Will 'clunkers' program deliver an environmental impact?

Posted at 2:11 PM on August 3, 2009 by Bob Collins (12 Comments)
Filed under: Economy

Supporters of Cash for Clunkers have suggested the program is both a floor wax and a dessert topping - it's both good for the environment and a boost to the economy. Good mileage automobiles use less fuel. Less fuel is less pollution. It's hard to argue with that logic.

But a study a few weeks ago raises more of a question about the drivers of fuel-efficient vehicles.

Quality Planning, a consultant to the insurance industry, studied the habits of drivers of hybrid vehicles. It found they drove their vehicles 25 percent more than drivers of non-hybrids.

"The additional miles driven by hybrid vehicle owners would seem to offset the net ecological benefit of owning a fuel-efficient vehicle. After all, a gallon of gas is a gallon of gas, no matter which type of engine is burning it," Dr. Raj Bhat, president of Quality Planning said on a posting on the firm's Web site.

Bhat says he doesn't know, however, if the lower per-mile cost encourages people to drive more miles each day or take more trips.

But why wouldn't it? It's an established fact, of course, that the cost of fuel changes our driving habits. As the price of gasoline went up last year, people combined trips and drove fewer miles. Why wouldn't a reduced per-mile cost similarly affect drivers' behavior?

A good question, perhaps, but one that doesn't have an answer. We'll have to do this anecdotally. If you've bought a hybrid -- or other "fuel efficient" vehicle -- in the last year or so, what was the bottom-line impact on the total amount of fuel you purchased? Did you change your habits from your gas guzzler days?

Update 3:03 p.m. - The Transportation Department released data on Monday showing the vehicles traded in so far averaged 15.8 miles per gallon, compared with 25.4 miles per gallon for the new purchases, or a 61 percent improvement. That's a lot of extra driving you can do and still be ahead of the game.

Update 3:41 p.m. - Here's the link to the Christopher Joyce piece on how long you have to wait to offset "new car carbon." Audio should be available by 6 p.m. The story runs this afternoon on All Things Considered.

Update 3:47 p.m. - MPR's Curtis Gilbert sends along this e-mail from Friends of the Earth:

Based on calculations done by colleagues of ours at CalCars (www.calcars.org), replacing an older, lower-mpg vehicle with a new, higher mpg vehicle reduces CO2 only if the replacement vehicle provides more than twice the fuel economy of the vehicle it replaces. This is why Cash for Clunkers is not an ultimately environmentally progressive program: the emissions avoided from transitioning to a 22 mpg vehicle from an 18 mpg vehicle does not, over the lifetime of the vehicle, make up for the energy embedded in the older car that is destroyed before its useful life is over, as well as the energy involved in manufacturing the new car--unless the mpg of the new car is double that of the old.

An important alternative to Cash for Clunkers is an idea that a colleague of ours, Felix Kramer of CalCars, has developed--i.e. to dedicate the cash that consumers would have put towards a new car to convert their older vehicles to electric vehicles. Please see more on this below and at the following link: http://www.calcars.org/scrap-or-retrofit.html

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Comments (12)

What if the people driving the hybrids were driving more than typical BEFORE they bought their hybrid vehicles? That would be a good reason to GET a fuel efficient vehicle, wouldn't it?

Posted by Heather | August 3, 2009 2:45 PM

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"Supporters of Cash for Clunkers have suggested the program is both a floor wax and a dessert topping - it's both good for the environment and a boost to the economy. Good mileage automobiles use less fuel. Less fuel is less pollution. It's hard to argue with that logic."

The logic is plausible. The question is whether we're getting a good return on our $3500-4500 investment in removing each 'clunker' from the road. So: it may be both a floor cleaner & dessert topping; but would we be better off spending less for two seperate products?

Heather points out one possible explanation for the 'hybrid drivers drive more' claim. I'll offer another anecdote, from a friend who drives a Prius. He has taken a couple long trips by car instead of by plane because his fuel cost is much lower in the Prius than the cost to fly. So, yes, he's driving more miles than he would in a typical car; but he's still, measured in carbon output, emitting less pollution than he would be otherwise.

Posted by bsimon | August 3, 2009 2:52 PM

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Adding to Heather's comment, a two car family might (read will) decide to drive their more fuel efficient car on longer trips. That's exactly what we do.

Posted by Jim!!! | August 3, 2009 3:01 PM

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I replaced a vehicle with a more fuel efficient one a year ago. I drove the same number of miles as the previous year. I find that I need to go where I need to go, and that didn't change.
The effect of the cost of gas on driving habits might be temporary. Does any one else remeber how people screamed when gas first rose to the price it is down to today? The effect of buying a more efficient vehicle lasts 5-10 years.

Posted by John P. | August 3, 2009 3:25 PM

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I'm reposting someone else's comment from another website, because I think it makes an important point - the CARS program isn't saving the environment - it takes MORE energy to build a new car than to drive the one you have until it dies.

Also, don't forget the restrictions on this program: 1) Your current car has to have been insured AND registered for the entire last year. 2) Your current car has to get 18 mpg or less. Doesn't sound like much, but you'd be surprised what your car is rated at (hint - more than 18, probably).

The people who really need this program as the poor driving old clunkers, but they can't afford the new car or secure the financing for the new car (even after the discount). So the effect is that the most of the people taking advantage of this are the middle class, who are trading in older, but perfectly serviceable vehicles, as part of the program. The "clunkers" name is a lie - many of these vehicles are problem-free, and feature functional modern safety and emissions systems. Many of these are families doing a "swap" - most families have a large family vehicle and smaller 2nd car, so trade in the old family vehicle for a new smaller car to get the voucher, then turn around and trade in the old smaller car for a new fuel-inefficient family vehicle.

Many people don't know what happens to the old vehicles either. The program requires that they be disabled on the dealers' lot, or face a fine. The prefered way of doing this is to drain the oil and pour a sand solution into the engine and run it to it seizes. Youtube is full of videos now of this procedure being done to these "clunkers":
[youtube.com] (late model Jeep Grand Cherokee getting destroyed)
[youtube.com] (Rather nice looking Oldsmobile Aurora gets trashed)
[youtube.com] (Late model Chevy Blazer/GMC Jimmy getting destroyed)
[youtube.com] (Nice looking Dodge utility van, apparently they just drained the oil on this one)

If you love cars, please don't click on these links:
[youtube.com] (BMW 7-series getting destroyed)
[youtube.com] (late model Volvo S80 with the turbo option and Satellite Nav(?) getting destroyed)

So not only do these cars have to be scrapped, to add insult to injury, when the scrap yards get them the most valuable part of the car (the engine) has been permanently ruined. So as far as I'm concerned, this program is nothing more than a disgusting waste of a lot of perfectly good vehicles in some kind of bizarre bailout for the auto industry by using taxpayer dollars to buy new cars for people who don't need them, and removing perfectly good vehicles from the used car market. There is nothing green about it at all when you consider the environmental costs of replacing these non-clunkers with new vehicles and recycling the carcass.

Posted by Tyler | August 3, 2009 3:27 PM

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Traded in for a more fuel efficient car two years ago. The new car covers about the same number of miles per year as the previous. Driving primarily to work and back, there isn't much variation.

Being a two vehicle family, the other is larger and less fuel efficient. This conversation does get me questioning if we could conserve fuel by switching vehicles depending on which driver will cover more miles that day.

Posted by kennedy | August 3, 2009 3:42 PM

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Did the maximal thing ... ditched a 1993 Ford Explorer (15 mpg rated) for a 2010 Prius (50 mpg rated).

So I can probably do a lot more driving, even though I suspect we won't.

Another factor ... The Prius is actually becoming our number one car, knocking the 2002 Camry (25 or so mpg) to number two. (The Prius will extend the life of the Camry by a few to several more years.)

So the net effect in gallons purchased will be fairly large for our family ... it'll go down by nearly half.

Now, the Prius will use 200 gallons going 10,000 and the Camry will use about 240 to go 6,000. New total: 440. Drop: 45 percent.

One mitigating factor is actually a pro-enviro one: my wife takes the bus to work many days, bikes several, but does need a car regularly. I work from home, but ditto - work-related travel and kids keep us from the one-car life.

The upside is that we keep our cars forever. The Explorer was 17 years old; the '84 Camry it replaced was 16 years old when we let it go. We're hoping our current Camry will last at least that long (ditto the Prius) putting us back in the market around 2020, when cars will be powered by fond wishes.

Posted by David Brauer | August 3, 2009 9:01 PM

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Accidentally deleted a paragraph, which basically said this: Our current gas consumption is about 800 gallons/yr.

Posted by David Brauer | August 3, 2009 9:03 PM

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bsimon: I find it hard to believe that the carbon impact of 2 people driving in one hybrid car is preferable to being 2 of 170 people in an airplane, although I admit that I don't really know what I'm talking about, and could easily be convinced.

Posted by Jason DeRusha | August 3, 2009 10:20 PM

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Jason, if this site:

http://www.motherearthnews.com/Healthy-People-Healthy-Planet/Carbon-Footprint-Calculator.aspx

... is right, our four-person family just enabled the CO2 emission of about half of our yearly driving in one round-trip flight to Seattle.

I have friend who calls these "frequent polluter miles."

Posted by David Brauer | August 3, 2009 10:53 PM

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I think that site is talking about the total impact of an airplane flight, not per passenger. According to Green Progress, "Air travel produces almost as much CO2 emissions per passenger per mile as one passenger driving the same distance alone in a car."

Posted by Jason DeRusha | August 4, 2009 8:39 AM

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I always ask the question of whether replacing something with something that uses less energy is actually worth it. The problem is that the answer is never easy to calculate or understand. And when we have a society made up of so many people who require incoming information to be at most 140 characters or 10 seconds of sound byte, complicated answers take too much time.

Posted by Alison | August 4, 2009 10:52 AM

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