Is the Klunker Commission Really Just a Cash Cow for the Car Industry?
What could be better than the new Car Allowance Rebate System (CARS); a recent bill that lets you trade in your old, gas-guzzling klunker for a new, more fuel-efficient vehicle?
When I first heard about it, I had to grind my teeth, since I just missed out on the cash bonanza. My 12 year old Honda Civic finally blew its head gasket and died last December, and I considered myself lucky to be able to flog it on Craigslist for $1000 to a resourceful Cantonese mechanic, who had it hauled by triple A.
If I had waited, I moaned, I could have traded that thing in for a massive $3500. Ai. Ai.
But then I read the small print.
The good part is that you only get the full rebate if your replacement car gets more than 10 MPG more than your old klunker. Less than 10 MPG more and you get less rebate. Good incentive. Until you think about it a bit. It doesn’t take long before you begin to wonder, if you trade in a battered hummer that gets 11 MPG, should you get a huge rebate to buy a car that still only gets 21 MPG?
That’s the first snag. The second is that you can only get the rebate if you buy a brand new car, from a dealership.
It’s always the same with snags. Once you begin to pick at them, the whole thing starts to unravel before your horrified eyes. The more you tug at these two, the more you begin to wonder who this bill really benefits.
If CARS is really about getting klunkers off the road and replacing them with fuel-efficient motors, then why can you only get the rebate if you are buying something brand new, off a lot? Why can’t you snap up a used Prius, for example, and trade 20 MPG for 55 MPG?
Unless I glue my rose-coloured glasses to the front of my face, all I can see when I look at this bill is the blurry figures of car industry lobbyists, begging for a bill than greenwashes their need to sell more cars. This has nothing to do with reducing our emissions, and everything to do with saving some asses in Detroit.
Jul 06, 2009
The reason for requiring that you purchase a new car in order to receive the rebate is if you purchase a used car you have not “added” a new high efficiency car to the national fleet of cars. The only way to increase the overall efficiency of the entire national fleet is to put new high efficiency cars on the road.
Jul 06, 2009
I would prefer to focus on creating livable cities where people are not slaves to a car to eat, live and play. walkable, bikeable communities connected by rail is much more humane than 16 lane highways filled with fuel efficient moving death traps.
Jul 09, 2009
The bill is actually worse than the article descibes. Someone with a gas guzzler that gets 18 mpg can trade it in on another gas guzzler that gets 22mpg and still get $3500. If it’s an 18mpg SUV or truck the new SUV only has to get 20mpg. It doesn’t matter what I trade my 35mpg Aveo on, I don’t get squat. I would call it a bailout for the auto industry if it required the cars to be made in the USA. It doesn’t. Take a good look at the demographic that benefits from this bill and the demographic that doesn’t. People whose egos demand that they drive huge vehicles get subsidized. Those of us who have tried to do the right thing along get taken for granted.