Exclusive: U.S. Cash For Clunkers Paid $20.7 Million For Volkswagen Diesels With Faked Emissions

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Last edited Tue Sep 29, 2015, 08:52 AM - Edit history (2)

Cash For Clunkers: the stupidest government program ever. It ensured that inexpensive, running automobiles were made unavailable to people who couldn't afford anything else by destroying them.

With fewer used cars on the market, the prices of the ones not crushed had nowhere to go but up. Poor people were priced out of the market.

Also affected were people who are mechanically adept, not afraid to get a little bit (or a lot) of grime under their fingernails, and averse to spending a lot of money on cars. They too were excluded from the market.

"Cash for Clunkers" is newspeak for "let them eat cake."

Cash For Clunkers Spent $20.7 Million To Sell You Dirty VW Diesels

Raphael Orlove
Filed to: Dieselgate
9/26/15 12:27pm

This might be the ultimate schadenfreude of VW’s diesel cheatery — the US government paid $20.7 million to help Americans get behind the wheel of these NOx-barfing Volkswagens during the Cash for Clunkers program.

The news comes from Yahoo Autos analysts who dug through the data of the 690,114 car sales aided by the $3 billion total Cash for Clunkers program. They concluded that $4,500 rebates were handed out to 4,599 new Volkswagen TDIs, which calculates out to $20,695,500.

This is another part of VW’s bad news, but it looks like even worse news for the already-tarnished legacy of Cash for Clunkers.

You can read the full report written up by Jalopnik Alum Justin Hyde right here.

Exclusive: U.S. Cash For Clunkers Paid $20.7 Million For Volkswagen Diesels With Faked Emissions

Justin Hyde
Managing Editor
September 25, 2015

Cash for Clunkers—the $3 billion U.S. government program from 2009 designed to boost the auto industry by spurring sales of fuel-efficient vehicles—spent $20.6 million helping buyers of Volkswagen diesel cars and wagons now under fire for software that faked their emission tests.
....

In the years since the program, academics have hotly debated whether it actually made economic sense, with several saying the ecological benefits were far less than the costs to taxpayers. At the time, there was little debate about whether to include diesels like the VW Jetta at all, since the focus of the program was on fuel efficiency; those editions of the Jetta diesel were rated for up to 34 mpg in combined city/highway driving.
....

Earlier this week, another analysis by The Los Angeles Times estimated that the government had also provided up to $51.5 million in tax credits to VW diesel buyers under a separate fuel-efficiency promotion. Since the U.S. Internal Revenue Service does not release detailed data on that program, it’s not known how many VW diesel owners actually claimed the credit.

Cash for Clunkers Winds Up Costing $2.9 Billion; Toyota the Big Winner

By Frank Ahrens | August 26, 2009; 12:25 PM ET

The final numbers are in for the federal government's Cash for Clunkers program: Some 690,114 applications were taken for a total cost of $2.9 billion, according to the Transportation Department.

Here are the Top 10 vehicles purchased in the program, which gave new car buyers a $4,500 taxpayer-supplied credit toward purchase. The takeaway is pretty stark: Buyers traded in American vehicles for Japanese vehicles.

1. Toyota Corolla
2. Honda Civic
3. Toyota Camry
4. Ford Focus FWD
5. Hyundai Elantra
6. Nissan Versa
7. Toyota Prius
8. Honda Accord
9. Honda Fit
10. Ford Escape FWD

Here are Top 10 vehicles traded in under the program:

1. Ford Explorer 4WD
2. Ford F150 Pickup 2WD
3. Jeep Grand Cherokee 4WD
4. Ford Explorer 2WD
5. Dodge Caravan/Grand Caravan 2WD
6. Jeep Cherokee 4WD
7. Chevrolet Blazer 4WD
8. Chevrolet C1500 Pickup 2WD
9. Ford F150 Pickup 4WD
10. Ford Windstar FWD Van

The story on mileage:

Average new-vehicle mileage: 24.9 miles per gallon.
Average clunker mileage: 15.8 miles per gallon.
Increase: 9.1 miles per gallon.

[unblock]

1. $20 million out of $3 billion? that's less than 1% of the entire program.

yawn.

[Kelvin Mace]

2. Yep, and VW will certainly have to pay it back

[kimbutgar]

3. Do I guess Fox and right wing media is going to jump on this and attack Obama's program as

A failure now?

Because you know President Obama is destroying this country in right wing world.

[jeff47]

4. Fucking stimulus bills helping people spend money in a down economy!!!!

This attack is really dumb, and ignores the primary purpose of "cash for clunkers" - to stimulate the economy.

[whatthehey]

5. Since the only final criteria were age, price and mpg, mission accomplished

In fact their mpg is much improved over the non-cheat baseline.

[MineralMan]

6. Yeah, so? It got a bunch of gas hogs off the road

and moved many people into more efficient cars. You only have to look at the two lists in your last block of information to see that. Since the cheating on emissions controls wasn't known at the time, and since most of the money was spent on cars other than VW diesels, I'm not seeing your point.

The program had nothing to do with emissions testing. It had to do with getting gas-eating SUVs and Pickups off the road and replaced with more economical vehicles.

[GeorgeGist]

7. Bank robbers steal money ...

press blames depositors.