September 25, 2009
A 15 mpg vehicle, driven 12,000 miles per year uses 800 gallons of gasoline.
A 25 mpg vehicle, driven 12,000 miles per year uses 480 gallons a year.
Thus, the average clunker transaction will reduce US gasoline consumption by 320 gallons per year.
They claim 700,000 vehicles were purchased to replace old ones- so that's 224 million gallons / year.
The government subsidies were between $3500 and $4500 per vehicle, an average of $4000.
About 50% of a barrel of oil can be made into gasoline so we will save less than 5 million barrels of oil.
5 million barrels of oil equates to about ¼ of one day's US consumption.
At $75 per barrel, 5 million barrels of oil costs about $375 million dollars.
Therefore, at $4000 for 700,000 vehicles taxpayers contributed $2.8 billion to save $350 million.
Someone should have done the math.
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