showing poor fuel economy it's really a no brainer that the car would cost the owner more not less over time.

Well as they would say here do you have a link to support this?

And would it apply to the cars that were traded in for this program?

It's astonishing to me the apologetics campaign for this failure. I assume it must be ideological and dogmatic in nature because logic, reason and the sum total of the facts cannot be used to defend it.

Google obliges quite nicely:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q...&aq=f&oq=&aqi=
(Add a publication's name to that search string and lots of other info is available. Example: consumer reports)

The stats aren't in on how the cash for clunkers program played out in this regard. Or at least I can't find them. But given that human nature will remain the same, all we've done is reinforce the tendency to buy new prior to it being wise economically. Individually, the economics have changed because of the subsidy. Isn't that always the case with a subsidy? But overall, the program was far from an optimal investment. In fact I'd say it was the exact opposite. We lost money by paying people to throw away working machinery.

Ok, so they talked about how successful the program was because:

"This program has been a lifeline to the automobile industry, jump starting a major sector of the economy and putting people back to work," Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said. "At the same time, we've been able to take old, polluting cars off the road and help consumers purchase fuel-efficient vehicles."

And for that, we give "Cash for Clunkers" an A+.

The following is a list of the top-selling vehicles under the program and the most popular trade-ins, according to the Associated Press.

TOP SELLERS

1. Toyota Corolla
2. Honda Civic
3. Ford Focus front-wheel drive
4. Toyota Camry
5. Hyundai Elantra
6. Toyota Prius
7. Nissan Versa
8. Ford Escape front-wheel drive
9. Honda Fit
10. Honda CR-V four-wheel drive


TOP TRADE-INS

1. Ford Explorer four-wheel drive
2. Ford F-150 Pickup
3. Jeep Grand Cherokee
4. Jeep Cherokee
5. Ford Explorer two-wheel drive
6. Dodge Caravan/Grand Caravan two-wheel drive
7. Chevrolet Blazer four-wheel drive
8. Ford F-150 pickup four-wheel drive
9. Chevrolet C15000 pickup two-wheel drive
10. Ford Windstar front-wheel drive van



It does cost more than it did before. But would it cost more than a new car payment and the regular maintenance costs associated with a new vehicle? You would be hard pressed to make that case. Especially with the average payment for a new vehicle being over $400 a month.

http://www.edmunds.com/help/about/pr...6/article.html

If you were very careful and went with a smaller less equipped vehicle you might get a car for around $200 a month. Not including gas and maintenance. That older car is sounding a lot less expensive to keep up when you consider the honest facts. You do the math...

Since anecdotal evidence seems to be your specialty, let me share some of my own.

The car I currently drive to and from work on a daily basis is a 1993 Mercury Tracer Wagon. I bought it in July for $950 cash.

I took it to my mechanic and got a power steering hose and serpentine belt replaced for about $300. I just got 2 new tires for it for about $200. Oh and I put a new battery in for around $80. It just passed 101,000 miles on the odometer.

It had just passed the AZ emissions test before I bought it, which is good for 2 years. 2 year AZ registration cost me $40.

So, for about a $1,500 investment (thus far), I have a reliable, economical (28 mpg average), safe vehicle at a fraction of the cost it would take me to buy a new one.

Yes, I may spend more on maintenance over a few years than I would on a brand new vehicle, but overall I'm still saving a ton of money.

No monthly car payment. Cheap to insure and register. And so far, pretty darn cheap to maintain.

So, in MY experience, with a little effort and persistence, it is very possible to find an older used car that will save you quite a bit of money as opposed to buying new.

Yeah, I guess i did forget to mention that you have to fully insure a new car against all collisions and accidents regardless of fault which means your insurance would be higher as well. At least until it is paid off. Which by every standard is longer now than ever before, the average is getting to be more than 60 months.

Now, if you take the monthly payments of a $200 a moth car and work through the numbers, you have a much more expensive car than was mentioned here by Jazzguru.

200 X 12 = 2400 in payments.
And just in that you have surpassed the full cost of a used vehicle for a year, every year you would own it. What does a new engine cost? $2000 is a fairly standard average. So if you have to replace the engine, it might equal a years worth of payments. Maybe. Transmission can be about the same. Those are the worst expenses you can get into with a used car. Maintain them and you will most likely not have to do any full replacements. Used car, much less cost over the log haul. And if it does fully fail, you can buy another USED car, and still be money ahead. Unless you do not do any research when you buy them new will ALWAYS cost more. But it is nice to drive a new car once in a while. It really is.

Looks like a win to me. A bunch of gas guzzling large vehicles traded in for a bunch of smaller fuel efficient cars. The only thing I wish was more of the Big 3 (I guess US 3 since they ain't that big no more) sales but many vehicles are assembled here. At least Ford got 2 of the top 10.

If the damn volt had been out maybe GM might have gotten one. GM and Chrysler sucks.

Fuel use has decreased so much more than an amount of domestic drilling could have produced and did so within a year, not a decade. From 20M bbl/day in 2007 to 19.5M bbl/day in 2008 to 18.7M bbl/day in 2009.

Not that cfc did all that much but the general trend is good.

And better to give money to taxpayers who happen to be doing the right thing (trading big for small) than just giving more to the auto industry. The folks that see the greatest impact are a) the folks buying cars b) the sales folks getting commissions and c) the dealerships. Sure the Japanese did well but I bet there are quite a few folks in the auto sales food chain that are having a better 2009 christmas than they would have had without the cfc program.

here's the economic analysis of the benefits of CfC. It cost the US taxpayers $3B. The 625K cars sold through CfC generated $18.2B in retail sales. The NADA estimated that 250K of these wouldn't have been bought in 2009. So of the $18.2B revenue generated $7.3B was booked in 2009 rather than 2010 or beyond. All sunk into the manufacturing industry (cars) that has one of the highest multipliers of any industry (more money for salesmen, truckers, auto workers = more money for the folks they buy from).

So for $3B the government did pretty well in terms of stimulus. So what if most of the sales were simply stolen from 2010? Especially when back in June folks were still wondering if the economy was going to melt down as opposed to turn the corner. Find me a stimulus package from any President that did much better than 2-1 or 3-1 direct economic leverage (ignoring the multiplier).

Some folks are never satisfied.

At that mpg rate, your car certainly doesn't sound like a clunker.

You $4C supporters don't actually think someone traded up their F150 that they used for daily driving for Honda or a Toyota for daily driving do you?

I have a nice bridge that I'm looking to sell that goes over some prime swamp land that ripe for development. PM me if your interested.

False assumption. You think that most of the car were piles of trash. But they weren't. All it really had to be was a car with a trade-in value of less than the CFC credit (the new one of course had to meet the standards of the program. This resulted in a lot of perfectly good cars being trashed. These cars would have been good for first cars or even the poor.

Example: Take a 2002 well-equipped Pontiac Grand Am in average condition. Edmunds.com puts the value of this car between $3200-$3500 (trade). This could be a very good vehicle. Thousands of vehicles like this were literally destroyed (a chemical had to be poured into the engine that made it "freeze"). These are cars that were not black cloud- spewing threats to the planet.

Do you see the 2002 Grand Am on the top 10 list? The top 10 list are mostly large vehicles. They are big gas guzzlers.

And yes, FloorJack, nobody that needs a pickup as a pickup or large vehicle for towing is going trade it in for a smaller vehicle that can't do the job regardless of rebate. If folks were trading large vehicles for other large vehicles then you'd see a bunch of medium sized pickups/SUVs in the top 10 list. All you have is the Escape which at the high end has half the towing capacity of the low end F150.

Given the number of Grand Cherokees driven by soccer moms that have never left pavement, I'm guessing these are largely daily drivers for which the owners have decided they don't really need the towing, pickup or off road/snow capabilities any more if they ever did in the first place.

That really wasn't my point. I agree that most of it was SUV and truck related. However, the point was that many "clunkers" weren't clunkers at all. For example, there were 1368 2002 4WD Ford Explorers traded in. There were 348 2002 4WD Jeep Liberties traded in. One can only assume that many of these vehicles, while not the most fuel efficient, were in perfectly drivable and perhaps even good condition. All of these vehicles are now destroyed or will be. And you and I helped pay for it.

And on top of that, the manufacturing of new vehicles entails a massive carbon footprint and other types of significant environmental impact. Everything from the mining of ore and refining of steel, to the transportation of various components to and from production facilities.

Cash for clunkers was probably bad for the environment. It's hard to really know for sure. But even if it was effective from an environmental standpoint, after the above point is factored in, it sure wasn't a very logical way of lessening our environmental impact. We likely could have just properly inflated our tires instead. That wouldn't have required mining, refining, and all the other waste associated with throwing away working vehicles and building new ones.

There's a used car shortage but in the 1-2 year old category. This is from reduced new car sales, smaller lease fleets and folks holding on to their cars.

There's 3 pages of Ford Explorers and 2 pages of Jeep Liberties at the local Carmax. These are also $10K+ vehicles. There ain't no shortage of them if you want one.

Personally, I don't mind paying for it given I prefer energy independence and guiding the public to make wise purchase decisions. Higher CAFE standards would be nice too.

Who really gives a shit about carbon footprint?

New car sales that use less gas means two things: US auto workers having jobs in an recession and less US foreign oil imports and less money going into the Middle East and Venezuela.

Mining, refining and transport of components are all US jobs since many assembly plants are still in the US. We're still a major producer of steel, we still need to truck parts to assembly plants.

You got something against US truckers or steel workers having jobs?

Are you really trying to lecture a Pittsburgh resident about the steel industry and job loss?

You seem really pissed off at me for something that I never even came close to saying.

Read my post again. You'll see that I was pointing out that the cash for clunkers program wasn't beneficial to the environment. Nowhere did I say that we should or should not trade jobs for the benefit of the environment.

Take a deep breath and look at things with a clear mind. You'll see that even most critics of the cash for clunkers program are in favor of "US truckers [and] steel workers having jobs". We're simply pointing out that cash for clunkers wasn't a very effective way to achieve that. Plenty of stimulus options were available other than the one that required the destruction of perfectly functional automobiles.

Maybe the owners decided these cars were crap.

One man's trash is another man's treasure.

If they were perfectly driveable, could they not have been donated to some charitable organization or sold at drastic discounts to people who needed them, rather than intentionally broken and destroyed?

I'm sure many people woud consider my car "crap".

It gets me to work every day so I can earn income to support my family. Therefore, it is valuable to me.