The Cash for Clunkers program, most commonly known as CARS which was supposed to last till the end of October but unfortunately ended on August 24th itself. $1 billion was gone within a fortnight and this success prompted the lawmakers to increase the program by another $2 billion. This way the Cash for Clunkers program increased the sale of environmentally friendly cars and removed the Junkers out of the road. This has also provided a relief to the suffering car dealerships and automobile industry in the U.S.
But there is always the other side of the coin and this program is no exception. The Cash for Clunkers program too has its shortcomings. This improper execution of the program by the government often resulted in overloading and even crashing of the government computers. The information that was conveyed among the consumers and the car dealers were insufficient leading to their frustration. In addition to this, the removal of Junkers from the market led to a loss of business to some mechanics adding to their sufferings. The mechanic shop such as a transmission-rebuilding shop has been shut for almost past two weeks because people preferred to buy or lease a new car over rebuilding their old cars.
All these side effects have added fuel to the discussions, whether the government should bring another CARS program seeing its initial success or not. There is an urgent need of making the reward as a function based on comparison of the efficiencies between new cars and the clunkers. Although the original bill was very strict in terms of mileage requirements but it did not go well and failed to get through the Congress. But this time we should hope to get miles per gallon requirements to be even stricter so that more savings of m.p.g. fetch us better rewards.
We expect that the next edition of the CARS program will encourage more creative provisions for the people working in automobile industry such as conversion of diesel cars into engines run on vegetable oil. This will equip the consumers with an incentive in addition to better efficiency.
The automobile industry has received a much needed boost with such a large amount of cash flowing in as a result of the Cash for Clunkers program. These initiatives in the automobile industry must continue with stricter mileage per gallon and relaxed requirements.
