Comment by ToucanLoucan
1 year ago
> Back in the early 2000s the US government offered people cash incentives to dispose of their fuel inefficient cars, and by disposal they meant running the engine with an abrasive liquid instead of oil until it is totally ruined beyond repair.
So. Fucking. Stupid. As though Joe Consumer with a V8 Mustang he puts a few thousand miles on per year is the boogeyman of climate change, and not, hell just off the dome:
- Every standing military on planet Earth
- The global shipping industry
- The fossil fuel industry
> "As though Joe Consumer with a V8 Mustang he puts a few thousand miles on per year is the boogeyman of climate change"
Scrappage schemes target the smokey, rusty shit-boxes that are worth next to nothing. Not Joe Mustang's prized V8, which would be worth far more than the value of the incentive anyway.
And when it comes to old cars, reducing local air pollution is often the major concern. Not just climate change.
Cash for Clunkers did exactly what it was intended to do: It screwed up the used car market for a very long time, simply by decreasing supply while demand remained.
People still needed cars, and everything is relative. When used car prices go up relative to that of new cars, then new cars become relatively inexpensive.
This helps sell more new cars. And back in the time of "too big to fail" auto industry bailouts, selling more new cars was kind of important.
edit: And remember, there were restrictions for Cash for Clunkers. The car had to be less than 25 years old, it had to run, and it had to have been registered and insured for the last 12 months. It was deliberately designed to thin the pool of functional used vehicles.
This program claimed revered cars like Audi Quattros and BMW E30s...along with V8 Mustangs. And once turned in, they were all quite purposefully destroyed: Sodium silicate replaced the engine oil and they were run at WOT until they seized, and then they were crushed just to be sure.
According to Wikipedia only about 677k vehicles were takes out of the market. In 2009 there were about 254 million registered cars in the US so did it really put a dent in the market?
[0]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_Allowance_Rebate_System
[1]:https://www.statista.com/statistics/183505/number-of-vehicle...
3 replies →
I don't know the details of the US programme, but London's recent successful scrappage scheme had a limit of £2000 for cars/vans and £1000 for motorcycles [1].
Only "dirty" vehicles that do not meet modern emissions standards qualified. And it only makes sense to scrap your vehicle if it's worth less than the £2000 payment you'd get by scrapping it. So nobody is scrapping modern, good quality vehicles: you'd just sell it instead and get more money.
[1] https://tfl.gov.uk/modes/driving/ultra-low-emission-zone/scr...
Or the manufacture of new vehicles to replace perfectly serviceable old ones.
And agriculture