Clunker Math

[Byte Stryke]

The person who calculated this bit of information has been a professor at
the University of West Virginia in Morgantown, West Virginia for the last
forty some years. I never looked at the clunker program in such depth----

A clunker that travels 12,000 miles a year at 15 mpg uses 800 gallons of
gas a year.
A vehicle that travels 12,000 miles a year at 25 mpg uses 480 gallons a
year.

So, the average Cash for Clunkers transaction will reduce US
gasoline consumption by 320 gallons per year.

They claim 700,000 vehicles so that's 224 million gallons saved per year.

That equates to a bit over 5 million barrels of oil.
5 million barrels is about 5 hours worth of US consumption.
More importantly, 5 million barrels of oil at $70 per barrel costs about
$350 million dollars. So, the government paid $3 billion of our tax dollars
to save $350 million.
We spent $8.57 for every dollar we saved.

I'm pretty sure they will do a great job with our health care, though.

Small Math/Argument Flaw

A barrel of oil is 42 gallons.
The amount of gasoline that can be distilled from crude depends on where the
crude is obtained. Venezuelan crude yields little gasoline (about 5&#37,
whereas Texas or Arabian crude yields about 30% gasoline. This is called
"straight run" gasoline.
However, the distilled components of the crude oil can be further processed
into gasoline by various other methods (catalytic and thermal cracking,
hydrocracking, catalytic reforming, alkylation, and polymerization) to
yield even more gasoline.
Bob Erck

So as the argument is made it fails to consider Costs and saving in respect to other products manufactured from crude or byproducts and labor costs of the refining process.
This creates fluctuations in supply and demand thus causing fluctuations in market prices of petroleum by-products such as heating oil, engine oil, etc etc...


Not arguing for or against anyone here...
Just saying that the argument as presented is Imperfect.

Cash-for-Clunkers killed the SUV
More interesting Information HERE