SEMA comes out against cash for clunkers
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) has announced plans to introduce legislation on the first day of the new Congressional session that would provide funds that would be used to pay people for taking old cars off the road. The "cash for clunkers" approach is intended to get older cars crushed, with economic and environmental goals in mind. The economic part would be part of a stimulus package by putting cash in people's hands so that they can presumably by new cars instead. This argument is dubious since the program is unlikely to provide enough money to people driving such cars to allow them to afford a new car. The environmental aspect makes more sense since older cars are the most polluting and create a disproportionate amount of the emissions. The Specialty Equipment Market Association (SEMA) is urging employees of member companies to contact their Congressional representatives opposing the bill. SEMA's argument is that the bill would do more harm than good by taking cars that aren't driven much off the road while eliminating a source of parts for older cars. This is a debatable argument since any useful parts could be stripped off before cars are crushed. SEMA also argues that historical cars could be destroyed which is also dubious since owners of cars with any potential value are unlikely to take advantage of such a program.
[Source: SEMA]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Aimless Six 1:05PM (12/30/2008)
What is more polluting, manufacturing a new car every 3 years or driving a 30 year old car?
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nads as in go 1:39PM (12/31/2008)
Someone who buys a new car every 3 years wouldn't qualify. The cars have to be 10 years old at least. Likewise, someone who can regularly drive a car thats 30 years must be able to put in considerable money for upkeep and would probably not meet the financial requirements, even if they were interested (they probably wouldn't be).
Lets get this going. $10k WILL buy you an ok car, it would be even better if they allow you to purchase from used car lots or auctions themselves (will they?).
Woodenbee 1:34PM (12/30/2008)
Its been working in Europe for years, but since taking on good ideas from abroad is "unAmerican" they can't mention that. SEMA's arguments are ridiculous, what a bunch of weirdos to even give an opinion, gee I wonder do the parts stores they represent want to keep people driving broken down old cars?
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Woodenbee 1:37PM (12/30/2008)
Its been working in Europe for years, but since taking on good ideas from abroad is "unAmerican" they can't mention that. SEMA's arguments are ridiculous, what a bunch of weirdos to even give an opinion, gee I wonder do the parts stores they represent want to keep people driving broken down old cars?
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Umai Kakudo 1:50PM (12/30/2008)
Here is a government report from 1996 on the various state run AVR programs with good details on what has been done in the US in the past.
http://digital.library.unt.edu/govdocs/crs/data/1996/meta-crs-287.tkl
It would be interesting to see how the euros do it but do you really think the government will redistribute billions of our tax dollars more efficiently than the existing used car and auto recycling industry does all ready or will we be reading an article a year from now how the program failed, didn't meet its goals, had unintended consequences, and was a waste of money?
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Jo 1:58PM (12/30/2008)
I'm not sure what SEMA's thinking here ... seems like a reactionary response with very little thought put into it.
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Dustin 10:29AM (12/31/2008)
"Taking cars that aren't driven much"? I would think people who are driving old cars are using them every day. SEMA seems to think they're going to be crushing classic show cars left and right...
Rich 2:04PM (12/30/2008)
I think it's another bunch of PORK!
I drive a car that's 23 years old. Every two years I take it for state inspection and it gets a tailpipe exhaust test on a treadmill. And every time the guy at the station says something like "This is great - lower emissions than a new car".
And the primary reason I have not bought a new car is that I don't want anything that's on the market now.
I heard an ad on the radio yesterday. A local GM dealer is advertising new Pontiac G6 cars at $11K. Even at that price I don't want it!
So what are they going to give me to crush my car? Not enough to replace it.
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Chris M 4:09PM (12/30/2008)
You've got a very good point, it's not the age, its the pollution. A much better proposal would be to tie it into the annual smog check, with the government offering partial funding for smog repairs or replacement of vehicles that don't pass.
Brent 3:27PM (12/30/2008)
Getting rid of the old car is a good thing, but we've already been selling and redistributing a lot of the clunkers out of the country and this bill will more than likely just help a bunch of used car dealerships more than the people with the need for a new car. All this redistribuition of wealth over all is for the better but giving all these things intended to just help the poorest won't help. Almost anyone poor enough to have a car that fits this old crappy criteria is the same type which wouldn't have enough to make a jump to a new car. Also helping only the poorest(which this will) usually the money is lost to drugs and black market goods which don't often profit our economy. This is just gonna be good news to those who already weaken the economy with welfare aid and other thing which are negative spending(meaning the opposite of possitive spending such as pushing money back into local economy). Rasing the poorest isn't what our nation needs for the next step, they need to help the middle class and push them towards spending it on sustainable energy forms and electric cars, so all of the billions we push out every year can bounce around inside more(as long as the goods can be manufactured more locally). We need to offer incentives to help things be manufactured locally, like investments to make them priced with the competitions product from the exterior. Thereby giving the america people a chance to puchase from the home team and raise themselves out of this ever growing recession.
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gorr 4:52PM (12/30/2008)
This is just another attemps by u.s.a politicians to prohibit private property and economic exchanges.
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Chris M 6:18PM (12/30/2008)
No, it doesn't prohibit a thing. Owners of older cars don't have to trade them in if they don't want to. Gorr, you can keep driving that old Dodge Neon as long as you want.
It does make it easier for someone to get rid of an old polluting clunker, if they want to. Gorr, didn't you say you were shopping for another car?
Baskingshark 6:06PM (12/30/2008)
Your statement that "SEMA also argues that historical cars could be destroyed which is also dubious since owners of cars with any potential value are unlikely to take advantage of such a program" is incorrect.
Many vehicles go through a period of low values before collector interest in them picks up. When I was at university in the UK about 12 years ago, you could not give away MkIII Ford Capris. I wish I had bought 20 of them for £50 each, because even non-runners now sell for £5K.
Regardless of this, "Cash for Clunkers" plans do not work. The vast majority of these cars are run by people who need to use them to get to work, but who are too poor to afford a new car, even with the incentives to remove them from the road. If all someone can afford is a 15-year-old $500 car, even $5000 off the price of a new one will be no help to them. The only people who can benefit will be those who are shopping for a new vehicle and who can afford to go out, buy a clunker for $500 first, then turn it in to get the discount!
Much better to take the suggestion of the poster above, and offer subsidised assistance to service existing vehicles so they meet smog emission standards.
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Brian Drake 6:24PM (12/30/2008)
California tried this with mixed success at best. Many of the cars brought in were clunkers that hadn't been driven in YEARS. There were also problems with people crushing cars that are valuable to collectors. Many people have NO idea of what that old car rotting in their back yard is worth. If its an extinct make, they're even LESS likely to know the value.
Its amazing what surfaces when a property owner dies, exceedingly rare cars are discovered all the time, that someone didn't know what they had. Unless you have a system in place to ensure that the person operating the crusher has access to a database and can positively identify a valuable car and have someone at the ready to buy the thing, you're going to lose a lot of history with this plan.
Somewhere, in Washington state, there's a wrecked 1948 Tucker rotting in a barn. Fully restored, it'd be worth around $1 million. Odds are, if it goes to a crusher, people will think its a Studebaker.
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nads as in go 1:40PM (12/31/2008)
Hey lets hold up increasing the efficiency and safety of the vehicles on our roads because Brian might want someone's old stinker. Never mind the family that uses a 15 year old dust bin to drive to work and school for their kids because bills are tight. People like you only care about themselves. You must be a rethuglican.
Brian Drake 3:19PM (12/31/2008)
Do you honestly think that giving a family driving a 15 year old clunker a few thousand dollars is going to be enough to get them into a NEW car, or even one significantly NEWER than they're presently driving? The average age of a car on the road is about 10 years, and it takes nearly 20 years for the US vehicle fleet to turnover. If you want to make a meaningful difference in this, you're going to have to pony up the money for them to buy a NEW car, which means you'll be shelling out around $15K per clunker (more if you want them to buy an American built car). That's an awful lot of money. You're also going to have to structure the program so that someone doesn't turn in a clunker, taken the $15K, buy a $5K car, and then pocket $10K.
As for your snide comments on my politics, I'm sure you'll be depressed to know that I vote Democrat.
BoneHeadOtto 10:53PM (12/30/2008)
All this program will do is to encourage college kids to purchase clunkers and turn them in for $10k towards a new car. This bill is supposedly aimed at those that make less than $25k. This is perhaps the worst way to spend taxpayer money.
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MitchJi 12:04AM (12/31/2008)
Hi,
"CalCars and Andy Grove have been proposing a major focus on converting "PSVs" (large internal combustion engine gas guzzling Pickups, SUVs and Vans) so they run partially on electricity:
http://www.calcars.org/ice-conversions.html.
Here we address some of the key non-economic issues in doing so:
http://www.calcars.org/calcars-news/1007.html
Even if it were possible to crush and replace many of these cars, there is one important underlying question that we haven't been able to answer until now. We haven't known how much energy it takes to build a car, and how much you're thereby throwing away when you crush an old car that operates perfectly well and could be converted into a PHEV PSV.
Now CalCars' Technology Lead Ron Gremban has investigated that question and come up with some answers.
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jharlan 1:38PM (12/31/2008)
SEMA's opposition to this proposal seems weak and self serving. There may be a convincing arguement against it, but this one isn't.
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Susan K 5:09AM (1/01/2009)
I think we should take low fuel economy cars off the road.
Not neccessarily the old cars, because back in the early 80's we were still making fuel efficient cars. Little Geo Metros got better mileage than the bloated SSUVs thatt followed them.
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