Cash for Clunkers, the clever plan to pay thousands of dollars to destroy used cars, ended in late August, somehow making Detroit even more hopeless than it already was. Since then, the numbers on the program have been rolling in, and it appears that we didn't exactly get a lot of bang for our buck:
WASHINGTON – The most common deals under the government's $3 billion Cash for Clunkers program, aimed at putting more fuel-efficient cars on the road, replaced old Ford or Chevrolet pickups with new ones that got only marginally better gas mileage, according to an analysis of new federal data by The Associated Press.
The single most common swap — which occurred more than 8,200 times — involved Ford F150 pickup owners who took advantage of a government rebate to trade their old trucks for new Ford F150s. They were 17 times more likely to buy a new F150 than, say, a Toyota Prius. The fuel economy for the new trucks ranged from 15 mpg to 17 mpg based on engine size and other factors, an improvement of just 1 mpg to 3 mpg over the clunkers....
The data show the average fuel economy was 15.8 mpg for the old vehicles and 24.9 for the new ones.
That last bit is referring to all cars bought through the program, not just the trucks from the earlier part of the article. The federal government handed out $3 billion through Cash for Clunkers. Doing the math there, that's over 329 million taxpayer dollars spent for every mile per gallon gained.
Thank God we don't have a calculator-breaking deficit to worry about, or this whole thing might seem like a hugely inefficient waste of money.
