lolwhat

[solarbird]

Data from Yahoo! Finance, chart from The Mess that Greenspan Made,
pointed out to me by cow

Comments

[anfalicious.livejournal.com]

What are they doing with these cars? Does this mean there's going to be a whole lot of cheap Ford Explorers for sale?

[gfish.livejournal.com]

No, they're getting junked. That's the whole point, to remove older, less fuel efficient vehicles from the road. It wouldn't be my first choice, since people are still driving afterwards, but it's looking to be one of the simplest, fastest, and most voter-friendly carbon reduction schemes ever tried on a mass scale. Woot!

[whip-lash.livejournal.com]

It wouldn't be my first choice, since people are still driving afterwards, but it's looking to be one of the simplest, fastest, and most voter-friendly carbon reduction schemes ever tried on a mass scale.

I guess this depends on whether you look at the carbon necessary to produce a new car as a sunk cost or not. I heard a bit on NPR the other day suggesting that the amount of time it would take for fuel efficiency gains to make up for production carbon cost would in the majority cases exceed the lifetime of the car, making the program a net CO2 emitter.

It seems to me that those cars would have been produced regardless (car inventories were already high) but I'm not sure whether that's the way to look at it.

[gfish.livejournal.com]

Eh, I've mostly decided to worry about issues like that when we finally come up with a standard way of measuring them. But we can't even come up with a solid number for the carbon footprint of cheese, much less something as complicated as a car. Until then, I'm going to say getting people into more fuel efficient cars is a win.

[whip-lash.livejournal.com]

Fair enough.

[solarbird]

CARBON FOOTPRINT OF CHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEESE!

[sarakate.livejournal.com]

CO2 isn't the sole environmental issue, either. You're also reducing fuel consumption, and significantly reducing emissions of NOX and particulates, levels of which are major issues for a lot of cities. Obviously one could also achieve similar ends by things like improving mass transit options, thus getting people out of their individual cars altogether, but this is a step, and one that's short-term effective instead of just long-term effective.

[epawtows.livejournal.com]

The engines have to be destroyed; most common technique is to fill the crankcase with a goo that hardens into a ceramic, and run the engine until it seizes. That renders the engine block and major components unusable; it's theoretically possible to undo the damage to some components, but it would never be cost-effective for an old engine.

The *rest* of the vehicle can still be solid for scrap (windows, suspension bits, drivetrain, etc). I believe the origonal 'cash for clunkers' bill called for the transmission to be destroyed too (probably by replacing the transmission fluid with the same goo) but that was deleted due to pressure from used-car-parts dealers, on the grounds that those are the only parts of an old car worth much.

Technically, though, it makes a bit of sense: if you wreck so much of the vehicle that they loose money disposing of the remains, junk dealers won't take them. You'll either have to pay the dealers to dispose of the remains, or worry about them dumping the hulks in the nearest lake (or worse, both).

[shadesofmauve]

Thanks for the explanation! I was wondering what would happen with them.

[denelian.livejournal.com]

how is this better than re-tooling the engines for use in different vehicls (tractors or something), or even just melting them down and re-using the metal?
one of the reasons i will never buy a new car is because i *aapprove* of used cars - the best way to recycle is to reuse, ya know?
i figured that the engines would be retooled to be more effecient...
just. wow.

[epawtows.livejournal.com]

The destroyed engines (with the ceramic goo) generally *are* melted down for the scrap iron; the ceramic would float to the top of the melt and be skimmed off as part of the normal iron-making process. Scrap iron isn't worth much these days, with industrial activity being so low.

There isn't much of a market for a old vehicle engine as anything other than as a replacement engine for a similar vehicle. If you have an old engine from a 1985 Ford Bronco, about the only way to make money with it is to put it in another mid-80's Ford Bronco (or possibly some other Ford truck of the same era that used the same engine) whose origional engine has failed.

Turning them into tractor engines is a neat idea, but it would not really work. Trying to rebuild an old auto engine for another purpose is going to take almost as much energy and effort as building a new one, particularly given that nobody knows in advance what the old engines will be, and it probably will be less efficient than a new one designed for whatever it is you want the engine for (And you can always use the melted scrap as the raw materials for the new one). Amateur gearheads will do things with old engines (mainly put them in cheap race cars) but that's an insignificant market.

The whole "cash-for-clunkers" thing has two main goals: reduce emissions by getting older vehicles off the road, and to increase employment as new cars need to be built to replace the junked old ones. Both goals are circumvented if the old engines are used to repair a similar car; you might as well have kept the original one around. The goals are partially circumvented because the old cars are not completely destroyed, but that was part of the political trade-offs made to allow the program to exist.

Feel free to agree or disagree with those goals or how suitable 'cash-for-clunkers' is at accomplishing them; that's politics. I'm not talking politics, my field is engineering and mechanics.

[denelian.livejournal.com]

i think it was sort of misunderstanding the goal of the program...
i mean, i knew it was to get "rid" of clunkers, but i thought it was also about finding a new use for the turned in stuff.
and i have absolutely NO clue where i got that, because i have looked around, and everything i thought i read about doesn't exist. so, um... i guess i just made it up somewhere? or maybe someone told me that they were going to recycle stuff. i am on a *lot* of pain meds, so my memory is sort of iffy right now...