Jul30
CARS Guzzlers’ funds to run out by Halloween
The cash-for-guzzlers program will run out of its $1 billion funding “well before” its Nov. 1 expiration date, a spokesman for the National Automobile Dealers Association said today, after the government said dealers have already applied for 10 percent of the funds. “Accordingly, NADA is currently working with (the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration) to ensure that every dealer is reimbursed by NHTSA for a valid deal and that the wind-down to this program is fair and orderly,” NADA spokesman Bailey Wood said in an e-mail. As of 4 p.m. Wednesday, dealers had submitted 22,782 deals worth $95.9 million in reimbursements, NHTSA said today in a statement. That’s an average of $4,209.26 per deal, indicating that a majority of sales include $4,500 vouchers. Dealers filed $27 million worth of requests during the workday Wednesday, compared with $51.9 million filed during the previous 24 hours. The system for filing applications is now in its sixth day. The cash-for-guzzlers program has a $1 billion budget to pay dealers back for giving consumers $3,500 to $4,500 for trading in some gas-guzzling vehicles for new ones with better fuel efficiency. As much as $50 million of that budget can go toward NHTSA’s administration costs. The $95.9 million is the amount of money dealers have requested for reimbursement, NHTSA spokesman Rae Tyson said today. His statement was a clarification of a previous statement that the money was the amount approved for dealer payouts. Tyson said he did not know how long it would take for dealers to receive their payments. The government’s www.cars.gov Web site says it will take about 10 days for voucher money to appear in dealers’ accounts after each request gets approved. Tyson said he wouldn’t “make any prediction” about when the funding will run out.
He pointed to his comments Wednesday in an interview with Automotive News, when he said NHTSA was taking steps to ensure that if the program budget is exhausted, dealers would not be left holding the bag for credits they paid to customers without getting reimbursed. "We will not, repeat will not, put those dealers at any risk in terms of transactions they may have in the pipeline," Tyson said Wednesday. Sales eligible for the reimbursements could have taken place as early as July 1, but the government released rules for the program July 23 and allowed dealers to register Friday. About 23,000 dealers have submitted registrations, and 19,328 of those have been instated into the program so far, NHTSA said today.
SOURCE: [ Automotive News ]
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