Cash For Clunkers Results… What the Numbers Look Like

Now that the Cash For Clunkers program has come to an end the question on my mind is.  Let’s look at the Cash for Clunkers results to try to see if it will it actually have an environmental or economic impact? While the long term effects might take some time to determine, from the numbers I’ve been seeing it seems like it, at the very least, helped on the short term side of things. 

According to the Cash For Clunkers Environmental Impact Survey;

• Average Clunker MPG: 17MPG
• Average NEW car MPG: 24MPG
• Average miles driven annually: 15,000
• Destroyed Clunker drinks 882 gallons of gas a year
• New, replacement car drinks 625 gallons of gas a year
• Cash for Clunker Program saves 257 gallons of gas each year, per unit sold.
• c4c Sales Estimate: 750,000 units

If you were to equate this out, you’d end up with 193 million gallons of gas saved each year. In other words,  4.6 million barrels of oil.

Undoubtedly, Cash For Clunkers results are good in that the program has taken off some vehicles from the road that definitely no longer belong there. But at the same time, the program processed some very nice vehicles that people could have used. In any case, the program didn’t seem to have too many negative effects and the positive is looking to outweigh the bad. Sales have gone significantly higher as far as dealerships go, Runde’s can attest to this as we have seen a significant increase of traffic throughout the programs run.

So it helped the automotive recession, got rid of some nasty cars from being on the road and gave some people a nice new ride, as of this point, regardless of the negative effects,  I would call the program a success. We will be sure to keep you updated whenever new information is released as to the affects of the Cash For Clunkers program.