The Car Allowance Rebate System is a US federal program that helps US citizens to purchase a new, more fuel efficient vehicle when trading in a less fuel efficient vehicle.

Thousands of Americans are rushing out and trading in their old cars to receive a $3500 or $4500 discount towards the purchase of select new cars. This may sound great at first but there are many hidden facts the majority of the population may not be aware of.

• The program is designed to get old cars up to 25 years old with under 18 MPG off the road and replace them with brand new cars that have a higher MPG rating.
• Depending on the age of the vehicle you will ether qualify for $3500 or $4500 off of the purchase price of the new car.
• The old car must have been owned, registered, and insured for the past year.
• The dealer is required to disable the old cars engine by draining the oil and replacing with a water and silica solution, permanently destroying the engine.
• The old car must the crushed and the engine and drivetrain cannot be sold for parts, this prevents the sale of the car in the United States and elsewhere as a vehicle.

Many of the cars being turned in as “Clunkers” to this program are still perfectly fine and are being turned in just so the owner can get a new car, but because the car is required to be destroyed hundreds maybe even thousands of cars are being destroyed. But is this really the best way to get people to buy new cars? Why go to the effort to destroy perfectly fine cars that may only be 4-5 years old.

Let’s say all the cars that went to the program that were newer then say 1998 were taken into a low income car program, helping get the “real clunkers” off the road.

It could work as follows:

• The total household income is less then a certain level.
• Each household would qualify for only one vehicle trade.
• The traded vehicle must need more then $500 in repairs to qualify.
• The car must be less then 35 years old, but mileage does not matter.
• The car must be owned for the last year but is not required to be registered or smogged.

This would help get the “real clunkers” and unsafe cars off the road and help clean up the roads. But why was this not the way the Cash for Clunkers program was designed? We can only guess that it has to do with the fact that the Government has recently bailed out both GM and Chrysler. By requiring people to purchase a new vehicle they are protecting there investments.

Another theory about why they don’t want to have a low income program is “Keep Them Stupid and Poor” consperacy that has been floating around the internet. I think the government has been brainwashing the population, there is so many stupid laws and programs right now and the majority of the population appears to be going along with it.

I see this first hand as I am an unemployed, student. Like many others I have been in search of a job for many months, but because of the current economy there has been very little interest. Another major issue is the cut to education budgets, just this summer I had a class I was attending get canceled after the first week was over because they were two people short of the twenty person quota. I feel that as an American I am not getting what I should, if I pay my taxes I should be able to use that money, and I feel it unfair to allow this program to only benefit the people capable of making monthly car payments. What about the rest of the population?

Since Obama’s election, it’s been very quiet here at Techimoto. In truth, we’ve had nothing much to rant about! Bush has evidently found himself some other hobby than trying to run a country, most likely trying to figure out how the Dewey Decimal System will work in his presidential library and hitting neighborhood yard sales on weekends to pick up a few volumes for the shelves. Cheney still rears his ugly head now and then, uttering some bitter ferocious nonsense regarding how the new guard is ruining everything, but in general, he’s also fading away from our collective 8 year nightmare.

Of course all is not perfect. Republicans still engage in some media spectacles, usually accompanied by shooting themselves a nice collective hole in their foot. The economy stinks for sure. Obama may not have THE answer, but so far, it’s the only one that makes much sense. So forge ahead we must (besides, if Obama’s economic strategy doesn’t work, computers and “blogs” will be a thing of the past; in 10 years we’ll all be busy outrunning howling gangs with painted faces and Mohawk haircuts, intent on robbing us of our precious gallon or two of petro.)

So, where do we go from here? Well, we’ll likely continue to write occasional rants, as we said, the world and our country are far from perfect. And, we’ll continue our “ecological” bent, but with even more with a focus on how it’s applied to modes of transportation (boats, cars, trains and planes). In fact, for the foreseeable future, we will be writing a number of articles on how you, the budget conscious and/or out-of-work average person, can save money by doing-it-yourself when it comes to “pimping out” (now, in these economic hard times, translated as “making into basic transportation”) your boat, car, train or plane.

Author Max Wilson will be doing a series of articles accompanied by useful “how to” pictures and videos about reviving a once DOA Jeep Cherokee. Also soon to come for those of you that can be described as “nautical escapists”, articles from Captain Jimmy about transforming his 1984 41 foot ketch into something that can actually be used as an “escape pod” (that is, escaping in style, without danger to life and limb). Since The Captain is basically professed escapist himself, it will also include some techniques and projects that might contain just a hint of survivalism (example: “Jerry Cans that can Catch Rain Water”).

So, when all is said and done, “moto” means “motion”, so “motion” it is!

Kennington said he’s waiting for better battery technologies, like nickel-metal-hydride and lithium-ion, to become more affordable. Those batteries can provide more power with less weight for increased range, but currently cost $10,000 to $20,000 per set, compared with about $2,000 for lead acid batteries, he said.

Anyone who has basic mechanical skills can build one of these,” Horsley said. “But it takes time,” he said, about three months. Most of that period was spent waiting for the parts to be shipped.

He’s got the motor of his maroon S-10 pickup set up to run on 20 six-volt batteries, the same kind used in golf carts. The motor connects to an existing manual transmission to propel the truck up to 60 mph.

Now, lets talk about “planned obsolecence“.  Hmmm.

The US consumes about 140 billion gallons of gasoline each year. A team of researchers led by John Heywood has completed a five-year assessment of what can be done to slash that and save fuel for the nation.

They looked at how gas and diesel engines, as well as hybrid electric cars and plug-in cars, are likely to evolve between now and 2035. They also assessed what can reasonably be expected from new fuels such as hydrogen and biofuels.

“Improvements” in cars in recent years have largely focused on increasing performance, driven by the demand for ever-larger and more powerful cars. As a result, no significant fuel consumption gains have been realised over the past 25 years, says the team.

They call for car manufacturers to focus efforts on improving fuel savings over performance.

Lighten the load

A seemingly simple way of reducing the amount of fuel used by cars without a big change in consumer preferences would be to produce lighter cars. Heywood’s team estimate that the average US car 25 years from now could feasibly weigh between 20% and 35% less without compromising on security and convenience. This alone would cut fuel consumption by between 12% and 20%.

I’m always amazed to see that one of the obstacles constantly cited by developers of smaller, alternative, and more fuel-efficient cars is that they “don’t pass safety tests”.  Um, how about we reevaluate the safety tests?  Right now it seems to be a demolition derby mentality out there; in other words, who can own and drive the car (read SUV) that can smash into you and sustain little damage.  A kind of “my car can smash up your car” way of thinking when we go out to buy something new. 

So, how about we change the rules.  If everyone were driving lighter cars with less “protection”, then a hit from another car would be relatively OK.  “Relative” is the key word here.  A large heavy car (again, read “SUV”), running into a small car, say a Prius, could be very damaging to the Prius and it’s owner.  However, if most people were driving light, and hence more fuel-efficient cars, then a Prius hitting say a Mini Cooper would be relatively (their’s that word again), OK and undamaging.  So, why don’t we redo the safety rules, giving light weight cars a whole catagory of their own.  This would greatly lessen the bureaucracy that the innovators in transportation have to wade through, thus leading to more fuel efficient cars SOONER.  Make sense?

True, for awhile, until all the SUV’s in the world are retired, it will be a little hairy out there.  But, hey, this state of affairs will be temporary, and the carnage can’t be any worse than Iraq, can it?  And the long range benefits to the death and destruction would be FAR more tangible!

The Compressed Air Car developed by Motor Development International (MDI) Founder Guy Negre might be the best thing to have happened to the motor engine in years.

The $12,700 CityCAT, one of the planned Air Car models, can hit 68 mph and has a range of 125 miles. It will take only a few minutes for the CityCAT to refuel at gas stations equipped with custom air compressor units. MDI says it should cost only around $2 to fill the car up with 340 liters of air!

The Air Car will be starting production this year, thanks to India ‘s TATA Motors.

Once again the “infrastructure” becomes the stumbling block. I can’t help but wonder where all those extraordinary profits are going within big oil. It seems, if our government so chose, that they could mandate that at least a percentage of windfall profit be reinvested in infrastructure. My guess is that it wouldn’t take long to have an air compressor installed in every gas station in the US. Meanwhile we take it in the ear by paying $4 or more per gallon.