No Cars Left for Cash for Clunkers

  • Dealers across the country are running out of new cars to sell that qualify for the program. (Photo source: IFCAR at Wikimedia Commons)

Two billion dollars is being added to
the very popular Cash for Clunkers
program. The original one billion dollars
is almost gone. But, Lester Graham
reports, there’s a shortage of new cars
that qualify for the program:

Transcript

Two billion dollars is being added to
the very popular Cash for Clunkers
program. The original one billion dollars
is almost gone. But, Lester Graham
reports, there’s a shortage of new cars
that qualify for the program:

The National Automobile Dealers Association says they’ve been hearing from dealers across the country who’ve been running out of new cars that qualify for the program.

Steve Demers is the General Manager of Cueter Chrysler Jeep Dodge in Ypsilanti, Michigan, a state where Cash for clunkers has been especially popular.

“There’s virtually no vehicles available, so there are other areas in the country that may not be as – the program has not been as popular – so we’re able to pluck some of that inventory out of their states, but it’s a nation-wide problem. I mean, we’re out many, many states away, thousands of miles before we can find a vehicle that can be brought in for one of our custormers.”

Factories are shipping more cars to the dealers but can’t keep up with demand.

185,000 gas-guzzling clunkers have been turned in to be scrapped in exchange for the government incentives.

Car buyers get up to 4,500 dollars toward buying a new fuel-efficient model.

For The Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham.

Related Links

Phantom Traffic Jams

  • A phantom traffic jam is when everyone slows down or stops, but starts to go again inexplicably (Photo source: Crazytales at Wikimedia Commons)

According the the last report from
the Texas Transportation Institute,
traffic congestion in the US causes
more than four-billion lost hours stuck
in traffic and nearly three-billion
gallons of wasted fuel. Lester Graham
reports mathmeticians have found – on
paper – one type of traffic jam looks
something like a bomb going off:

Transcript

According the the last report from
the Texas Transportation Institute,
traffic congestion in the US causes
more than four-billion lost hours stuck
in traffic and nearly three-billion
gallons of wasted fuel. Lester Graham
reports mathmeticians have found – on
paper – one type of traffic jam looks
something like a bomb going off:

Phantom traffic jams are frustrating. You know the kind – traffic slows downs or completely stops, and when you finally get to the end, there’s no wreck, no closed lane – nothing.

Mathematicians at MIT say these phantom jams are a lot like detonation waves produced by explosions.

Morris Flynn is the lead author of the report published in the online edition of Physical Review E.

“You have a single person who taps on their brakes. The driver behind them will over-react, hit their brakes just a little bit harder than the person in front. And this disturbance is just cascaded all the way back so that eventually you get this very rapid deceleration.”

And, phantom traffic jam.

Solutions: more lanes on the highway, and automated signs that warn drivers about slowed traffic ahead.

Or, get more people on mass transit.

For The Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham.

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E-85: The Loneliest Pump

  • This E85 pump is one of two publicly available in the city of Chicago - a city of nearly three million people and dozens of dealerships that sell E-85 compatible cars. The federal government provided incentives to manufacture E85- compatible vehicles, but the fuel infrastructure hasn't kept up. (Photo by Shawn Allee)

If you’ve kicked the tires around
a new car lot recently, your dealer may
have told you about “flex fuel” cars. These
Flex Fuel Vehicles run on gas or they can
burn “E85” – a mix of ethanol and gasoline.
Congress promoted Flex Fuel Vehicles to cut
oil imports, but Shawn Allee reports
on why it really hasn’t helped:

Transcript

If you’ve kicked the tires around
a new car lot recently, your dealer may
have told you about “flex fuel” cars. These
Flex Fuel Vehicles run on gas or they can
burn “E85” – a mix of ethanol and gasoline.
Congress promoted Flex Fuel Vehicles to cut
oil imports, but Shawn Allee reports
on why it really hasn’t helped:

I’m in my car across the street from a gas station. It’s raining right now. Keeping my
distance.

I’ve been watching a pump that dispenses that E85 blend – it’s the stuff with 85% ethanol.

Anyway, this is a very lonely gas pump. I’ve been here for something like an hour and
half and no one’s filled up on E85.

So, I’m gonna head in and talk to a manager to see whether this is normal.

(sound of bell)

Allee: “What’s your name sir?”

McLemen: “Greg McLemen.”

Allee: “How often do you see people fill up on E85?”

McLemen: “It depends on the location. Mostly people just don’t know what it is. They
see a little pump over there that says E85. A lot of vehicles take it, and they don’t even
know it.”

McLemen pulls out a flier that shows which vehicles can use E85.

He says lots of these models pull in, but often pass up his E85 pump.

(sound of crinkling)

McLemen: “You can see most of them are General Motors.”

Allee: “A lot of General Motors – Tahoe, Avalanche, Uplanders.”

McLemen: “We always recommend they go online or check the owner’s manual.”

But there’s something most Flex-Fuel owners manuals don’t tell you.

Nationwide, only about 1% of stations have an E85 pump.

E85 is supposed to cut gasoline use.

So it begs the questions: If there’s not much E85 around, why can so many Flex Fuel cars
use it?

“Currently, auto companies receive a fuel economy credit for producing a flex-fuel
vehicle.”

Environmentalist Roland Hwang tracks car policy for the Natural Resources Defense
Council.

He says the Flex Fuel incentives infuriate him – because they’ve made us waste gasoline,
not save it.

“Just very roughly speaking, like a twenty per mile gallon car might be treated like a
forty mile per gallon, almost like a hybrid-level of efficiency, under these fuel economy
credits. Thereby allowing the auto companies actually to build a less-efficient vehicle
fleet than they would have had to build.”

You don’t have to take Hwang’s word for it – energy analysts in the government agree the
incentives have wasted gasoline.

But some of these analysts say there is a bright side to the Flex Fuel vehicle incentives.

One is Paul Leiby of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

Leiby: “The important side of effect Flexible Fuel incentives is that we actually can begin
to achieve energy security with the enhanced capability to use alternative fuels even if
we’re not yet using them.”

Allee: “You mean the flex fuel vehicle program wastes some gas, but having flex fuel
vehicles around is like an insurance policy, for an oil shock or something?”

Leiby: “That’s exactly right. If we have to do something very fast, within one to three
years, we already have some vehicles on the road, that can quickly switch to ethanol.”

Leiby says Congress really believed this “insurance policy” idea, so it let Flex Fuel
vehicle incentives for automakers go on for more than a decade – even while we were
just spinning our wheels when it came to actually saving gas.

But now, the game could be changing.

Congress is phasing out Flex Fuel credits for the car makers.

And, there’s talk about making all cars flex fuel.

It’s a move Detroit doesn’t want to make. Because then they’ll have to actually have to
meet the government’s requirements of a more fuel efficient fleet.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

Related Links

Watch Where You’re Walkin’

  • Just how easy is it to hoof it in your 'hood? A Seattle software company called FrontSeat created WalkScore.Com. The programmeers claim the site indicates whether a neighborhood offers residents enough amenities to get out of their cars. They hope people will consider the site's "walkability" scores when choosing a place to live. (Photo by Shawn Allee)

Picking a place to live can be a huge
environmental decision. Some people argue
if you can walk to everything you need, you’ll
stay out of your car, and that will cut air
pollution. But how do you compare how ‘walkable’
one place is to another? Shawn Allee looks at a Web site that aims to make that a breeze:

Transcript

Picking a place to live can be a huge
environmental decision. Some people argue
if you can walk to everything you need, you’ll
stay out of your car, and that will cut air
pollution. But how do you compare how ‘walkable’
one place is to another? Shawn Allee looks at a Web site that aims to make that a breeze:

When urban planners want to know exactly how ‘walkable’ a neighborhood is, they
commission a study, and get results in weeks or months.

One computer programmer says this approach is poky.

“And so we built a piece of software that would let anyone look up to what they
could walk to from their address.”

Matt Lerner helped build a Web site called Walk Score dot com.

You don’t have to be an urban planner to use it.

Anyone can just type in an address, and …

“We tell you all the closest schools, parks, retail stores, so you can see exactly what
that neighborhood looks like.”

Walk Score dot com also spits out a number between zero and a hundred.

If a place scores above ninety, the site calls that a ‘walker’s paradise’.

Lerner says the computer ignores stuff like weather and hills, but there’s a reason behind
that.

“Research on why people walk has shown the number one predictor of whether
people will walk is whether there’s something good to walk to.”

This is all well and good, but does Walk Score dot com work?

I want to test it out – so I ask Lerner to score a Chicago neighborhood close to me.

“If you look at Logan Square, you can see it has a walk score of 86. So if you’re
living near Logan Square, you can get by without driving very often, or even owning
a car perhaps.”

Really?

I head to Logan Square and ask people, does the neighborhood deserve the high score?

Resident: “Yeah, we’ve got a movie theater, a grocery store, restaraunts and bars.”

Resident: “Yes, you can really minimize your use of a car.”

Resident: “Everything’s close – even jewelry stores, furniture stores, grocery stores.
It’s pretty easy to get around walking.”

Most of the people I speak to say the Web site’s pretty much got it right. This is a
very walkable neighborhood. But there’s an activist who works on making the
neighborhood more walkable. He’s not convinced the web site’s got it 100% right.
He says it leaves out some things, for example, this:

(sound of dog barking)

“You’re talking about kids walking to school? That house, that’s a barrier.”

And, Ben Helphand says the Web site doesn’t just miss dogs. It misses other things
that intimidate walkers.

“They should factor in these things that are known to decrease the walkability of the
neighborhood, a big gas station complex, a drive-through bank which is right
behind us.”

Shawn Allee: “Only because they’re hard to walk by, because cars are coming in
and out?”

Ben Helphand: “And because they disincentive people getting out of their cars,
because they’re designed to keep people in their cars.”

The programmers admit the Walk Score site leaves out a lot. Helphand says he’s a
fan of the site, it’s just that it’s tailored to one purpose.

“Their real target audience is people who are moving or relocating and they want
walkability to be a factor in that choice.”

Helphand says the site gives the impression that people interested in walkability have
only one choice to make – where to live.

He wants them to make lots of choices over time.

He wants them to fix bad sidewalks, tame scary dogs, and support zoning laws that favor
walking over driving.

Helphand says if that happens enough, we can make new walkable neighborhoods – not
just rank ones that already exist.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

Related Links