Cash for Clunkers is DONE!

Wow, a couple of days after the full rules are announced and CARS formerly know as cash for clunkers is tapped out, run dry....outta cash!! Now they just have to find places to dispose of these cars in a nice 'green' way!

Thankfully I Don't Have a Coal Powered Car

The smog in major cities is bad enough, imagine if there was clouds of coal soot drifting around, my guess is the average age most folks would live to would be 45. Let's think back to December 1979, coal was the buzzword when Popular Mechanics covered "fuel for the future." Scientists in Germany had developed the Bergius method in 1913 to create a synthetic gasoline from brown coal.
More than 60 years later, market forces made the process appealing. "It is expected that by the late 1980s and early 1990s ... the price of imported oil will have risen enough to make synthetics fully competitive—perhaps even make them attractive," PM wrote.

Today, the search for oil alternatives is a priority for energy companies (see "The Shape of Fuels to Come" in this month's PM) and coal gasification is being studied anew, often in combination with carbon seques­tration. I can just imagine having to clean this baked on soot from used car parts where I work. What a nightmare!

Cash for Clunkers Changed

So it seems the name we all know and love is being changed to something much more boring and diplomatic....Cash for Clunkers is officially changing to Car Allowance Rebate System, which does translate into a good acronym though, CARS!

So from a neat name to a cool acronym it is, and here are some of the details:

President Obama signed into law a program the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is calling the Car Allowance Rebate System (CARS). This is a federal program that helps you purchase a new, more fuel efficient vehicle when you trade in a less fuel efficient vehicle.

While the CARS Act makes transactions on and after July 1 potentially eligible for credits under the CARS program, interested dealers and consumers may want to wait until all of the detailed issues that must be addressed in the implementing regulations are resolved and the final rule is issued. Issuance will occur around July 24.

I think I liked cash for clunkers better but I think CARS will grow on me, the bottom line is that if you want to get rid of your old junker you should take advantage of this new program and help make the world a better place.