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We should put in a cost section. Edmunds said in yesterday's paper that they expected 200,000 CARS eligible cars to be traded in during the next 3 months (that's their baseline average I guess), and that since CARS has a cap of 250,000, the $4B the government is spending is only increasing the cars purchased by, at most, 50,000; and realistically 25,000. So the government is spending $160,000 to facilitate each purchase. -- Mrcolj ( talk) 15:26, 31 July 2009 (UTC)
Take a look at this [1] and look at who did it. Is this a problem? I don't like the formatting but I'm not going to take the responsibility. Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 17:34, 31 July 2009 (UTC)
The issue of privacy has been raised because the government website for this program states:
"This application provides access to the Dot CARS system. When logged on to the CARS system, your computer is considered a Federal computer system and is the property of the U.S. Government. Any or all uses of this system and all files on this system may be intercepted, monitored, recorded, copied, audited, inspected, and disclosed to authorized CARS, DoT, and law enforcement personnel, as well as authorized officials of other agencies, both domestic and foreign."
This should be mentioned in the article. I cannot add it, as I am under a topic ban on political articles.
Grundle2600 ( talk) 00:11, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
As far as I can tell the "Debate" section is all Original Research. If you are going to put this in, and the carbon necessary to make a new car, then lets put in 1) the average mileage loss due to older cars being more inefficient than the government rating 2) the gain in productivity of those not relying on older cars 3) the cost-benefit analysis of the other 2 reasons for the "tripartite purpose" of the program. -- 128.146.33.130 ( talk) 00:53, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
-- 128.146.33.130 ( talk) 00:57, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
Is the new car someone purchases actually required to be more efficient than the old car? Could one purchase, say, a Hummer under this program? If there are restrictions, it should be listed in the Eligibility criteria section; if not, I think it's worth mentioning that there aren't. 70.90.176.206 ( talk) 00:08, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
Honestly, does this belong? Not only is it complete opinion, but it cites another wikipedia article as it's source! I'm not sure who added that/keeps adding that, but I haven't a clue how including such a broad and unsupported declaration such as "the program is bad because government spending is less efficient than the free market" is appropriate for an encyclopedia. 75.117.229.240 ( talk) 12:35, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
The list of top-selling new cars that has the Ford Focus at the top is actually government spin. Please read http://money.cnn.com/2009/08/07/autos/cash_for_clunkers_sales/index.htm . The short version is that the government counts 4WD and 2WD versions of vehicles separately. There aren't very many 4WD cars, so the numbers of trucks and SUVs get diluted. According to Edmunds, if you don't count them separately, the Ford Escape is the #1. I don't think Wikipedia needs to take a position in this debate - we should, however, report both counting methods and both #1's. -- B ( talk) 17:27, 8 August 2009 (UTC)
The reference says that "an independent estimate" concludes that the entire $1B initial disbursement was used up in administrative costs alone. This seems highly implausible, and the original source for this claim is not identified so I could not verify it. The reference also appears to be a political blog, making its claims somewhat suspect. So, I have removed the above text from the article. -- Beland ( talk) 17:51, 12 August 2009 (UTC)
I will be quite busy until Sept 1st, so here I will leave some links to news articles (a couple already used as refs in the article) I was planning to use for my next edits, so I leave them for any of the regular editors interested in expanding the sections dealing with the controversial issues and criticism. There is plenty, and please do not forget to follow NPOV and avoid OR. See A Clunker of a Program, Unintended Consequences of Clunkers Law, Doing the ‘Clunker’ Calculus, Mom and Pop Used-Car Dealers Left Without Clunkers, $3 billion buys not-so-green vehicles, Obama administration withholds data on clunkers, Swings and roundabouts, and particularly 5 Downsides to 'Cash for Clunkers' and `Cash for clunkers' effect on pollution? A blip.- Mariordo ( talk) 21:20, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
Is it the Car Allowance Rebate System (CARS) or is it the Consumer Assistance to Recycle and Save Program (the CARS Program)? Throckmorton Guildersleeve ( talk) 14:07, 20 August 2009 (UTC)
The entire article smells of a biased POV. It mostly promotes the benefits of the program with unquestionable positivity. It is assumed that the program is "good for the environment" (which most people seem to just think means reduced CO2 emissions -- hint, it's not), good for the economy, and a win-win situation for everybody on the planet. All of the criticisms are delegated to the bottom of the article, many of which were reverted because they did not "cite" anything -- even though the majority of the content already in the article which praises the program is uncited as well. Mac520 ( talk) 16:45, 25 August 2009 (UTC)
Does the buyer have to pay income tax on this Stimulus check like we do on the other stimulus check? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.184.223.136 ( talk) 16:16, 26 August 2009 (UTC)
The primary rankings of top sellers should be Edmunds before DoT. Replace the Corolla at the top of the page with the Escape. The DoT used an unconventional method for counting sales which was intentionally chosen to to back up their agenda of advertising foreign, compact cars. Edmunds uses the universally accepted method, and should be taken first. Mac520 ( talk) 01:08, 2 September 2009 (UTC)
There is missing analysis on motivation affecting the shift of vehicle type traded in and purchased. The unsupported assumption is a desire to "go green" and reduce fuel costs. No information is given on changed vehicle needs such that many people did not simply buy a more efficient version of what they traded in.
No one has noted that child car seat laws encouraged purchase of gas guzzling SUVs and mini-vans for their relative ease when securing and freeing children. Years later, when the owners' children have outgrown legal requirements to use car seats, compact sedans like the Toyota Corolla better serve their needs [once again?]. -- Mark Kaepplein ( talk) 16:38, 6 September 2009 (UTC)
Mark Kaepplein ( talk) 07:20, 4 July 2010 (UTC)
Mark Kaepplein ( talk) 21:42, 6 July 2010 (UTC)
1. According to Edmunds AutoObserver [2], Edmunds.com collected a sample of actual trade-in and new-car sales transactions that occurred under the Cash for Clunkers program from its July 24 launch to July 31. (a) The Edmunds analysis covers only transactions in the first week of the CARS program, though the press release is dated Aug. 6, 2009; (b) The Edmunds analysis is based on a sample of sales transactions under the program, there can be scope of sampling error (depends on sampling size and sampling method and how scientific the samples are selected - Edmunds does not give out any info on its sample size and margin of error est.)
2. CARS released its latest info on new vehicles purchased under the program, based on info submitted by car dealers, as of Sept 9, 2009, see [3]. (a) According to CARS's 9/09 info, under the program, Escape (FWD+4WD+hybrid) sold a total of about 21,000, significantly less than that of Corolla (about 29,000 sedan) or Civic (about 27,000 excluding CNG/hybrid model), (b) Jeep Patriot (ranked #3 on Edmunds list) sold (2WD+4WD) a total of about 7,000; Dodge Caliber (ranked #4 on Edmunds list) also sold about 7,000, both significantly lower than vehicles on the top 10 list on DOT's Aug 26 release (Honda Fit, ranked #9 on the list, sold over 12,000).
3. To consider delete or rewrite the whole section of Disagreement. North wiki ( talk) 06:59, 21 October 2009 (UTC)
Using mpg as the only measure of efficiency may llead to overly optimistic estimated. Since what everybody ultimately cares is how much fuel will the new cars use, recalcuating efficiency into liters per 100 km (or galons per 100 miles if you wish) will show that new cars will use 40% less fuel (article leads you to believe it is about 60%). http://www.pege.org/fuel/convert.htm Vspg ( talk) 14:35, 2 November 2009 (UTC)
It would be good to add a paragraph on US auto sales for September. The bottom fell out of that market, and was the major reason that general retail figures were lower for the month. In fact, by taking out the gigantic drop in car sales, the overall retail sales went up. An unintended consequence of the "wildly successful" program that ought to be noted in the article. Jackrafuse Jackrafuse ( talk) 16:49, 16 November 2009 (UTC)
there is currently a shortage of used cars, obviously there is a relation. Where in the article would I add this? 67.176.160.47 ( talk) 20:25, 16 September 2010 (UTC)
The word "oversight" does not appear in the article. Who guaranteed that engine disabling actually occurred, as opposed to dealers and scrapyard operators merely reporting such? Any statistical sampling; investigation occurred to validate compliance?
Mydogtrouble ( talk) 16:50, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
I'm not a frequent editor of Wikipedia pages, so I thought I'd just roll this out for whomever might be interested in implementing this suggestion into the article.
The article currently states that the average fuel efficiency of the trade-in vehicles was 15.9 mpg, while the average fuel efficiency of the purchased vehicles was 24.9 mpg. The article goes on to state that this represents a "58% fuel efficiency improvement". This figure is quite flawed in ways both simple and complex.
First, let's see if we can reverse engineer the figure given. (24.9-15.8)/15.8 x 100 = 57.59%. This appears to be the method employed to arrive at the 58% figure.
However, measuring fuel efficiency in miles per gallon makes this kind of arithmetic comparison invalid. This is because miles per gallon as a measure of efficiency is non-linear, which means that 1 mpg is not a constant amount, but rather varies depending on whether it's 1 mpg at 15.8 mpg or 1 mpg at 24.9 mpg. In other words, you cannot subtract 15.8 mpg from 24.9 mpg because they are apples and oranges.
Here is a better way. Translate miles per gallon into gallons per X miles. This is easily performed and will yield figures that can be arithmetically compared. For the sake of familiarity, I will use 300 miles as the target figure.
At 15.8 mpg, it will take 19 gallons to travel 300 miles. At 24.9 mpg, it will take 12 gallons to travel 300 miles.
(19-12)/19 x 100 = 36.84% or 37% improvement in fuel efficiency.
Since gallons per mile is a linear measure of fuel efficiency, this figure is a more accurate representation of the actual increase in fuel efficiency represented by the figures listed. At the same time, though, it points out a new potential source of error - the input. Arithmetic averaging is no more valid for fuel efficiency in mpg for the calculation of the "average" fuel efficiency of the traded-in and purchased vehicles than it is for the calculation just performed. Following the referenced document reveals that much of the information presented on this point is taken directly from the DOT. From this, we learn two things. We learn that the calculation was not performed by a Wikipedia contributor, but rather apparently by the DOT. This suggests that the original inputs may indeed have been calculated by the same invalid method. We also see that the original data are unavailable. Without access to the original data, we cannot peel back the onion any further.
So, we're at an obstacle. Perhaps the original data are available somewhere else, in which case, more research is needed. If the data are not already available, perhaps the data may be available by a FOIA request. Or maybe the best solution is to remove this part of the article entirely.
66.166.41.146 ( talk) 18:36, 30 March 2011 (UTC)
Would it be appropriate to redirect National Motor Vehicle Title Information System to the same section in this article? — danhash ( talk) 14:39, 11 October 2011 (UTC)
"It led to a gain in market share for Japanese and Korean manufacturers at the expense of American car makers, with only Ford not taking a significant hit." How does the source determine that cash for clunkers changed market share, since market share for the US automakers was already shrinking? Seems like this is negative wording, rather than something which actually happened. 76.21.107.221 ( talk) 19:40, 1 June 2012 (UTC)
http://news.yahoo.com/why-cash-clunkers-hurt-environment-more-helped-024848694.html
Gh82xc56 ( talk) 18:35, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
In general, it might work to organize the article in terms of
1. Initial promises and claims
2. Evaluation immediately afterwards
3. Evaluation now when more data is in.
And that should include the results in the reports available at
http://www.brookings.edu/research/papers/2013/10/cash-for-clunkers-evaluation-gayer
The program resulted in a small gasoline reduction equivalent only to about 2 to 8 days’ worth of current usage.
this last bit from Li, Linn, Spiller (2012):
In other words, the federal government spent $3-10 of tax money (or the equivalent cost of deficit-spending inflation, which hits the poor and middle class) to get perhaps $1 of social benefit. 165.91.13.9 ( talk) 21:04, 30 October 2013 (UTC)
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Hello, all. I was wondering if there should be mention of the reaction of vehicle enthusiasts to the program. I've talked about the program to many enthusiasts and they all seem to come to the same conclusion that the program is nonsense. I probably wouldn't be the best choice for adding the subsection as I am biased against the program. ShiberuInupreza ( talk) 03:10, 4 December 2018 (UTC)
In the article, most discussion of MPG includes repeated conversion to other systems, in particular to British and European systems. Is this appropriate for an article entirely concerning the US market? Perhaps do it once, probably at the first mention, and then later stick to US units. I mean, we could convert to furlongs per dram, too, and that's just as likely as the metric system to be useful to a reader of this particular article. (This isn't an anti-metric thing; it's an anti-article clutter thing.) 24.120.176.68 ( talk) 00:16, 19 February 2022 (UTC)
Correct me if I'm wrong or missing something, but it seems the article cited for this sentence makes no claim about vehicles sold via CARS replacing unsafe(r) ones in developing countries. Still-Can't-Believe-It's-Not-Butter ( talk) 00:02, 19 March 2024 (UTC)