Friday, January 21, 2011

Clunker Math

The person who calculated this bit of information went to high school
in Pittsburgh, Pa.
He is now & has been a professor at The University of West Virginia
in Morgantown, West Virginia for the last forty some years.

I never looked at the clunker program in such depth.


Clunker Math

Think of it this way: A clunker that travels 12,000 miles a year at
15 mpg uses 800 gallons of gas a year. A vehicle that travels
12,000 miles a year at 25 mpg uses 480 gallons a year. So, the
average Cash for Clunkers transaction will reduce US gasoline
consumption by 320 gallons per year.

They claim 700,000 vehicles so that's 224 million gallons saved per
year. That equates to a bit over 5 million barrels of oil. 5 million
barrels is about 5 hours worth of US consumption.
More importantly, 5 million barrels of oil at $70 per barrel costs
about $350 million dollars So, the government paid $3 billion of our
tax dollars to save $350 million.

We spent $8.57 for every dollar we saved.

I'm pretty sure they will do a great job with our health care, though.

7 comments:

  1. Well now, me be'un a CFO (Cain't Figger it Out) dude and all, I deduce your cypherin' sure adds up two some well balanced truth.

    But cha got me 2 wonderin',,,? Iffen we'z now procuring 224 million less gallons of gasolean what happens when the Feds and States lose the gas tax revenue? Don't they understand the infrastructure of the hi-ways (no I'm not smokin') and bye-ways (yah waving that to me yet) re-lie on those bucks (wuz that a bigot thought?) to really fix dem divots we swerve wrecklessfully to avoid?

    Wait a minute, (ok wait alotta minutes we acctng folks sure take our own sweet time to tell yah sales folks what cha already know) I got it all figgered out.

    Since that dare campaign promise about shovel ready jobs ain't been digging no dirt to date, I conspearitorily conclude that the pot holes are left to grow so dat Obama dude can send out the shovel leaners to stand around doing nuttin and therebye-bye drive down the unemployment numbers so he can git re-elected 4 a nudder dun nothing productively term in office.

    Good morning, time to wake up.

    ReplyDelete
  2. oh you are good MOW. They are raising the revenue by raisng the gas prices. Or maybe they are doing it so's that we all switch to electric cars to help boost the newest company cahoots with the White House- Governmnet Electric.
    Ah-So.

    ReplyDelete
  3. My husband was pretty much explaining it the same way back when it was going on. So Stupid!!!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Not to mention all the gas guzzling pick up trucks that were purchased as part of the program. I cannot find the statistics anymore but I read the majority of new vehicles purchased were not as "green" as they had planned. *shakes head*

    ReplyDelete
  5. hey DT thanks for the visit. I keep hearing things about government programs on the radio.
    Like the rebate if you put solar panels on your house. If you have the 50,000 to install them. If you can afford them then I don't believe they need a 5,000 rebate just to ad to the government tab.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Sounds like my wife's shopping math!

    ReplyDelete
  7. Sounds good in theory right Joe. She wasn't going to buy but it was on sale.

    ReplyDelete