This tool is ideal for letting you see your gas and cost savings from a "Cash for Clunkers" trade in.
How to use it: Select a driving distance and gas price of your choice. Compare your current MPG level (15 MPG) to a wide range of more efficient MPG levels (e.g., 24 MPG, 27 MPG, 33 MPG) to see your gas and cost savings.
You might also find the following tables helpful:
1) These tables directly caclulate the gas and cost savings of trading in a car that gets 18 MPG or less for different combinations of cars with higher MPG.
2) The following table shows why MPG is misleading as a measure of gas savings and why we need to look at "GPM" measures such as "Gallons per 100 Miles". "Gallons per 100 miles" makes clear that the improvement from 14 MPG to 25 MPG saves more gas (3 gallons per 100 miles) than any possible improvement on a 33 MPG car. Here is a downloadable version of the table below.
| MPG | Gallons per 100 Miles | Gas Costs to Drive 10,000 Miles |
| 10 | 10.0 | $2,500 |
| 11 | 9.1 | $2,273 |
| 12 | 8.3 | $2,083 |
| 13 | 7.7 | $1,923 |
| 14 | 7.1 | $1,786 |
| 15 | 6.7 | $1,667 |
| 16 | 6.3 | $1,563 |
| 17 | 5.9 | $1,471 |
| 18 | 5.6 | $1,389 |
| 19 | 5.3 | $1,316 |
| 20 | 5.0 | $1,250 |
| 21 | 4.8 | $1,190 |
| 22 | 4.5 | $1,136 |
| 23 | 4.3 | $1,087 |
| 24 | 4.2 | $1,042 |
| 25 | 4.0 | $1,000 |
| 26 | 3.8 | $962 |
| 27 | 3.7 | $926 |
| 28 | 3.6 | $893 |
| 29 | 3.4 | $862 |
| 30 | 3.3 | $833 |
| 31 | 3.2 | $806 |
| 32 | 3.1 | $781 |
| 33 | 3.0 | $758 |
| 34 | 2.9 | $735 |
| 35 | 2.9 | $714 |
| 36 | 2.8 | $694 |
| 37 | 2.7 | $676 |
| 38 | 2.6 | $658 |
| 39 | 2.6 | $641 |
| 40 | 2.5 | $625 |
| 41 | 2.4 | $610 |
| 42 | 2.4 | $595 |
| 43 | 2.3 | $581 |
| 44 | 2.3 | $568 |
| 45 | 2.2 | $556 |
| 46 | 2.2 | $543 |
| 47 | 2.1 | $532 |
| 48 | 2.1 | $521 |
| 49 | 2.0 | $510 |
| 50 | 2.0 | $500 |
If you want to know your carbon impact, saving 100 gallons of gas reduces carbon dioxide emissions by roughly 1 ton.
[Update June 20: Here is a link to the final June 18 plan.]