Folks working in the oilfield will understand the accuracy of the following:



A clunker that travels 12,000 miles a year at 15 mpg uses 800 gallons of gas a year.

A vehicle that travels 12,000 miles a year at 25 mpg uses 480 gallons a year.

So, the average Cash for Clunkers transaction will reduce US gasoline consumption by 320 gallons per year.

They claim 700,000 vehicles so that's 224 million gallons saved per year.

That equates to a bit over 5 million barrels of oil. 5 million barrels is about 5 hours worth of US consumption.

More importantly, 5 million barrels of oil at $70 per barrel costs about $350 million dollars. So, the government paid $3 billion of our tax dollars to save $350 million.

We spent $8.57 for every dollar we saved.

I'm pretty sure they will do a great job with our health care, though.

 

Silly you! Expecting logic from our government.

Your mistake is in assuming that that program was about saving energy. It wasn't. It was about saving jobs, and it's not clear that it had much of an effect there, either. The impact of the program was so slight compared to the size of the economy and the size of the auto market that it turned out to be, as you've noted, much ado about nothing.

 

Oh, wait...

 

Another government run scam.

 

Interesting topic, but please save it for Political Science 101.

 

I would like to know, how much hydlic fuild was used crushing the c4C rigs, PLUS all the diesel fuel running th ebig-rigs hauling teh C4c cars to and from!

 

Pretty good math but then you also have to consider that it will save fuel from now forward because the cars traded in will not be on the road anymore so multiply that times 5 over the next 5 years and so on. As well when they trade those new cars in 5 or more years in the future chances are the next vehicle will be more fuel efficient.
Then of course a new car today puts 15 times less pollutants into the atmosphere than cars 10-15 years ago and in the future that number will also go down. The U.S. oil industry will not be able to supply enough oil for many years to come but the intent is to import less from abroad. I think the arab countries have gotten quite rich enough because of the dependance of the west on oil.

 

The biggest supplier of oil to the US is us, Canada. I remember about 10 years ago the Canadian gov't was studying a tax to impose on cars that poluted more than a 1990 car. I wrote the Enviroment minister saying a car that's used 365 days a year will polute more in that time than my car used 60-90 days a year.

I actually got a letter back saying it was just a study and that she agreed.

 

Plus the fact that it would be a tax on poorer people who could not afford to go out and buy a new car. We already pay enough tax on fuel and the more fuel your car uses the more tax you pay.