The Car Allowance Rebate System, formerly known as the Cash-for-Clunkers bill, takes effect today, July 1.

Yesterday, President Barack Obama signed the bill into law that pays consumers up to $4,500 in credit for trading in their cars or trucks for more fuel-efficient vehicles. The $1 billion program is overseen by The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Details of how the plan will be rolled out are still being discussed. The full release is expected by July 24, but cars purchased between July 1 and Nov. 1, 2009 (if the funds do not run out before that) will qualify.

Here are some requirements listed from the CARS program website:

• Your vehicle must be less than 25 years old on the trade-in date.
• Only purchases or leases of new vehicles qualify.
• Generally, the vehicles you trade in must get 18 or fewer miles per gallon. You can check your current car's gas mileage estimate here.
• The new car being purchased must get a minimum of 22 miles per gallon and cannot exceed a price of $45,000.
• The vehicle you trade in must be drivable.
• Trade-in vehicles must be registered and insured continuously for the full year preceding the trade-in.
• The vehicle that you are trading in is required to be destroyed. Therefore, the value negotiated with the dealer for your trade-in is not likely to exceed its scrap value.

The CARS rebate does not count on top of the trade-in value of your vehicle. When you trade your car in, you do not need to do any paperwork with the government because the dealer will apply the credit when you buy the new vehicle.

The bill is designed for people with older, inefficient cars who are looking for new, more fuel-efficient cars. But there have been criticisms that the purpose of the bill is more for stimulating car sales than greening America’s fleet, since the gas mileage standard is just a 4 mpg increase.

Others, such as the Washington Post, are criticizing the bill for not providing enough money. The $1 billion of credits is only expected to increase car sales by 250,000 cars. Businessweek quoted Jeremy Anwyl, chief executive of Edmunds, saying that the program will not help the auto industry because auto sales would need to increase by 3 million vehicles more to get them out of the bad situation they are in now. But most automakers and auto dealers support the program.

What do you think about the new program? If you qualify, what kind of car would you get? If you don’t qualify, what kind of car would you want to get? Share your thoughts by posting a comment below.

According to the U.S. Department of Energy, 1.2 billion gallons of gas are wasted annually due to under-inflated tires. By keeping tires properly inflated, drivers can improve their gas mileage by up to 3.3 percent.

 This Earth Day students at Loudoun Valley High School in Percellville, Va., have launched the enGAUGE It campaign to encourage motorists to regularly check their tires and keep them properly inflated. The students will hand out thousands of free tire gauges at various locations around the community and will provide demonstrations on checking tire inflation to community members, including local elected officials.

The Newton Marasco Foundation, an organization dedicated to inspiring the next generation of environmental stewards, is sponsoring the enGAUGE It campaign by providing the students with the tire gauges. The Foundation has also created a website for enGAUGE It that offers tips for checking tire pressure, a gas savings calculator and a tool kit for starting an enGAUGE It campaign in your area.

To learn more about checking your tire pressure and why digital gauges are best, read Check Your Tire Pressure and Improve Your Gas Mileage and Under Pressure: Better Tire Gauges Mean Better Fuel Economy.

This week, Congress debated an auto industry bailout bill of $25 billion. The executives of the Big Three Automakers – Ford, Chrysler and General Motors – testified at congressional hearings (after spending tens-of-thousands of dollars to fly in on their luxury private jets, one of which cost $36 million) and asked for federal support.

Reactions to the Detroit automakers’ requests have been mixed, from support to flat-out opposition.

The Civil Society Institute (the organization behind 40MPG.org and CLEAN) sent out an action alert at the beginning of the lame-duck session, asking its supporters to contact members of Congress and President-elect Barack Obama’s transition team in support of a Green Auto Bailout. The goal being to have conditions on a bailout that would require the car manufactures to develop and produce more hybrids, clean diesels and fuel-efficient vehicles, as well as drop their lawsuits against states with higher global warming emissions standards, such as California, Vermont, Rhode Island and New Mexico.

“If taxpayers are going to be put at risk by guaranteeing new loans, then any such new help should be conditioned on the U.S. car companies ending their campaign to frustrate state-level efforts to clean up car and light-truck emissions that cause global warming,” said 40MPG.org founder Pam Solo. “Further, Congress should insist that every penny of the $25 billion in new loan guarantees that Detroit is seeking to building the cars of tomorrow, not the gas-guzzling dinosaurs of yesterday.”

Although Congress is leaving for Thanksgiving break, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said they may call Congress back in session at the beginning of next month to continue work on the automaker bailout bill and other economic issues before the next holiday break.

40MPG and CLEAN are still encouraging people to sign and e-mail the action letters, since the issue is still on the table.

There is some support for environmental preconditions in Congress, but others argue clean energy restrictions might make the bill more difficult to pass. It is estimated that if even one American automaker goes under, more than 2 million jobs will be lost in 2009.

Here are some links to other articles on this topic:

MSNBC

CNN

The New York Times

Fox News

Sept. 30, The U.S. Department of Energy launched the 2008 Clean Cities National Alternative Fuel Vehicle Day Odyssey, also known as Odyssey Day. The day was celebrated in Washington D.C., and embarked a nationwide symposium of 80 events dedicated to promoting the use of petroleum-free fuel that will take place over the next few months. Events are happening in over 60 locations and range from ride-and-drive events to public forums.

The Clean Cities partnership consists of 86 coalitions working with 5,700 local stakeholder programs. Clean Cities has helped reduce the use of petroleum-fuel by 2 billion gallons; put more than half a million alternative-fuel vehicles on the road; and contributed to the construction of more than 3,000 alternative refueling stations across the country.

I couldn’t find where the events will be, but with 86 coalitions, chances are good there will be one in your state.

Reading this article in The New York Times, I was struck by this example of old-think (trucks, SUVs; entrenched executives) vs. new think (small, efficient cars; relatively new chief executive Alan Mulally) at the notoriously financially troubled Ford: 

As recently as 2004, two-thirds of Ford’s United States sales were of truck-based products. Many people in the company were skeptical that Ford could be profitable with more small cars in the showroom.  

But Mr. Mulally has challenged those notions.  

At a town hall-style meeting this year, he expressed frustration when one employee suggested that making small cars was a money-losing proposition.  

“Why can’t we make money on small cars?” Mr. Mulally said, according to two people in attendance. “Do you think Toyota can’t make money on small cars?”  

At virtually every management meeting, Mr. Mulally would repeatedly refer to charts showing that smaller vehicles constituted 60 percent of the global automotive market.  

Each time an executive suggested that Ford’s future lay in expanding its truck business, Mr. Mulally pulled the charts out.  

“Let’s see, the global share of large vehicles is 15 percent,” he said at one such meeting, according to people in attendance. “And you’re telling me you want to invest more in them?”  

Details are few and far between, thus far, but today Ford announced it is shifting its longstanding focus on trucks and SUVs to small cars and crossover vehicles. The automaker will convert three plants in North America from truck and SUV production to produce six new cars, according to this report.

A recent editorial from Car & Driver editor-in-chief Csaba Csere makes a “fearless prediction” that plug-in hybrids will be “the hot rods of the 21st century.” 

Csere acknowledges that we still need a breakthrough in lithium-ion battery technology to make plug-in hybrids feasible, which is certainly true. But he adds that plug-in hybrids will “quickly proliferate” after that breakthrough happens. Csere is dead-on when he argues that plug-in hybrid development is ahead of that for fuel-cell vehicles. He says: 

“A reasonable person might conclude that once plug-in hybrids become common and their batteries become inexpensive purely battery-powered vehicles will leapfrog the fuel-cell machines and leave them stillborn.” 

The rest of Csere’s column is a technical, but interesting discussion of the keys to plug-in hybrid development, the horsepower from advanced batteries and electric motors, and the advantages of series hybrids (in which the electric motor and internal combustion engine are separate) over parallel hybrids (in which the electric motor and internal combustion engine are intertwined). 

And — in case you’re wondering — Csere’s name is pronounced something like “Chabba Chedda.” At least according to the forums at caranddriver.com.

Over at Greenversations, the official blog of the EPA, there’s a lively discussion going on about what it’ll take to get us to change our driving habits. It’s a good question, one that’s becoming more front and center for most Americans.

The post notes that the pressures of rising gas prices and increasing pollution have many people wanting to drive less, but not necessarily everyone can, at least easily so. 

For me, I’d take public transportation in a heartbeat. If it were available for my commute. I yearn for high-speed light rail of some sort to run between where I live and where I work. In the meantime, I’m thankful I’m at least able to carpool with three or four other people. 

To share the pain of record gas prices and post your thoughts on what it would take to significantly change your driving habits, click here.

What is the plural of Prius? Priuses? Prii? Prix? Priora. Just Prius? Whatever’s correct, there certainly are lots of the trendsetting hybrid car out there. More than 1 million, in fact. 

As of April 2008, worldwide sales of the Prius reached 1,028,000 units. The Prius is sold in more than 40 countries and regions, but the bulk of sales come from North America and Japan. 

According to Toyota, all those Prius hybrids have contributed 4.5 million tons less carbon dioxide pollution (the leading cause of global warming) than what would have come from similarly sized gas-only cars purchased instead of the Prius. 

And, in case you’re wondering, the official word from Toyota is that Prius works for the singular and plural forms.

Here's a cool move from Volkswagen: Starting tomorrow, the automaker will pay to offset one year's worth of carbon dioxide emissions from every new vehicle it sells in the United States before Jan. 2, 2008.

Volkswagen will work with Carbonfund.org — perhaps the heavyweight among the growing number of carbon-offset nonprofits — to reforest the lower Mississippi alluvial valley, wetlands in northern Louisiana that have mostly become farmland. According to Volkswagen, this ecosystem is one of the top carbon-suckers in the United States — its trees and soil absorb 450 tons of CO2 per acre, compared to 170 tons of CO2 per acre from comparable reforestation efforts.

Specifically, Volkswagen will pay CarbonFund to plant more than 250,000 native trees in the area, which will reduce CO2 emissions by more than 372,000 tons.

To learn more about the Mississippi alluvial valley, click here. To calculate your carbon footprint and see how you can offset it, click here.