this post was submitted on 20 Nov 2023
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Hm, sorry if I missed a section. It seems to be only about trading in old cars for a credit toward a new one. I was suggesting paying people to retrofit existing vehicles to be EVs.
Bingo. Indeed you caught on to the problem with this rebate program.
The article fails to mention that retired cars worldwide go to Africa, where the average age of a car at the time of purchase is 21 years. So the clunkers continue to emit GHG and EV buyers falsely assume they’ve done something good for the planet. They only move the emissions from the US to Africa.
In that whole article, there is only ONE sentence that covers where the clunkers go:
Sounds encouraging, but it’s hard to be convinced that they are actually melting down the metals. I want direct 100% reassurance that they are doing the right thing. In fact, melting them down is only the right move if the frame is trash. If the frame and everything apart from the engine and transmission is good, the environmentally sound approach is to convert them to an EV (to thwart the purchase of a new EV). And for engines that are still good, the best move is to convert them to power generators which would only be used during power failures.
I’m skeptical because if they really are just melting the metals, I would think the revenue is only enough to cover the wages of the scrap workers.. not sure about scholarships. But say it’s true that there is spare money in the end. It should go to cycling infrastructure, not cars in any way.
#fuckCars
Currently, that's more expensive than buying a brand new car
I believe it. All the retrofits I've seen seem to be highly custom and/or for classic cars. If someone developed a standard procedure for converting Honda Civics for example, I thought there could be savings and it would make a decent impact since they're so common.
I also think some people would be more receptive to an "upgrade" rather than a full on trade-in. People can get attached to their cars for reasons other than economics.
There are companies that specialize in doing the conversion to EV. So indeed the gov rebate could theoretically be to cover the cost of that. I think $6k would be sufficient budget.