What did they pour in the engines of cash for clunkers cars? (2024)

Quote from: nctnico on March 03, 2018, 11:21:21 pm

IMHO this is a prime example of wasting perfectly good cars which could have served people in lesser developed countries.

It also happened to remove many pre-engine-management-computer cars from use. Resulting in more rapid market share gain for cars with mandated computers, GPS and always-on GSM modems.

In other words, cars that will support future government moves towards pay-to-drive, monitoring of vehicle movements, and ability to remote-brick vehicles if the owner does anything the government doesn't like. Not to mention the ability to remotely hack and cause the car to 'suicide' the driver at will, a la Michael Hastings.

See Also

Surprise! 'Cash For Clunkers' Was Really Bad For The Environment‘Cash for Clunkers’ stimulus program actually hurt automakers, study says – Research@Texas A&MWhat to Do if Your Car Fails its Smog CheckHow Long Does It Take To Buy a Car? [2024 Update] | FINN

The good news for me: I just finished getting major repairs and blue slip registration done on my 1993 model pre-computer Subaru, and it's back onroad.

In the meantime I had been driving a couple of other newer cars, one very new. A Mazda 'sky-active' model. It talks to you. Human female voice. No way to shut it off. I find it utterly insufferable, highly distracting and disturbing, and would never, ever purchase such a car. Even if I was stupid enough to want to buy a new car, as opposed to a minimal outlay old car that doesn't matter if I scratch up the interior, or get dings in the outside on rough roads.

The new Mazda also has the absurd driver distraction of a large bright LCD screen top-center in the dash. Which I solved by permanently draping a black cloth shopping bag over it. And don't get me started about 'iStop' engines and no-key electronic fobs.

Fortunately that's mostly untrue, as few cars of the cash for clunkers era could be remotely disabled like that. They might have all had computers, but not all had GPS, GSM modems or Internet connectivity. Even the cars which have all of that aren't designed to be remotely disabled, although I'm aware that attack vectors do exist, which can do that with some models.

The program was criminally wasteful. The requirements were pretty clearly designed not to remove "clunkers" from the road, but to destroy as many perfectly good used cars as possible as a thinly veiled bailout for the auto industry. Most of the people driving the true clunkers could not afford to buy a brand new car even with the rebate, it was mostly middle and upper middle class people turning in good used cars to buy something new with marginally better fuel economy. It drove up the cost of the remaining used cars, keeping quite a few polluting worn out old clunkers on the road.

I have a very big moral issue with the act of deliberately destroying good stuff just to keep it out of someone else's hands. Those responsible for creating the cash for clunkers program should be removed from society and locked up.

I agree. There was a similar scheme here in the UK a few years ago and it resulted in some very expensive historical cars being scrapped, for no reason.

People say how wastefull that is but that was nothing compared to haliburton in Iraq. They would buy a $120,000 18 wheeler and not buy any oil filters or spare tires for it. When it needed an oil change or got a flat tire they would torch the whole truck in $4.00 a gallon marked up gasoline and bill the tax payers for a new one under a "cost plus" contract. So they would spend $120,000 plus a 25% bonus of $29,000. So a hundred dollar tire would cost tax payers almost $150,000 or the cost of food stamps for 729 people for one month. They did that with EVERY thing costing almost a trillion dollars. Cash for clunkers was nothing.

I haven't seen any figures, but would suspect the value of cars scrapped in the US, exceeded the waste in Iraq, unless you're talking about the whole war, which is more plausible.

In the UK we have threats that diesel cars may be banned from city centres. This after diesels were heavily promoted as being 'lower pollution' (Meaning CO2) and given all sorts of tax breaks. Many people also looked towards biodiesel as a greener form of transport. So basically it's a vicious backstab for people who thought they were doing the right thing by the environment.

Yet, if you check the official DEFRA figures you find that transport pollution levels have consistently fallen during the diesel sales boom era. It doesn't add up.

I don't think there is any doubt that the Green Party, the main people behind this along with Greenpeace etc, are being given backhanders by the auto industry. In an about-face from their previous obsession with bicycles they are now heavily promoting battery cars. Go figure.

I guess they realise the climate scam is nearing its end, so they need another source of funding.

http://iwrconsultancy.co.uk/blog/diesel

I don't think that was intentional.

Climate change due to increased CO₂ is very real and is a separate issue to air pollution. The problem was, no one foresaw the diesel emissions scam. Diesel engines are more efficient, than petrol engines and produce less CO₂, per mile, so were given tax breaks. Regulators thought they had dealt with the higher emissions, with more stringent regulations. The problem was manufactures cheated, which forced the authorities to clamp down on them.

I disagree with banning diesel cars outright, because it would increase waste and which wasn't what was originally intended. The original policy was to ban the manufacture of diesel cars, not stop people from driving them. Unfortunately some city authorities have decided to ban diesel cars from their streets, which will result in more wastage.