One of the problems with trying to look at the long term fuel situation in the U.S. is that most of the costs for a typical middle-class motorist are independent of the mileage driven, and largely independent of the type of vehicle, as westexas has pointed out. My own car has a long term average of 28 mpg. My wife's SUV has a long term average of 20 mpg. Yet the majority of the annual costs for both cars are very close to the same: insurance on my car is slightly higher (because it is a VW, which costs more to repair than her Ford); depreciation on her car is higher, because it is newer; maintenance on my car costs more, because it is older and is a VW; and the difference in fuel consumption is pretty much down in the noise level. Doubling the miles we drive with either car (or doubling the fuel cost) does not make much difference.

Now where fuel consumption (and price) really makes a difference is at the low end of the socioeconomic spectrum. The average motorist in this group does not buy insurance; does not renew his registration; and either does his own maintenance or neglects maintenance entirely until the vehicle dies. Such a motorist did not buy a new car under the cash-for-clunkers program. He or she never dreams of owning a new car of any kind. He buys the cheapest used car he can find. A vehicle costing $500 might only last for 10,000 miles before it dies completely, but that is only $0.05 per mile. If the same vehicle only travels ten miles on a gallon (which is quite likely, because the cheapest vehicles these days are 20-year-old gas guzzlers), the cost per mile is $0.25 for fuel, and that's nearly all of the costs.

I don't know where people keep getting the idea that the price of car fuel is such a big huge deal, but these numbers show - yet again - that while it may be a problem for some, for most it isn't. They also show one of the reasons why raising the price of gas/diesel has so little effect on consumption - it has little effect on overall cost.

And the numbers also show - yet again - why public transit is such a joke in terms of both utility and level of provision. The per-mile cost of riding a local bus is in much the same ballpark, and appears cheaper only because taxpayers pay for most of the fare and all of the heavy wear-and-tear on the streets. Factor in the time cost - where I live, a 20-minute drive is often a 90-minute or more bus trip if there's even a bus available near the time it's needed - and driving would often becomes cheaper enough to be a no-brainer even if the taxpayers gave away bus rides for free as they do in a few places.

Now, should availability of car fuel become an issue, there may well be another story to tell. One might guess for starters that many of the remaining civic organizations would atrophy or close because, with roundtrip time raised, say, from 40 minutes to 3 hours, there simply would no longer be enough hours available in a day to travel both to work and to a civic gathering or meeting. But that's not yet...

A recent study put the total cost of driving a Honda Civic at $0.50 per mile, assuming 10,000 miles per year.

I don't know exactly where you got that number from, but my guess the $0.50 per mile is mostly depreciation, and they are assuming you get rid of the car when it's only 5 years old or so, over which time the depreciation is the worst.

Let's assume the Civic in you example costs $20,000 and will have a vehicle lifetime of 150,000 miles. I'll throw a made up number of $5000 lifetime maintenance in there. And, assuming your stated 10,000 miles a year (which is currently well below average), the car would last 15 years to 150,000 miles. I'll say $1000 a year for insurance. (Probably above average)

Vehicle lifetime costs are $20,000 for the car purchase plus $5000 maintenance plus $15,000 insurance plus $12,500 for gas based on your numbers totals $52,500 for 150,000 miles, or 35 cents a mile, not 50 cents.

Your point still stands. 8 cents per mile out of a total of 35 cents a mile to operate the vehicle is still a relatively small part of the total cost. My only point is that I think the $0.50 a mile average cost is unreasonably high for the lifetime of the car.

FMagyar you say

we *CAN'T*!!!

Why not? As long as there is fuel and cars this will continue.

I really like driving around and because I have a car I see no reason to change my habbits.

While I drive I think about stuff like this:

Central Banks, pie, money, upfront energy, history,internet.

Central Banks were created to help our gouvernments to run our sociëty.
It took us from the first bank until 1951ad to stabilize the system and make it what it is today.

Sharing the pie is what this is all about, sharing needs a controller and present day US were given that honour after ww2.
Offcourse "friendly" Central Banks got more pie than others and this has lead to some tentions between nations.
But nowadays most central banks comply to the rules. Because the pie is getting smaller and more nations have joined the party. Democratizing surplus resource nations have helped to increase/stabilize the pie in the last 20 years. But it seems like things are peetering out at this point.

When everybody is already sharing there is no need to go there and take it. Also keep in mind that war is some sort of investment which needs a lot of (upfront) energy. So if going there cost more than you can take....why make the effort?
Have we ever invaded a country for their "paper"money?

The whole world has been explored and there isn't much left. The remaining energy is very expensive (papermoney or upfront energy?,take your pick!) to develope.

To conclude: A lot of our present day actions and thoughts originated a long time ago. We have made small and big steps all along the way, some were bright ideas others were just improvements of those bright ideas. It took us centuries to get here and if we don't change thinking we can lose this in a few years. (unplug your home from the grid is a nice way to explore this)
The internet gives us the "power" to figure this out and our journey hasn't ended yet. As long as there are places like this (tod) and many other places where creative thinking takes place combined with accumulated data reports, history and some common sense. I see no reason why we can't come up with something new. Changing our way of thinking costs nothing! But it can save a lot of energy. This energy we can use to ..... ahh something sustainable for the next 60 years would be a nice start.

For people in the denial pfase or already in the depression phase, I would like to add this thought:
Is our future about all the things we won't have.
Or can we shift towards thinking about all the things we can have.

It's (y)our choice.

Gotta go I need a haircut.

I strongly agree.The older cars and trucks traded were mostly well past the point at which they were in regular daily use according to local gossip in the trade-the lawyers and bankers treded in thier elderly hunting and fishing and second and third property utility vehicles-notably a pickup in one case that was kept on "standby duty "on a local farm and was driven less than once a month for the last ten years or so.The cash value of that old truck was probably not over eight hundred dollars.

Some others were on thier very last legs and in need of repairs that would have necessarily resulted in being scrapped anyway.We considered treading our ninety two Ranger truck-and the salesman was very clear-as long as the paper work was in order the dealer would send a tow truck-about the only thing that mattered was that it be more or less complete-the engine transmission and wheels had to be there.

In the end we decided that the Ranger will probably last longer than we will and that we most likely could not recover even a tenth of the net costs of trading up, given that increased property taxes, insurance premiums, and loss of interest income on the purchase money would more than wipe out any potential savings in fuel purchases, leaving only potential savings in maintainence costs to justify the purchase.

But the real crime(other than the additional corporate /big labor/middle class welfare handout) was setting the mileage standard so low-some vehicles that would have remained on he road another year or two at 17 mpg were traded for new ones that get 19 and will be on the road for twenty years or more, and being new, will be driven many many more miles.

If a vehicle traded as a clunker had been kept in service for four or five more yearswhile being driven occasionally and then replaced with a new vehicle, chances are that the 20 14 model really would be a fuel saver.

People not into the industry or short of money simply don't get the fact that older cars and trucks for the most part are not driven a lot of miles in comparison to new ones.

Your local govt agencies, your local businesses, your local farmers, or your local redneck-the situation is the same.If there is and old truck and a new one,the old one sits until both are needed the same day.Ditto the family cars if a family has two or three-you gotta run the new one at least til the warranty is shot and you bought it anyway BECAUSE you wanted to be seen driving it and because it is new and shiny and comfy.The odds are high that the second or third car or truck either sits in the drive or makes the much shorter commute and is reserved for such trips as may dirty or scrath up the new one-trips to the building supply or dump or garden center or a local fishing trip,etc.

Suggesting that the public or dealers have changed buying habits as a result of the clunker of a clunker of a rebate deal is unsupported speculation-people are short of money these days and cutting back in many respects-a smaller and more fuel efficient car or truck purchase is much better explained by this overall trend of economizing across the board.

Bottom line-the whole deal was corporate welfare with a fig leaf of environmental justification.

Spending the same amount of money on subsidizing the energy efficiency of essential public buildings such as schools would have saved a lot more energy over the long run and been fair to everybody.

And GM is finished anyway-all the advertising in the world will not get back the customers who have bought new GM vehicles over the last couple of decades and wish they hadn't.People are buying hondas and Toyotas now because thier big brothers and sisters and friends bought Hondas and Toyotas ten or fifteen years ago and put three hundred thousand miles on them w/o major repairs in many , many cases.

The old brand loyalty died with my parents generation-half the middle aged rock ribbed buy American farmers and construction people my age are driving imports-including me.The 92 Ranger is a good truck but it is not as good as the 84 Toyota, which gets better mileage and costs less to maintain.

If you look at this policy on an individual level that inclusively looks at the embodied energy of materials/labors/fossil fuels, it flunks. I'm especially curious about how the cars were recycled (or not). The policy is even worse if you look at it on a systems level, mostly because it promotes BAU. As a result of this policy, we sell more cars, we re energize and sustain defunct car companies, we redirect future wealth in the form of quantitative easing that could have been used instead to create sustainability in terms of mass transit, we send a message to the populace that sustaining the American way of life is non-negotiable, and we put Americans further in debt both collectively and individually.

Is it possible that most people in this country own their last cars? And maybe the next iteration will be an electric bike? I'm glad we have so many school buses; we're going to need them to expand the bus system in this country when we get our first oil shock.

This was a horrible program:
1. It takes a substantial amount of energy to
build a new car. You need to add this in,
comparing:
a. Energy to build new car plus energy (fuel
use) for new car vs.
b. Just Fuel use for old car.
2. Most of the autos bought would have been
bought anyway, they were just bought a few
month sooner.
3. This substantially raised the cost of
used cars, very negatively impacting the
poor. So you might have the poor continuing to
use a 10 mile per gallon poorly maintained
car--instead of replacing it with a somewhat
better 15 mile per gallon car.

There is a retail sales tax on new vehicles in individual states. For example, the sales tax (not just on vehicles, but on most retail goods) in New York State is just over 8%.

There is also a federal (nationwide) tax called the gas guzzler tax which, contrary to its name, encourages SUV and heavy vehicle sales rather than small light cars.

The retail sales tax is paid to the state and local governments, and it's typically 6-10%. The road tax in UK is called vehicle registration here, paid annually. That varies widely from state to state, but in California it's 1% of the purchase price and depreciated every year.

The federal government will actually lose tax revenues on car sales this year. One of the less well known stimulus programs is the income tax deduction for sales tax paid on new car purchases.
http://www.irs.gov/newsroom/article/0,,id=205863,00.html

It is estimated that the cost for electrifying existing rail($10 million per mile) would cost as much(more) as to build new rail for diesel($6 million per mile).

http://melbpt.wordpress.com/rail-construction-costs/

http://melbpt.wordpress.com/electrification-economics/

The efficiency of Amtrak diesel passenger trains is about the same
as cars going long distance( 2.2 x 18) ~40 passenger miles per gallon. A Prius hybrid with one passenger getting 45 mpg would be more efficient.

During WW2 when there was severe gas rationing and every available seat on trains were taken on trains the efficiency rose to double that of cars(~80 p-m per gal.)

http://www.railway-technical.com/US-fuel-paper.shtml

Figuring out ways to reduce all trips by all means of transit is the cheapest route.

To emphasize your point Earl we had local car dealers running adds offering the same price reduction even if your car didn't qualify for CFC's. Well...da! Except for the very popular models when was the last time a dealer didn't come off the sticker? Great for the dealers: instead of eating the price reduction themselves they got the tax payers to cover it. I bought a KIA before the program started and the dealer had already took $5000 off the sticker before I came through the door. CFC's starts up and they raised the price back up.

The UK scheme has resulted in the second hand value of some cars going up by 30% since it was introduced - so many cars were taken off the road.

My own car (not the sort likely to be bought under from the program) has gained $2000 in value since I bought it second hand in January.

Furthermore, the requirement for the traded-in cars to be scrapped also removes used auto parts from the salvage market, thus increasing the difficulty and price of repairing old cars

Other than having to pour some stuff into the engines to make them unusable, I think the parts were probably removed and added to the used parts inventories.

The post does not state that the clunkers program was a success or failure.

Instead, for the benefit of taxpayers and others, the post investigates any lessons to be learned.

The data in the post shows that the clunkers program appears to have (possibly only temporarily) changed the vehicle efficiency trend of the US even after the program ended. How is that fact in particular a bad thing?

@Iconoclast421, whether the government should have borrowed money to carry out this program is not what the post was about. That it worsens the debt burden is obvious and the payoff for taxpayers is minimal if anything at all. This was stated in the introduction.

The point of the post was to try to show that there was something to learn from the program and it was the change in efficiency which resulted (moreso than when oil hit $147) and may have stuck after the program ended due to the successful negative characterization of inefficient vehicles.

This country is finished if people cannot comprehend these basic principles of finance.

Right.

The average car gets driven 12000 miles per year. The trade-ins were
15 mpg using 800 gallons per year. New car average was 25 mpg using 480 gallons per year. Difference is 360 gallons.
Price of gas is $2.5 per gallon or $900 per year saved.

Average car last 15 years.
The uniform present value factor at 3% discount for 15 years is 11.94. 11.94 x $900 = $10746.

Unfortunately, the government is hurting itself by encouraging
efficient cars as it would be losing the 53 cents per gallon($190 per year) going to the Highway Trust Fund or an additional $2145 over the 15 year lifespan.

The consumer would save ~$10746 but the government would pay $6646 total assuming a $4500 payout.

The government uses a 1.5 multiplier (effect) so they would expect
about $16119 to result from a $10746 investment. If the tax rate is
28% so that's $4513 back to the government per car.

The loser would be the Highway Trust Fund.

The US has been spending roughly an average of $100 billion per year for military expenditures in the middle east since the first Gulf war. I doubt we would spend more than ten bucks to "stop oppression" there if all they had was sand (think Dafur, Rwanda).

The US gets roughly 800 million barrels per year from the Gulf. Do the math - each barrel is costing us $125 in military expenditures.

At 39 gallons of product per barrel, it's about $3.20 per gallon.

Of course, that doesn't apply to the barrels we get from Mexico or Canada, but on the margin it's probably the figure we should look at. And that marginal military cost is likely to go higher when we talk about getting oil out of the 'stans under China's nose.

And what's the debt service on that $100 billion?

Seems like CFC was a bargain to me - and I hadn't even thought about the effect of negative association of "behemoths" with "clunkers".

Have you factored in the potential reduction in oil imports due to the improvement in fuel efficiency? Assuming drivers do not increase traveling, more money will stay in the U.S. The U.S. needs to get its crude oil consumption down to about 5 Mb/d currently to eliminate our dependence on foreign supplies. Cash for Clunkers was a step toward localization.

Thomas-The cars traded in did not have twenty years of lifetime left-and as cars ge older they are driven a lot less as a rule.I didn't save the link but a few days ago somebody here put on e up that said fifty percent of all vehicle miles are put on cars less than six years old, although the average car is much older.

It is precisely decisions which impact gas mileage, oil use and resources which are cold hard reality and far from meaningless to discuss and act on. The trillions of dollars are the illusion.

dougphd -

As I'm sure you are aware, word meaning and usage are constantly changing.

With regard to 'data' being singular or plural, from a purely literal standpoint you are of course correct. However, these days the word data is commonly used to connote a set of information made up of multiple information subunits. So, just as one would say "this collection of information IS of high quality", one can legitimately say "this data IS of high quality". Further reinforcing this point is the fact that the singular form, 'datum', as used to indicate a single piece of information, is rarely used for anything these days. Honestly now, how many scientists do you know would actually say, "we discovered we had a bad DATUM and so did not include it in our graph"?

So, apart from the pedantic style of formal scientific papers, treating the word data as a plural is gradually fading away. This is why I deliberately use data as a singular word (particularly when referring to a specific set or collection of information) even though I know it is technically incorrect.

We are seeing the same thing with regard to the distinction between 'who' and 'whom' in common speech. In casual speech, the use of 'whom' sometimes has a rather stuffy feel to it. This is not necessarily a corruption of good English, as there was a time when the word 'ain't' was considered perfectly good English.

In terms of wealth distribution, the US has been a banana republic for decades. I suspect peak oil will make this more obvious.

I will gladly purchase a few Brooklyn Beers (favorites of mine are their rare 'Black Ops', 'Local 1' and 'Local 2') or alternative local beverage for anyone that visits New York City with a copy the book or if you are a TOD commenter/poster. Email the web site.

Sure enough,Nick-The old drunk economy's hands are shaking but if we pour him another drink or two he'll steady up -a little- for a few minutes.

"Stimulus" is just another word for corporate handout in this case.

We could have had ten times the bang for the buck doing someting useful with the money, and gotten the energy savings right quick by slapping a graduated guzzler tax on the larger vehicles.

For those not in the know-nearly all the three quarter ton four by four trucks sold over the last few years were bought by business owners who were allowed to write them off on a superfast schedule -another "stimulus" for Detriot at every one else's expense.

At least they hit the targeted audience and vehicle squarely that time- the Japanese don't yet sell such trucks here.