I’ve heard of this new plan they rolled out today and have a question.
If I want to get rid of my 2004 Ram 1500 am I REQUIRED to trade the vehicle in or can I sell the vehicle outright and still get the $4500 or whatever? This doesn’t sound like a great deal since I could sell my vehicle privately and probably get 15-20% more for it.
This seems to give the dealers alot of power over the value of my truck.
Is there any way to take advantage of this without basically taking whatever the dealership will give me?
If your vehicle is worth more than $4500, then there is no point is participating in this program.
If it is worth less, then you should negotiate a new car deal with the dealer before you even mention that you’re going to do a trade-in. Then add the clunker to the mix.
And here’s a site that tells you if the car you want to get rid of is even eligible for the program. Among other things, the vehicle has to get less than 18 m.p.g.
Ah shit. I thought it was $4500 + trade-in value. Stupid me. I guess that makes sense though.
I’m trying to figure out who all the people are who have vehicles made after 2002 or so that get less than 18mpg and are worth less than $4500. Those would have to be some seriously beat to shit cars/trucks.
I guess there is no incentive for me to get rid of my truck then eh?
Here is what I don’t understand about the program. If I have a truck that gets 14mpg, I can turn around and buy a new truck that gets 19mpg and I get the full $4500.
But if I have a car that gets 20mpg and trade it in on a car that gets 45mpg, I get no credit at all? Sounds like the govt. in action
It may seem counter-intuitive, but replacing the low-MPG truck may result in more savings than replacing the relatively high-MPG car. See this article about a study by two Duke University professors for more info. From the article, “Because vehicle fuel efficiency is non-linear, the authors point out, replacing an old rust bucket that gets 16 miles per gallon with a car that gets 20 miles per gallon will reduce your energy costs and reduce climate change-inducing emissions more than replacing a 34-MPG car with a spiffy 50-MPG hybrid model. Assuming that the average person puts 10,000 on their odometer per year, upgrading to your 20-MPG car will save about 31 gallons of gasoline over a switch to a 50-MPG hybrid, they wrote.”
Fair enough, but it still doesn’t change the fact that I started with a more fuel efficient vehicle than what the truck owner is TRADING for, but he gets full credit and I get zero.
I guess I should have been less fuel conscious a few years back and bought a gas guzzler.
I’m completely sympathetic, as I own a 1994 Honda Accord that gets 22MPG according to the fueleconomy.gov website so I don’t qualify either, although I’d like to get $4,500 to help pay for a replacement vehicle. But on the bright side, by owning a fuel-efficient car all this time, you and I have been saving money and polluting less than the owner of a gas guzzler.
The point of the program is to get the serious gas guzzlers off the road. If your car is 20 mpg, then it’s not really a gas guzzler and they don’t care about it.
But if it was 19mpg, then it would be a “serious gas guzzler” worthy of a $4,500 federal subsidy?
Actually my car probably only gets about 15mpg because it is in really bad shape, but since it was originally rated for 20, then it isn’t covered. So, a finely tuned car getting 19mpg qualifies, but my piece of crap really only getting 15mpg does not qualify.
The limit is 18 MPG. I just used the government site to determine if I qualify, and they say my 1999 Toyota Sienna van is rated at combined 19 MPG, so I don’t qualify. :rolleyes:
I hate to quibble, but there is no dual purpose. It was designed to subsidize auto dealerships and manufacturers. The public wouldn’t fall for anything else called a “stimulus” or a “bail out” so they wrapped the hook in environmental propaganda to get enough of us to swallow it.
Quibble - For minivans and the like its “18 or less” - not “less than 18”. That matters if your vehicle, like ours, is an 18.
Also FWIW the program could run out of $$ in the first week. (I am told) As of Monday there were at least 16,000 dealerships registered, and if each had only one deal lined up at an average of $4000, that’s over $60M already gone. And our ‘mid-size’ dealership had 32 clunker deals lined up as of last Friday.
Even if you and Dag Otto are right, the incidental consequence of getting more high mileage cars on the road is surely a good thing.
As for the 19 mpg truck, trucks are notoriously bad for mileage, but they are a necessary vehicle for many occupations and so can’t really be pushed aside like the H3 can. If the only improvement we can make in that area is to push the 10-13 mpg trucks up to 18-20 mpg, that works for me. It’s still a huge cut in fuel consumption.
I saw a news story last week where some “expert” said the rules were so complex that many people would not bother to participate, guess they got that way wrong.
Just heard on the news this afternoon that the program may be shut down at midnight tonight. It is looking like it may be a bit of a screwup. Evidently the instructions the dealers must read and follow before submitting the paperwork for reinbursement run to 168 lawyerly written pages. A large number of dealers have already sold cars to customers based on the government cash they expected to get, and now are finding that their submittals are being rejected because they didn’t follow the requirements clearly stated in paragraph 16.4-sub paragraph H, clause 14, or some such thing. The fear among the dealers is that the program is going to be halted before they get the paperwork submitted satisfactorily, and they are going to be stuck for the amount they gave the customer. As many dealers have up to hundreds of deals on the line, there is a real fear of bankruptcy.
And this plan was written by the same folks we expect to save health care? God save the republic.