The Coming "Clunker" Law

[imp]

Stimulate the economy, sell more new cars, help ease air pollution via higher fuel economy, fund the war effort in the Middle East all at one time! imp

"President Obama has backed the clunker plan and passage in the Senate is expected soon. Proponents claim that the so-called "Consumer Assistance to Recycle and Save Act (CARS)" may spur an estimated 625,000 vehicle sales. The program will last for one year (but that was the plan for the original federal income tax, too). The vehicle scrappage legislation was passed by the US House of Representatives by a 298-119 vote last week.

"The U.S. House on Tuesday narrowly passed a scaled-back version of a bill that would give consumers cash vouchers of between $3,500 and $4,500 if they trade in their cars for newer, more fuel-efficient vehicles.
The $1 billion cash-for-guzzlers proposal, modeled after successful programs in Germany and other European countries, is part of a $106 billion supplemental spending measure designed mostly to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It also extends billions in new credit to the International Monetary Fund."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-parker/no-clunker-over-25-years_b_216017.html

EDIT: Some years back, an article appeared which described mandatory auto scrappage after a car reached, I think it was, 5 years of age, within Tokyo City Limits. The corollary is in the soup here, watered down, bur still, rather scary for the less-than-privileged. I was unable to find info on the Tokyo deal.

 

[WhatInThe]

The original cash for clunkers tanked the used car market for consumers, raised new car prices and fueled even more leasing of new vehicle which in itself creates a supply of over priced used cars.

 

[imp]

The original cash for clunkers tanked the used car market for consumers, raised new car prices and fueled even more leasing of new vehicle which in itself creates a supply of over priced used cars.

Now that you mentioned it, they did do some similar scheme before, but I recall little about it. Couldn't afford a new car then, can't now, so paid little attention. imp

 

[Debby]

Do you folks have any sort of Air Care Program that makes you have your cars tested for emissions every year or so before you can get your car insurance renewed?

We've had it for years. I remember when it wasn't uncommon to see old cars spewing blue smoke but I can think of the last time I saw that.

 

[Dudewho]

Do you folks have any sort of Air Care Program that makes you have your cars tested for emissions every year or so before you can get your car insurance renewed?

We've had it for years. I remember when it wasn't uncommon to see old cars spewing blue smoke but I can think of the last time I saw that.

"Blue smoke" would be burning motor oil, (a malfuction), not hydrocarbons (pollution).

 

[Dudewho]

From a 2014 article in Autoblog.


It's been 5 years since Cash For Clunkers, was it a success?




CARS set out to kill two birds with one stone: jumpstart slow automobile sales and get a large number of older off the road.
A lot has happened since 2009. President Obama was re-elected. The Arab Spring saw popular uprisings overthrow dictators across the Middle East and North Africa. General Motors declared and subsequently emerged from bankruptcy. Fiat bought Chrysler. And the Cash for Clunkers program came and went.


That's right, it's been five years since the federal government launched the Car Allowance Rebate System – known as CARS for short, or more popularly as Cash for Clunkers. The program set out to kill two birds with one proverbial stone: jumpstart slow automobile sales across the country on the one hand, and get a large number of older (and less environmentally friendly) cars off the road. Identifying both problems and a single way to solve them, the government offered financial incentives (cash) for drivers to trade-in their old cars (clunkers) in favor of new ones, following the lead set by similar scrappage programs that had taken place in other countries around the world.


Even with a moribund economy, buyers jumped at the opportunity, and in less than a month, the entire $1 billion allotted by Congress to the program had been used up. So legislators approved an additional $2 billion, which ran out before the end of August 2009 – two months ahead of schedule.


The question that lingers five years later is whether the program was actually a success. Proponents point to the rapid rate at which customers took advantage of the program as a sign of its success, providing a boost in sales to automakers and dealers across the country. The Department of Transportation also reported that the new vehicles acquired averaged over 60-percent better fuel economy than the ones that were traded in, all the while giving a shot of adrenaline to Detroit's automakers.


Critics, however, debate the veracity of those claims and paint a different picture. The program's detractors claim that the increased sales promoted by the program were not created out of nowhere, they merely pulled ahead future sales that would've taken place anyhow, resulting in a zero net gain at the cost of $3 billion to the taxpayer. Implementing the program also required the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to take on thousands of additional employees to process the applications for reimbursement and necessitated the government setting up the National Motor Vehicle Title Information System just to keep track of it all.


Meanwhile, detractors point out, it was not American automakers but Japanese ones like Toyota, Honda and Nissan that brought in the lion's share of new car sales from the program (while American cars were ineligible under Japan's own scrappage program). The initiative is also said to have had the unfortunate side-effect of raising prices on used cars (which only made things harder on those who couldn't afford new ones during difficult financial times), and reduced the number of old cars being donated to charities that depended on them.


As for the improvement in fuel economy, critics claim that drivers are likely to drive their newly fuel-efficient cars more (canceling out any environmental benefit of their improved economy), also arguing that the environmental impact of manufacturing and shipping the new cars bought hadn't been taken into account. Further, they note that many large SUVs and crossovers qualified for the program even though they didn't meet the 20-mpg threshold for eligibility.


Whether the program, now five years in hindsight, could ultimately be viewed as a success or not, one thing's for sure: it was certainly expensive.

 

[oldman]

Do you folks have any sort of Air Care Program that makes you have your cars tested for emissions every year or so before you can get your car insurance renewed?

We've had it for years. I remember when it wasn't uncommon to see old cars spewing blue smoke but I can think of the last time I saw that.

We do here in Pennsylvania, depending on the county one lives in. All of PA has mechanical inspections once per year, no exceptions. This is a really good program and if anyone buys a car in PA with a 'current' inspection sticker they will be getting a mechanically safe car as all safety parts of the vehicle is checked. Remember, I wrote, "mechanically safe", not mechanically sound, which may include the drivetrain.

We also have an emissions test once per year, excepting pre 1975 vehicles and some counties, that is performed at the same time as the mechanical inspection. This test is performed by ramming a tube up the exhaust pipe and allowing the computer to check for emissions. If it goes above the limit the vehicle's catalytic converter probably needs replaced. If both tests are passed successfully, two state inspection stickers are applied to the left side (driver's side) of the windshield.

http://www.dmv.com/pa/pennsylvania/emissions-testing

 

[Butterfly]

We have the mandatory emissions testing here, too. You have to get it done to renew your license plates.

 

[NancyNGA]

I'm going to present another point of view about auto emissions testing.

I moved to Georgia 1975 and there were required auto inspections every year. Most any full service gas station was allowed to qualify to inspect, just in order to meet the demand, and there were still long waiting times. Many service stations were taking advantage of this by coming up with unnecessary repairs to issue a permit. They held you hostage. A lot of money was made and fraud charged and things couldn't be monitored sufficiently. Even if legitimate problems were found the costs could be prohibitive.

We have a lot of poor folks in Georgia. And legislators soon realized this was causing disproportionate hardships on the working poor, who were lucky to have any car at all to get to work. It was eventually dropped in favor of local options. Atlanta still requires annual checks because of the dense population, but it also has a pretty good public transportation system. Our town dropped it.

Now I'm not against changes, or reducing emissions, at all, but changes sometimes can't happen overnight. If you try to rush them, it can cause a backlash or unintended consequences. I'm sure even the clunkers driven now are better than those driven in 1975.

Flame suit on. nthego:

 

[WhatInThe]

I'm going to present another point of view about auto emissions testing.

I moved to Georgia 1975 and there were required auto inspections every year. Most any full service gas station was allowed to qualify to inspect, just in order to meet the demand, and there were still long waiting times. Many service stations were taking advantage of this by coming up with unnecessary repairs to issue a permit. They held you hostage. A lot of money was made and fraud charged and things couldn't be monitored sufficiently. Even if legitimate problems were found the costs could be prohibitive.

We have a lot of poor folks in Georgia. And legislators soon realized this was causing disproportionate hardships on the working poor, who were lucky to have any car at all to get to work. It was eventually dropped in favor of local options. Atlanta still requires annual checks because of the dense population, but it also has a pretty good public transportation system. Our town dropped it.

Now I'm not against changes, or reducing emissions, at all, but changes sometimes can't happen overnight. If you try to rush them, it can cause a backlash or unintended consequences. I'm sure even the clunkers driven now are better than those driven in 1975.

Flame suit on. nthego:

I lived in states with & without vehicle & emissions testing. The roads/vehicles were not safer nor the air cleaner. As technology and time moves on vehicles will improve. I remember when it was not uncommon for some one to start a car smoke would come out like it was nobody's business and no one thought twice about it. To me what's on the road today regardless of state's requirements is 10 times better than it was decades ago and that's technology when it comes to pollution. I also remember an era where people would take their own oil change oil and dump it in the sewer no questions asked-not good but common decades ago. The big problem now is heavy equipment like buses, dump trucks and landscaping/ lawn equipment used en mass in many areas. Especially the landscaping equipment in certain neighborhoods because setting aside emissions powered lawn equipment puts particulate matter into the air which is worse in many respects.

 

[imp]

"Emissions" and Reality

Exhaust emissions from burning fuel like gasoline contain a lot of crap, but chiefly Carbon Monoxide (CO) and un-burned Hydrocarbons (HC) are the two which are measured and classed as "pass or fail".

By the early '80s, it was getting pretty tough to meet the emission level requirements. That is the main reason carburetors disappeared; they just don't allow precise control of fuel/air mixtures over the entire driving experience range.

I had vowed years earlier to never own a non-carburetor auto, that is a car having Electronic Fuel Injection (EFI). Then in about 1991, driving about Phoenix, I spotted a nice-looking Mustang among the used cars at a Chevy Dealership, and on whim, told my wife, let's test-drive that. She was less than enthusiastic, which was the norm for her about cars; I was always tearing into one. That 1989 5.0L HO (High Output) Mustang, 5-speed overdrive equipped, ran like a dream, and went like hell! Talked her into buying it! Six months later, a second one, 1990, became her daily driver (she actually prefers stick!). They of course, were EFI, Ford by then pretty much at "state of the art" level, with GM and Chrysler still lagging behind until the late '90s. Ford was using Sequential Fuel Injection", whereas GM and Chrysler were still simply removing the carburetor and replacing it with fuel injectors which dumped the gas into the common airstream. Sequential uses an injector for each cylinder, poised directly above the intake valve, much more concise control.

If yer still with me here, wondering where in hell I'm going, hang on! I of course could not tolerate having a car I could not fix myself, so bought a good book on Ford's EFI system. That led to buying several 5.0 engines out of wrecked cars; my first "conversion" was a 1970 Bronco 4X4, which got a 5.0 and 5-speed; it took me 4 months to ferret-out all that wiring, but it ran really good, finally.

The second was a beautiful '79 Ranchero, same conversion. But that one had to pass emissions, the Bronco did not, too old. The CO and HC readings came out damn low, CO actually as low as it gets: 0 %! This astounded me, as technically, such a vehicle could not kill you running in a closed garage by carbon monoxide poisoning: there was none! Inspection guy FAILED the vehicle! Claimed the smog pump dump line was not directed into the exhaust gas stream, which was true. The "pick" wanted simply to be a pick with an "r" in it. Took it home, ran a tube down underneath, went back, PASSED!

Here's the other most impressive thing, to me, about EFI: Fuel economy. That Ranchero was a huge, heavy boat; it got 25 mpg when we moved from AZ to MO! Here's my current project car, a 1972:

 

[Ken N Tx]

We have the mandatory emissions testing here, too. You have to get it done to renew your license plates.

...Same in Texas...A friend of mine, visiting from another state, was surprised and amazed at the quality (newer) of the vehicles driving around..

It is a joke down here that inspection stations take advantage of women who bring in the family vehicle and get hit with unjustified repairs such as blinker fluid!!

 

[oldman]

I haven't heard that one, Ken. I have heard of other problems that women (and some men) sometimes get stuck with. I have always felt that any garage that would get caught "cheating" should lose their state inspection license for at least 2 years the first time and life, if caught again. Here in PA when a car is inspected and parts are replaced, the owner has the right to ask for the old parts back. Are they yours? Who knows? I used to check the part numbers stamped on the old parts, but before computers that meant calling the dealership and putting him through the mill to find what part fit my car and what part I was sold.

Thankfully, I have had a mechanic that I can trust and have used him for the last 35 years. We have grown old together. He used to tell me what I needed for inspection, (ball joints, tie rod ends, brake linings, pads etc.), and I would put them on and then he would give me the sticker. Today, I am too old for climbing under cars, even though I am restoring a '65 Chevy Impala SS. I now leave it all up to him. My cars seldom need anything (knock on wood).

 

[Ken N Tx]

I haven't heard that one, Ken. I have heard of other problems that women (and some men) sometimes get stuck with. I have always felt that any garage that would get caught "cheating" should lose their state inspection license for at least 2 years the first time and life, if caught again. Here in PA when a car is inspected and parts are replaced, the owner has the right to ask for the old parts back. Are they yours? Who knows? I used to check the part numbers stamped on the old parts, but before computers that meant calling the dealership and putting him through the mill to find what part fit my car and what part I was sold.

Thankfully, I have had a mechanic that I can trust and have used him for the last 35 years. We have grown old together. He used to tell me what I needed for inspection, (ball joints, tie rod ends, brake linings, pads etc.), and I would put them on and then he would give me the sticker. Today, I am too old for climbing under cars, even though I am restoring a '65 Chevy Impala SS. I now leave it all up to him. My cars seldom need anything (knock on wood).

Yes, we can get the defective parts upon request..Also you do not have to have them do the repairs, you can get them done elsewhere and return for the inspection.