As predicted here, the Obama administration is about to buy 17,600 “fuel efficient vehicles” from The Big 2.8. Uncle Sam will spend $285 million of the $787 billion stimulus bill to prop up ailing American automakers. Coincidentally enough, the deal will now go down by GM’s June 1 restructuring deadline. “By swapping out less [Ed. less?!] efficient federal vehicles for new hybrid and fuel efficient ones, this strategy will reduce gasoline consumption by 1.3 million gallons per year and prevent 26 million pounds of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere,” the White House said in a statement. So, you ask, what constitutes fuel efficient? Hybrids? Don’t be silly. The D2.8 don’t have enough production capacity for that action. And the answer is . . . ANYTHING! Just as long as the new vehicles are A) built by Chrysler, Ford or GM and B) at least 10 percent more efficient on average than those being replaced. Whoa! Ten percent! If I worked for any of the transplants, I would be angry as NSFW right now. They did everything right and the government rewards the guys who screwed the pooch. Yes, I know: the governments have been buying domestics for years. But still.
So, in essence, there are only one elligible car in this equation, as so many politically correct politicians have already found out. The Ford Escape Hybrid will replace EVERYTHING.
“swapping out” ? Why not just “swapping” ? More government gibberish.Make it sound like what they’re doing is more important and complicated than what it is.
Just swap, just change, just switch. There’s no need to include the word “out”.
Same thing as “price point”. Redundant and not necessary.
They should buy GM, then technically the federal government would be buying cars from themselves…..
John
10% is setting the bar pretty low.
One of the few niches the Hybrid Tahoe could effectively serve is as a patrol car. Having a beefed up electrical system and significantly better stop-n-go mileage can work. Having a patrol vehicle get 18mpg vs. 12 is a big improvement.
As long as we are giving the D2.8 welfare lets have Ford figure out how to retrofit their hybrid system to postal vans.
Woo! Hoo! A picture from my hometown. Spent many a hot summer there wishing I was growing up elsewhere.
Based on the numbers in your article, that is only $16,193 per vehicle. Must be a lot of Cobalts, etc. in that figure. I said in the beginning, if they want to give money to the domestic car makers, why not buy $10B in cars at msrp and “give” them to the American taxpayers. Two cars (at least) in every driveway.
Well, they may not have to take delivery this month, but they will sure as hell write the check.
It would be great if Ford got all the orders! I can see the Fusion Hybrid as a decent bureaucrat-mobile (they’d have to strip down the trim level considerably. Steel wheels!) and as noted above, the Escape Hybrid should replace every park service vehicle out there.
Re postal vans, I think I read somewhere the USPS is the single largest vehicle purchaser on earth. They have all those funky (Grumman IIRC?) vans running on CNG already…
So let’s see, if their current Dodge Ram gets 10 mpg (like my friend’s 04 did), and the new one gets 11 mpg, we’re green and good. OK.
The tree-huggers should be outraged since the government is passing up opportunities to really reduce pollution and fuel consumption. But here’s a guess – it will be all silence coming from the left, since this helps the Beg 3, the UAW, and we can talk about CO2 reduction in terms of millions of pounds (as if anyone knows what that means).
Oh, and by the way, C02 is NOT a pollutant; it’s tree food. This savings will work out to 1 part in 156 million, in terms of CO2 in the world (yes, I geekly went and calculated it). So maybe we’re getting our money’s worth. Or not.
The Obama economists talk a lot about the multiplier effect from higher government spending. My modest proposal is to buy everything from Chrysler. The multiplier effect on the parts and service industries will be felt for years.
gslippy :
April 9th, 2009 at 4:56 pm
The tree-huggers should be outraged since the government is passing up opportunities to really reduce pollution and fuel consumption. But here’s a guess – it will be all silence coming from the left, since this helps the Beg 3, the UAW, and we can talk about CO2 reduction in terms of millions of pounds (as if anyone knows what that means).
——————————————-
Hmmm, tree-huggers, “the left” and UAW are different people. There are some overlaps, but still different. So, when you make your statement, please make distinction. I consider myself a tree-hugger and I am all for a GM C-7.
It’s like, one American solder was convicted as a rape-murder of a Iraq girl. Can you say that Americans = rapers? No. More than half of them don’t even have the tools.
A quick Google search didn’t yield more detail on the measure of fuel economy, city or highway, one needs to improve on by 10%. However, should be easy to do if the vehicle being replaced is a Tahoe. Will have to look for a good deal on politically incorrect vehicles pulled from government use.
As Lumbergh21 pointed out, it’s 16K per vehicle. Probably not buying Cobalts. So that means, what, they’re buying larger vehicles at cost maybe? Then this is just cranking up production so that less factories are idle and workers are going to work, parts are being built, etc. Vehicles will need replacing anyway and it’s not like that many government vehicles are imports – don’t count confiscated vehicles like the plain vanilla wrapper Nissan Altima I saw pulling people over on the interstate 2 weeks ago. The implants are getting sales from their governments too and likely making profits from those sales (assuming that my earlier unresearched assumption about “at cost” is correct) so there isn’t too much to cry about here. Sure the claims about Japan subsidizing their automakers all along are likely overblown, doesn’t mean the argument is completely without merit.
Bush used the American flag as a protection layer for his own agendas (i.e. anti-terror contracts for Lockheed, no-bid Katrina contracts, secret prisons, etc).
Now Obama is just using “green” as his own “American flag”.
Actually, most Americans know about this. They know it’s not justice. But they choose to be ignorant, because it’s not their interest that’s at immediate threat.
Very similar to Germans. They knew Jews were thrown into death camps. But since they don’t face immediate danger and can even possibly benefit from the situation, they chose to be ignorant.
They steal money from those who earned it and hand it over to the automotive laggards for free and then they steal more of our money and purchase the cars built with the stolen money…Lots of stealing going on.
If I worked for any of the transplants, I would be angry as NSFW right now
Well, there isn’t much they can do about it with a very pro-union/pro-UAW president fom the north. Sad, but true.
give me a break
associating govt. buying cars to Jewish Death Camps WTF!!!
Actually under the government contract a Ford Taurus only cost $13,000 something… I work for a city in WI and they have all Taurus, Buick Century…
Fleet Service does not want to change and “needs ten more years of research to find fuel efficient alternatives”. I work for Engineering Division and Engineering buys their own vehicles (as the only agency) and has all vehicles serviced under private contract (since Fleet Service takes 3 days and $80 to do an oil change). The recent cars Engineering bought were 5 Honda Fit and 4 Ford Escape Hybrids (for construction inspectors). It is quite hard to buy vehciles on your own from private dealers since they have to sign all the Affirmative Action BS paperwork and when the Fit were on high demand most refused to sell to us because of the paperwork and we had to go 100 miles out of town to buy Fits.
Well, while Fleet Service needs ten more years to research if a Honda Fit has better mileage than a Taurus (Edmunds? Internet??) we just have to move forward.
Sad to see that the federal government is working against us, but we keep trying….
Unless the replaced vehicles are actually scrapped, there is no reduction in CO2 emissions…but considering that there is a significant energy investment in making a vehicle, does scrappage make sense? Not to mention there are people who can’t afford a car…kind of wasteful just to destroy them.
“If I worked for any of the transplants, I would be angry as NSFW right now”
You forget though that each respective country buys its own country’s vehicles for gov’t work. So the Japanese buy Japanese vehicles, the Italians buy Italian vehicles and so on. Granted there are a few exceptions to this, but overall this is generally the situation. So the gov’t is only doing what every other gov’t does and what should be done anyways, its called patriotism, something many Americans have forgotten. And while Obama is probably doing this for the wrong reasons, we should look at the positive in that emissions will be reduced, maybe not as much as could have been done, but they will be and thats good in any case the way I see it.
Upstate NY’s exceptionally tax-parasitic civil servants tend to favor imports as their personal vehicles.
But, since they probably supported Obama 10:1, there’s rough justice (and borderline cruelty) in forcing them to swap from their personal Accord to a work Durango (V6).
rf
and u think the united states govt should buy a toyota…kia? maybe iranian vehicle…..
unseensightz:
you are partially right… however, other governments buy cars that are PRODUCED in their country. German stte government favors their state producers if they have any..
Bavaria: BMW, Baden Würtemberg: MB
Hessen does not discriminate against transplants (Opel = GM) or Ford (=Ford). With that theory the US government rightfully should buy cars produced in the US. This probably would exclude many of the big 2.1, and include Toyota, Honda, Mazda…
“The Ford Escape Hybrid will replace EVERYTHING.”
And we will drive them to the Taco Bell, the only fast-food joint remaining after the “fast food wars.”
(too obscure?)
(refer to Judge Dredd movie)
Juniper, you’ve just been Godwin’d.
But to be honest shouldn’t we be concerned about the other $786,715,000,000.00 that’s going to somewhere other than Detroit as well?
Just wondering…
According to the GSA, the federal government’s vehicle fleet includes over 645,000 vehicles, and it buys about 63,000-65,000 vehicles per year.
Based upon that record, 17,600 vehicles is about three months’ worth of purchases for them during an ordinary year. Bucket, meet drop.
It sounds as if Obama wanted to create positive investor and market sentiment over something that they would have done, anyway. Total added costs associated with this project: Whatever they spent on making the coffee and Kool Aid served at the press conference.
I was in the Military during the first Chrysler bailout, early 80’s. Every base or government agency suddenly grew a plethora of K Cars.
Obbop,
It wasn’t the only fast food restaurant, it was the name of EVERY restaurant!
Demolition man… great movie!
So they purchased 10% more efficient domestic products. Wow! Unbelievable. Why couldn’t the US govt buy foreign instead? I can’t figure it out. Please help me…
While 10% might not be breathtaking, a 10% reduction in fuel spending over a period of years is still some major money to redirect to better uses. As for why it goes to the D3 – why wouldn’t it?
When it comes to fuel economy the domestic brands have offerings on par with imports, and while buying foreign owned but locally built vehicles might in some way help those who work in those plants, buying locally owned and locally built helps a lot more.
@ RedStapler :
Ford already makes and sells electric postal vans and has been doing so since at least 2001.
For what its worth the government does buy Toyotas. At three separate large postal facilities in Florida that I have access to virtually every forklift, powerlift and towmotor (little electric tow vehicles) were all Toyotas.
““The Ford Escape Hybrid will replace EVERYTHING.”
And we will drive them to the Taco Bell, the only fast-food joint remaining after the “fast food wars.””
I’m cool with both of those things Just as long as we don’t use the seashells on the wall in place of toilet paper!
The contrived logic behind this purchase reminds me of the guy struggling to explain why he bought his wife a set of alloy wheels for their anniversary.
Do politicians really think we are that stupid?
But what happens to the 17,600 vehicles that they are replacing?
Do they flood out into the used market?
Are they crushing them?
Paying somebody $10,000 a car to “recycle” them?
17,600 just isn’t that much… Buy 2 million units from GM and you’ve given them something to do for a little while.
2,500 hybrid sedans? I doubt that means they’re buying $40k new Fusion hybrids. So what hybrid sedan is left that Detroit makes…uh…Malibu/Aura! 2500 sales in a single month will be their best showing ever!
Other posters here are right…despite the justified viewpoint of government redistribution of money to the undeserved, 17,600 is a drop in the bucket and will barely help clear inventory, much less get factories running. And it’s only a portion of what is purchased each year anyways.
Someone point me to the used government vehicle auction!
Even I can support this sort of bailout. Also, as long as the price is fair, I have no problem with buying domestic as a policy. I don’t think anyone but the French would argue it’s unfair to favor the domestic player. Of course, whenever they do it, it’s because their domestics are the best!
I worked in a Naval shipyard for years. It is about two miles long and 500 feet wide on average, and a high proportion of the government vehicles that are used there never go out the gate. Usage requirements there don’t have much to do with the world at large. You have trucks to haul big parts of ships from the ship in drydock or at a pier to the shop, and back after they’re refurbished. Buses to help move people, mostly at shift change. Vans to haul work crews and tools where they’re needed in a hurry. (The rest walk.) Little Daihatsu etc. rigs to move one or two people and small parts and packages. Pickups for public works people etc. A few cars for chauffeuring bigshots. Top speed on base is 20 mph. You can guess for yourself what the average gas mileage is, and how resistant to efforts to reduce fuel consumption it would be.
The shipyard used to buy its own vehicle fleet, but nowadays most of them are GSA vehicles.
I suspect, with other B&B commenters, that this announcement is just a puff piece; the number of vehicles involved is well under a normal year’s purchase. And, I’d also suspect that most of the vehicles will be used a lot more like normal fleet vehicles than the ones in my old shipyard.
Oh the irony. Let’s use Ford as an example:
Rather than buy their most profitable products, even at fleet prices (Crown Vic, Grand Marquis, Town Car), the Government is going to buy vehicles that Ford loses money on at RETAIL prices (Escape and Fusion Hybrid).
How is that helping again?
How is that helping again?
Well it helps in two ways:
1. When you have fixed costs (such as UAW labor) that you can’t reduce, it’s always better to keep them working, even at a small loss than to have them completely idle and thus take a complete loss on your costs.
2. Cash flow…. You can stay in business while losing money for a long time, as long as you have cash flow to pay the bills.