I never have argued about the price at the pump. In fact, I wish it would go to 10 dollars a gallon.

The higher the price goes, the faster alternative fuel cars come out. 

Again, this is not a problem government can fix. Why do we always look to them for the answers?

How do you make this negative is beyond me, this is great, it's so great it was too successful.

We should give everyone $50,000 to buy a new house, and see how successful that is too!

I mean, how could anyone make that negative?

@HappySqurriel

There is no shortage of used cars. In fact the United States generates so many used cars that we export used cars. Go to South America and you will find the roads choked with used cars from the United States. This will have no impact on the availability of used cars. Only on the availability of the extremely old used cars. Hell most of these cars being seized weren't even going to be sold as used vehicles. They were going to be recycled for parts, because that is where they would have been most profitable.

@TheRealMafoo

That is an extreme poor point of view. The reality is that the infrastructure of the United States is based upon personal transport. The middle class and the working poor simply have little control over what is available, and would be in serious financial trouble if the price was to go that high. They simply couldn't afford to work, and frankly they couldn't afford to eat either. With gas prices being that high the agricultural system would simply collapse. First due to excessive transport costs, and secondly due to biomass fuels becoming comparatively cheap. We would basically convert all our grain crops to ethanol production.

I am a fairly pragmatic person, but your wish is one for a global Apocalypse. The United States is one of the largest agricultural producers on the planet. Her crops feed far more then her own population, and while the American people have arable land enough to sustain themselves. In other words we have enough good land near by to grow gardens. I have a small orchard out behind my home personally. The Europeans would be hard pressed fairly fast.

I will tell you this the European nations no matter how progressive will start raiding the third world for food stock. They simply aren't going to let their populations starve. I hate the use of gasoline as a fuel as much as the next guy, but I am not so ruthless to wish pain upon others to make that happen. You do not spite yourself to spite something else.

Okay, let's say we have 0.8 billion dollars in this program to work with.  Let's imagine that 0.2 billion is all administration (that's a lot of administration but w/e).

Let's also assume that every trade results in the max $4,500 payout.

800,000,000 / 4,500 = 177,777 trade-ins.

Let's also assume that all trade-ins are for the minimum increase (15->25, 19->29) and let's say that an average gas tank holds 15 gallons (I have no idea but we'll use 15 as a number).

That's an additional 150 miles per gas tank that someone will get to drive or (for the 15->25) that's 6 gallons of gas saved to get the same distance.  For the 19->29 car, that's about 5 gallons saved.

So now we have 177,777 cars on the road using 5-6 gallons less fuel than they were before this program.  So that's 888,885-1,066,662 gallons saved per refueling.  I usually refuel about once every two weeks so let's multiply this by 28 (56 weeks in a year / 2) to see what that stacks up to...

24,888,780 - 29,866,536

That's between 24 and 29 million gallons of gas saved during the course of one year.

Even with all the assumptions made, that's pretty impressive.  If you want to play the "Well not everyone is destroying the cars" then figure 25% aren't.  Even 75% of those above numbers is pretty nice.

I agree with psrock, this was a huge success. Plus what about the people who couldnt afford to get a new car but with the $4500 plus whatever other rebates the dealers/manufacturers were running at the time allowed that person to get rid of their old "clunker" and get a new car that is better for the environment? I think the people that you are refering to, the ones who take advantage of this situation, are the minority and not the majority.

Or, a savings of .0192% Nice use of a billion dollars.

@ TheRealMafoo

Thats only per year, plus that is in gallons not in dollars. Gas by me is around the $2.75 mark. So that would mean $68,444,145-$82,132,974 per year saved in gas alone. Thats a $342M-$410M savings over a five year period of time, which is about the average time a person keeps a car.

Cant edit my post because my IE crashes when I do.

Plus those numbers are only using the minimums upgrades in gas mileage and doesnt account for any changes in gas prices. Those numbers numbers could skyrocket if we see $4.50 per gallon gas again or the $10 a gallon you hope for.

.0192% is in gallons, not dollars. As gas gets more expensive, the percentage saved goes down, as less miles would be driven anyway.

To put this into perspective, if we could assume the savings were liner, meaning for every billion we spend, we save another .0192%, it would cost over 52 billion dollars, to reduce our gas usage by 1%.