I'll bet those old clunkers were driven a lot less than the opne that was just purchased. Net improvement...probably "0".
P.S. I'd question the 15.8...
To: shortstop
Let’s do some math on this. Gas is $2.33/gal here. $4500 gets you 1931 gallons. Being a “clunker”, let’s assume 15 miles/gal. For that payoff, you could have driven the thing 28970 miles. Having bought a new car instead, let’s assume you’re getting 25 miles/gal - covering 48275 miles, or 19305 more than the “clunker”. Coulda just paid clunker owners $3000 for the extra milage, at which point they most likely would have replaced the durn thing anyway.
I’m increasingly unclear as to the alleged point of this program.
25 posted on 08/03/2009 6:29:49 AM PDT by ctdonath2 (John Galt was exiled.)
The 15.8 is more accurate than we're probably inclined to believe. According to Ford Motors in the WSJ the most traded-in veheicle for them was the Ford Explorer SUV which averaged about 13MPG. The most popular replacement was apparently the Ford Focus which averages 27MPG. Even if these are secondary cars that are driven less it can still be said that WHEN those cars are used it's putting less oil money in the pockets of states that I don't want funded by us at all.
Besides - it's a recession. Most people will use the more fuel efficient car if possible. I also don't know anybody using this program to replace second cars that they rarely drive. I know of people bumping their current primary car down to secondary and using their new car as the new primary ... but not getting a new car to sit around and rarely use except to go to church on Sunday.