Report: New Car Sales Prices At 15 Year High

If data from CNW Research is accurate, there’s bad news on the horizon for new car shoppers. Early April sales show that transaction prices for new car sales in the United States are at their highest level in 15 years, reflecting an average discount of just 13% off of MSRP. That may sound good on paper, but it reflects the highest transaction pricing since 1996, which is good news for car dealers but bad news for consumers. Don’t expect things to get better anytime soon, as Japan-related shortages will shortly begin to impact availability of popular models from multiple manufacturers. Remember that law of supply and demand? As supply dwindles and demand increases, prices go up. Read more

Automakers Not Selling Enough ‘Green’ Cars To Meet Looming CAFE Standards

By 2016, automakers who sell their wares in the United States have to achieve a CAFE average of 35.5 miles per gallon. To put that number in perspective, the average fuel economy of a vehicle sold in 2010 was 22.2 miles per gallon; in other words, in the next five years, fuel economy has to increase by an average of nearly 61% per vehicle sold. That’s not even remotely possible, especially when you consider that the average fuel economy per vehicle sold declined from 2009 to 2010. One reason is that sales of trucks, minivans and SUVs rose by 3% last year; in other words, Americans like big vehicles, and as long as gas prices don’t stay at current levels, we’ll continue to buy trucks. That’s bad news for automakers, who face stiff financial penalties if they can’t achieve the ridiculously optimistic CAFE goals. So what happens next? Read more

Almost 13,000 Falsely Claim Electric Car Tax Credit

Imagine that: nearly 13,000 Americans tried to scam the government in the first half of 2010 by claiming they purchased an electric car. The false claims amounted to about 20% of credits granted, and totaled some $33 million. Twenty nine of the fake claims were filed by prisoners (why not roll the dice when you’ve got nothing to lose), while other fraudulent claims were actually filed by IRS employees. Currently unemployed IRS employees, I assume. Some taxpayers claimed the deduction for the purchase of a Hummer H3, a Dodge Durango or a Cadillac Escalade, and one form actually tried to claim the credit for purchasing a golf cart. Read more

Cash for Clunkers Suspended Indefinitely: $1 billion Already Gone

White House officials and lawmakers were studying late Thursday how to keep alive the government’s cash-for-clunkers incentive program because of concerns the program’s $1 billion budget may have been exhausted after just one week. Read more